[Hardware geeks, microcontroller geeks, please come]

Yet another Hacktoberfest tshirt...

Gotcha? (I bet you know who I am)

Just kidding. Just a random project idea I am not sure if it is possible to make from scratch.

It is essentially a usb external storage
About 32gb

And has a lcd that shows available storage space

And some buttons to play snake. (Yup)

Is it possible?

What should I expect when creating from scratch? (Microcontroller, c language, interfaces, etc)

Of course its possible, for that maybe you should use microprocessor

@wowotek hmm okay
Waiting for others to cut in

@CozyPlanes have you getting somewhere? Like choosing hardware, or other features maybe ?

@irene
Outer me: It is just a coincidence.
Inner me: How did this fuxking person read my fuxking mind?
Inner inner me: Is this person a subscriber of liveoverflow youtube channel?

@wowotek i wrote some features below

@M1sf3t I'll upload a clear version later, please delete these when those become available
Thanks!

Oh, any any ideas too?

@M1sf3t I am with you. I love the idea, and want to extend more
Ofc the final prototype should be made by a third-party, and the PoC should be created by myself with bigger parts in a breadboard, but can't find where to start.

@Haxk20 bingo
I really enjoyed his GSM network series too

@M1sf3t what do you mean?

Lets all get to the point 🤣🤣

I worked in the high density storage field for an extremely short while. I'd recommend finding a decent USB controller MCU (Microchip makes a couple) paired with 4x 32Gb NAND chips (you can find all sorts of them on Alibaba). Since you'll be making the controller software from scratch be sure to read up on block allocation algorithms, bad block mapping and block reordering, and of course the USB MSC protocols. And please please PLEASE don't reuse VID/PID codes and allocate one for your project at pid.codes or the like. For the board I believe you could manage to fit everything in only 2 layers, which will cut down on milling/mfg. costs.

@joshumax Thanks for telling me the starting point;!

Can I ask you details when I need more help voa your email?

@joshumax
If you mean 4x 32gb nand chips, do you mean 128gb in total? (May i ask why)

Also, what is the controller software usually written? (C, assembly, ...)

Are those algos you mentioned open source in some way?

How much does it cost (estimate) to make the final circuit board via a third party?

I really appreciate your help!! °v°

@CozyPlanes

NAND is usually measured in gigabits, not gigabytes, so a 1Gb flash == 128MB.

As for firmware development related to the controller and display, a lot of that is done in a systems language like C mixed with platform-specific assembly for hardware initialization, registering interrupt vectors, etc.

I'd be happy to answer more stuff if you send an email to my research address joshumax AT uw.edu

@joshumax Just one more here, is usb controllers in USB sticks like sandisk, are they closed source?

@Nanos Depends on the vendor.

Some implement CRC and Hamming codes in the controller firmware to detect and correct SBEs. Other vendors just leave that stuff out entirely and expect the filesystem to handle errors at the block level.

@CozyPlanes SanDisk and the like tends to create their controllers in-house and outsource fabrication to overseas manufacturers. They usually integrate low power softcores in them like the M0.