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Geoffg

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Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 3363

Posted: 09:31am 25 Jun 2026

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I have been in discussions with a coder who goes by the handle of Lunarc3 and he has made a preliminary port of MMBasic to the Cardputer ADV . If you have not heard of this it is a tiny battery powered computer that manages to pack a 1.14" LCD, 56 key QWERTY keyboard, SD card slot and much more in a tiny package the size of a credit card (but thicker).

The price is also small at US$30.

The port has a lot of work left to do but it is a promising start.

His current reddit post is: https://www.reddit.com/r/CardPuter/comments/1u23w1l/release_mmbasic_port_for_cardputeradv/
and his GitHub page with bin only is: https://github.com/lunarc3/MMBasic_cardputer
When the port is stable and complete we may publish the source.

Watch this space.

Geoff

Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net

PhenixRising
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Joined: 07/11/2023
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1965

Posted: 10:32am 25 Jun 2026

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Amazing

I like the M5Stack products (I have the M5Stack Tough)

I was going to use it with Annex32 but then I learned about the license restriction.

I see the ESP32 + PicoMite as a killer combination

robert.rozee
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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 2532

Posted: 01:43pm 25 Jun 2026

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hi Geoff,
a very cool port, the only problem is the display size is way too small for my not-so-great eyesight these days! now if the Cardputer folks could come up with a hardware design similar to the Sharp PC-1262 pocket computer, that would be just perfect...

i see the Cardputer ADV has a set of pins brought out on the top edge of the housing, i wonder if a plug-in dot-matrix LCD display that folded down over the keyboard could be added there?

cheers,
rob :-)

PeteCotton

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Joined: 13/08/2020
Location: Canada
Posts: 639

Posted: 02:18pm 25 Jun 2026

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I use a bunch of M5 stack stuff. Great quality products. But I don't have a cardputer ... yet.

I think I'm going to have to remedy that situation now

This would be fun to tinker with.

al18
Senior Member

Joined: 06/07/2019
Location: United States
Posts: 241

Posted: 07:07pm 25 Jun 2026

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Sounds promising. I have the original M5 Cardputer, which is very similar - same ESP32-S3, 1.14 inch screen, micro SD card slot, WiFi. Keyboard. The ADV model added LoRa, external antenna, improved audio.

Hopefully all Cardputers are supported by MMBasic

Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 5947

Posted: 07:25pm 25 Jun 2026

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I think it is great, but a gadget.
Buy it, show off with your friends, and put it in the box of forgotten toys.

I learned this the hard way owning 2 rp2040 geeks. Very rarely they get used. Too small, too limited.

My eyes cant see, and most likely cant type with my aging thick vingers.

Sorry Geoff…. Wasted on me.

If anything then picocalc.

Volhout
Edited 2026-06-26 05:26 by Volhout

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

robert.rozee
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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 2532

Posted: 08:35pm 25 Jun 2026

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Volhout said I think it is great, but a gadget.
[...] My eyes cant see, and most likely cant type with my aging thick vingers[...]

i'd not be quite so quick to dismiss it, from the same manufacturer and in same family of devices there is their "Tab5" for us$60:
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-tab5-iot-development-kit-esp32-p4?variant=46276989255937
along with a us$11 clip-on keyboard:
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/keyboard-for-tab5?variant=49210670940417

this combination gives you a 1280x720 screen capable of 80 columns of text, along with a small but perhaps-more-accessible keyboard. once a Cardputer port is complete, these other variants are much closer to being a possibility:

also, i presume that one of the ideas behind the Cardputer is that once a project is running on it, you can just unplug the ESP32-S3 module from it and plug the bare module into your own custom carrier board. much like what many folks did (and still do) with the MX170/micromite mk2.

cheers,
rob :-)
Edited 2026-06-26 06:44 by robert.rozee

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