With regards to the wireless power on, I was definitely not the trail blazer. I’m just using https://github.com/Thunkar/bc250-esp32-switch

[0] https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005009609601844.html

[1] https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005011847734240.html

[2] https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005007479144456.html

[3] https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0DJDC74BP?th=1

Yours seems a bit too eager though! I wouldn't want the thing to start up every time I get home as it turns the projector on, which lowers the projector screen, which blocks the (small) apartment's main entrance when lowered and would make me enter home on my fours ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't have an ethernet cable where the box is, so WoL is not an option for me either. I could have used something similar to your approach (very smart, by the way!) but decided to go ESP aiming for the most console-like experience of just grabbing the controller and playing your game

It is also a very hacky build. You need to flash the BIOS which enables a few interesting unlocks: from 24 to 40 GPU compute units and 6 to 8 CPU cores. It's a bit of a silicon lottery and will depend on your specific board and you need to test everything thoroughly yourself, honing on a config that works for you.

The software side of things is Linux, so if you're familiar with setting it up it shouldn't be difficult to go through the different steps. There are a few distros that work well. I use Bazzite and boot directly to Steam big picture, the UX is great. You can exit to desktop and you have a fully usable Linux box that you can play around with from the comfort of your sofa.

One of the downsides is that it uses a lot of power when idling, about 80W. I just turn it off after using it. I'm working on a QOL feature: an ESP32-based power switch that starts the board when a specific BT device is detected (usually a controller). Once everything is setup the board works very nicely. It can be a bit loud depending on your fan/case combination. I'm currently printing this one[0]

It delivers about the same punch as a standard PS5. The hardware is remarkably similar, and much better than mini PCs set up with AMD APUs, unless you go Strix halo but that is another price league (10x). You can play Cyberpunk 2077 decently on it on settings similar to an AMD RX 6700XT or slightly below RTX 3070.

A pretty impressive number is the memory bandwidth at ~410 GB/s, which should run local LLMs like Gemma 4 or Qwen3.8 27B at decent speed but with limited context size as its just 16Gb

Would I build it again? It was a lot of fun, but financially is not a crazy deal if you need to buy all the materials and factor your time in. Still much cheaper than a Steam Box!

- [0] https://makerworld.com/en/models/3021754-bc250-case-mkuu-fsp...

Edit: GPU performance comparison

I think France and Spain are the best of the big European countries regarding coverage, but also adoption: If we look at the adoption ranking globally, Spain sits fourth at 90%, behind the UAE, China and South Korea and ahead of France at 83.6%.

Very few European countries convert coverage into subscriptions that efficiently, and I think it's driven by competition. You can get 500Mb symmetric connection for as little 10 euro [1], 20 for 2Gbps. DIGI has just gone crazy and in their own network they are offering symmetric 10Gbps for 25. Most people I know have 1Gbps because when is that not enough?

[0]: https://digital.gob.es/en/telecomunicaciones-infraestructura...

[1]: https://www.digimobil.es/fibra-optica/

I will start with older standard GoPro videos, and hope that by the time I make it to the Insta360 videos the editor supports 360 video (unless it does already!)

It is also cheaper than 3.5:

> This enhanced efficiency is also combined with a lower price than 3.5 Flash. At $1.50/1M input tokens and $7.50/1M output tokens, 3.6 Flash reduces the overall cost per agentic task, making agents more cost-effective to build and run.

It is very smelly as well as it’s a two stroke engine, but I don’t mind that at all. Quite the opposite