Rectangles are a habit, not a law. The Saucer is a handheld console built around a circular touchscreen — no corners, no letterboxing, no pretending. Every game on it is designed for the circle first: the rim is the playfield boundary, the bezel is the sky dome, the center is the pit.
It runs on parts anyone can order, in a case anyone can print, playing games served as a single HTML file. When it publishes, everything publishes: the bill of materials, the layout editor, the case files, and the arcade itself.
Nine games, one file, fully offline. Multi-finger multiplayer on one shared disc — everyone puts a finger on the screen and it gets gloriously messy.
Play Arcadia in the browserOrdinary parts, honest numbers. Everything below is confirmed from manufacturer dimension sheets or the physical part — the whole build lands around €275 and three to four hours of play per charge.
| Part | What | ~€ |
|---|---|---|
| Display | Waveshare 5″ round 1080×1080 HDMI touch (7″ variant supported) | 85 |
| Brain | Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, 2GB (kit with PSU + heatsinks) | 67 |
| Power | UPS HAT (B), 5A — powered over an internal USB-C cable, mounted flat, not stacked on the Pi | 28 |
| Battery | 2×18650 Li-ion + 8.4V charger · ~3–4h play | 25 |
| Sound | Stereo I2S amp (MAX98357A ×2, channel-selected) + 2× VISATON FR7 full-range driver + volume pot — wired direct to GPIO; the header's fully free now that the UPS isn't pogo-stacked on it | 30 |
| Rest | microSD, adapters, screws, filament | ~40 |
No permanent external USB port — yet. One charge port, one power switch, two speaker grilles, one hidden debug pad was the plan when this was still a dedicated arcade cabinet. The UPS's link to the Pi is an internal USB-C cable now, not a stack, so it doesn't add an external port on its own. But a Pi 4 opens the door to a real Linux mode alongside Arcadia, and whether the shell should expose a USB port after all — for a keyboard, an SSD, that live-performance audio interface — is an open question again, worth settling alongside the boot flow itself. Practice audio still runs off the Pi's own headphone jack either way — quiet, no extra parts, plugged in only when needed.
Optional, external, not in the total above: a class-compliant USB audio interface (e.g. Behringer UCA202/UCA222, ~€25–30) for feeding a mixing desk at a gig. It needs no drivers and outputs over RCA straight into a mixer's tape or channel input — nothing to install inside the shell, just plugged into a Pi USB port when it's actually needed.
The layout editor is the same tool this project is being designed with: drag the real parts inside the real case at true scale, check collisions against the rim, flip to a side elevation or a rotatable 3D preview, and export a millimetre-accurate print outline.
Open the layout editor Project statusOpen source at publication. License to be chosen when the first build works — no promises sold before a saucer exists.
Ancestors — Simon (1978) · Warlords (1980) · Missile Command (1980) · Tempest (1981) · Joust (1982) · Arkanoid (1986) · Snake · the handpan (PANArt, 2000). The mechanics are folklore; the games, names, and Klangfeld's synthesis here are original.
Built with — Raspberry Pi · Waveshare · Three.js · Claude.
Named in memory of the Emerson Arcadia 2001 (1982) — a small console that deserved better. We inherit the name and keep the light on.