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The PicoSystem itself can be purchased from its creator, pimoroni: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/picosystem https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/picosystem

varispeed 4y ago
I wonder what's with safety of such enclosures made of pcbs? For instance is it going to have unpleasant chemicals transferring on the fingers and then to the body when someone touches eyes or mouth?
- whiskers 4y ago
  The only part of the enclosure that is exposed PCB is the front plate, the rest is machined anodised aluminium - it feels great. All of our products meet the REACH and RoHS requiements for restricted and hazardous materials. TL;DR It's fine.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    Intended use of PCBs is to provide a rigid platform supporting electronic components and so would you not agree that regulation is written with that in mind, as the bar for chemical safety would be set higher if the product was intended to be touched (even accidentally), rather than being hidden inside an enclosure away from direct contact? Use of PCB as a human user interface started in hobbyist world, because it was cheap and easy to create sturdy front panels and was good enough for creating prototypes, but it was never meant for mainstream commercial use in this way - as PCBs even if they meet RoHS, still can contain dangerous chemicals - like flame retardants.
- detrites 4y ago
  As a user can confirm siblings comment. The way it's designed your fingers don't really come into contacting the faceplate, and even then it's not raw but painted. Certainly, I have not felt anything coming off of it and I've used it rather a lot.
kefabean 4y ago
As an aside, if you haven’t yet found this wonderful if tiny retro gaming experience, the InfoNES emulator project ported to PicoSystem is definitely worth hitting up: https://github.com/fhoedemakers/PicoSystem_InfoNes https://github.com/fhoedemakers/PicoSystem_InfoNes It’s still in early stages, no sound and no save points, but thoroughly cute and addictive nonetheless!

varispeed 4y ago

I wonder what's with safety of such enclosures made of pcbs? For instance is it going to have unpleasant chemicals transferring on the fingers and then to the body when someone touches eyes or mouth?

whiskers 4y ago
The only part of the enclosure that is exposed PCB is the front plate, the rest is machined anodised aluminium - it feels great. All of our products meet the REACH and RoHS requiements for restricted and hazardous materials. TL;DR It's fine.
- varispeed 4y ago
  Intended use of PCBs is to provide a rigid platform supporting electronic components and so would you not agree that regulation is written with that in mind, as the bar for chemical safety would be set higher if the product was intended to be touched (even accidentally), rather than being hidden inside an enclosure away from direct contact? Use of PCB as a human user interface started in hobbyist world, because it was cheap and easy to create sturdy front panels and was good enough for creating prototypes, but it was never meant for mainstream commercial use in this way - as PCBs even if they meet RoHS, still can contain dangerous chemicals - like flame retardants.
detrites 4y ago
As a user can confirm siblings comment. The way it's designed your fingers don't really come into contacting the faceplate, and even then it's not raw but painted. Certainly, I have not felt anything coming off of it and I've used it rather a lot.

kefabean 4y ago

As an aside, if you haven’t yet found this wonderful if tiny retro gaming experience, the InfoNES emulator project ported to PicoSystem is definitely worth hitting up: https://github.com/fhoedemakers/PicoSystem_InfoNes https://github.com/fhoedemakers/PicoSystem_InfoNes It’s still in early stages, no sound and no save points, but thoroughly cute and addictive nonetheless!