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what is sploom fr?

imemat16/sploom — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

2CAudience · developerComplexity · 5/5Setup · hard

tl;dr

A homebrew project that turns a PlayStation Portable into a stock trading terminal, using a Python backend to fetch market data.

vibe map

mindmap
  root((Sploom Terminal))
    What it does
      Trading client on a PSP
      Paper trades via Alpaca
    Architecture
      Python Flask backend
      C client on console
      ASCII data transfer
    Features
      Order execution
      News sentiment tags
      Moving average overlays
    Setup needs
      Custom firmware
      pspsdk toolchain
      Financial API keys
    Audience
      Homebrew hobbyists
      Retro hardware fans

Code map

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filefunction / class

what do people make with this?

VIBE 1

Turn an old PSP with custom firmware into a paper trading terminal for practicing stock trades.

VIBE 2

See live market news with basic sentiment tagging displayed on a handheld console.

VIBE 3

Explore how to build a lightweight text based client for hardware with very limited memory.

VIBE 4

Learn how to split heavy data processing onto a server so a resource constrained device can stay simple.

what's the stack?

CPythonFlaskAlpaca APIpspsdk

how it stacks up fr

imemat16/sploomcode-my-spec/ear_witnessdouglascorrea/syscall-agent
Stars222
LanguageCCC
Setup difficultyhardhardmoderate
Complexity5/54/54/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

how do i run it?

Difficulty · hard time til it works · 1day+

Requires PSP custom firmware, the pspsdk toolchain, and API keys for Alpaca, Finnhub, and NewsAPI.

in plain english

Sploom Terminal is an unusual project that turns a Sony PlayStation Portable, the handheld gaming console from the 2000s, into a working stock trading and portfolio monitoring device. It is aimed at hobbyists who enjoy homebrew console projects as much as anyone interested in trading tools. The PSP itself only has 24 megabytes of memory, which is far too little to handle large amounts of financial data directly, so the system splits the work in two. A Python web server, meant to run somewhere external like a cloud hosting service, does all the heavy lifting: it fetches market data, calculates indicators, formats everything into simple text, and sends it to the console. The C program running on the PSP itself just handles the network connection, reads that text, responds to the handheld's buttons, and draws a simple text based screen. The features include placing paper trades, meaning simulated trades with no real money, through the Alpaca brokerage API, viewing a live list of open orders, and reading market news headlines with a basic positive, negative, or neutral sentiment tag attached to each one. The terminal screen also shows account holdings alongside indicators like moving averages and Bollinger Bands, all squeezed into a narrow, fixed width text display since the PSP's built in debug screen cannot do graphics or transparency. Getting this running takes real effort. The PSP needs custom firmware installed so it can run unofficial homebrew software and connect to modern WiFi networks. Building the console side program requires a specific legacy toolchain built for the PSP's older processor architecture. The backend needs API keys from Alpaca, Finnhub, and NewsAPI, plus a Python environment with Flask and a handful of other packages installed. The IP address of the backend server is hardcoded into the C code, so anyone setting this up needs to edit and recompile it themselves before it will work. By default it is set up to use paper trading rather than real money.

prompts (copy fr)

prompt 1
Explain how the PSP client and Python backend communicate given the console's 24 megabyte memory limit.
prompt 2
Walk me through setting up custom firmware on a PSP so it can run this homebrew trading client.
prompt 3
Help me update the hardcoded backend IP address in main.c before compiling this project.
prompt 4
Describe how the sentiment analysis on news headlines works in this project's backend.

Frequently asked questions

what is sploom fr?

A homebrew project that turns a PlayStation Portable into a stock trading terminal, using a Python backend to fetch market data.

What language is sploom written in?

Mainly C. The stack also includes C, Python, Flask.

How hard is sploom to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is sploom for?

Mainly developer.

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