Customize a retro handheld gaming console with Onion OS
Gaming Upgrade
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Adding custom firmware to a handheld gaming device enhances your gaming experience and lets you write custom apps. We show you how with Onion OS on a Miyoo Mini Plus.
The Miyoo Mini Plus [1] and Anbernic [2] family of handheld gaming consoles offer a wide range of retro gaming options. These consoles start around $50, and they have emulators for all the major old-school gaming platforms. The handheld hardware comes in several different form factors, but they all run Linux under the hood (Figure 1).
While the firmware that ships with these consoles locks you into a fairly limited interface, you can find custom firmware that offers some enhanced functions and usability features. For the RG35XX/RG40XX hardware, some of the custom firmware choices include Knulli [3] and muOS [4], with GarlicOS [5] being extremely popular on RG35XX units. For the Miyoo handhelds, Onion OS [6] is the most commonly used custom firmware.
In this article, I'll introduce Onion OS and show you how to access its Linux features. To showcase Onion OS's ability to handle custom apps, I'll finish up with two shell scripts that display internal and then remote Raspberry Pi data on the Miyoo Mini Plus screen.
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