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Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (Completed!)

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 4:44 am
by sotasystems
Since I got loads of private messages on this, if you are planning on using a Leonardo Pro Micro for your gameboy build with PSP 1000 analog sticks, feel free to also check out this guide: http://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1766

I'd like to thank my buddy who lives with me for helping me out on quite a bit on the casing and advicing.

Then I'd also like to thank [mention]kite[/mention] for his support on my battery monitor.

Credits to [mention]helder[/mention] and [mention]wermy[/mention] for their ideas and existing products which I very basic reproduced (I always wanted to order an AIO from [mention]helder[/mention], but never gotten the chance to as everytime I checked it went out of stock :lol:)

I had a lot of fun building this project and gathered quite a bit of experience, and that is what counts, right? :)
The end product is not "perfect", but in no way was it ever meant to be.

Here are pcitures of the finished result:

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Original posts starting from here ->

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After seeing all parts of [mention]Wermy[/mention]'s video guides I fell in love with the end result and decided to make my own, though I want to make it a little individual.

Now, I am not going to modify an existing Game Boy. I am going to start from scratch with an aftermarket case in transparent blue, like this one here:

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  • - Instead of using an RPi Zero, I want to actualy use an RPi 3 for more capabilities such as more compute power, wifi and bluetooth etc. which I have sucessfully modified in order to fit into an actual gameboy (desoldered pretty much every IO except for µUSB)
Also, for some reason, some of my friends thought that the desoldered topside looked like ripped off pads. :roll:
Just to clarify things, they are 100 % intact. What you are seeing is the pure copper, and yes, there was no solder/not much solder on them, that is the reason they look sort of brown-ish instead of silver like solder would.
On the underside of the board, you see that things do look different.


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To make sure it still works, I attached the Pi to my TV via composite over those pins (Audio and Video, pads marked in red circles) and my PC also discovers it over WiFi (\\retropie)

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Now, I took my girlfriends existing gameboy apart (which I won't sacrifice for this project) to see how well the Pi could fit inside, and it didn't look like it's going to give me trouble, but we'll see about that in the future :lol:
  • - Having two analog sticks from a PSP 1000 inside to use other/more emulators (e.g. N64, PSP of course)

    - Instead of just having L and R buttons, I am going to add L1, L2, R1 and R2 so that you can for example play PS1 games.
Here is all the parts listed I am going to use for this project:
Now, I first have to order these and wait for them to arrive, but I will keep you updated! :)
UPDATE: Everything has arrived. :)

[spoiler="Parts list"][/spoiler]

Also I made a little (and very rubbish) "concept" of what it could look like in photoshop ^^'':

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(Front only for now)
Also, the analog stick's positions aren't definite right now, but I grabbed my gameboy and imagined analog sticks to be there and then I came up with the center and a little higher than the left bottom to be comfortable spots.
The 4 raspberries only showcase it to be an RPi with 4 CPU's, in this case an RPi 3.

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 6:04 am
by sotasystems
Ok, so I started putting my analog sticks in place to check out how they would 'feel' when they are inside the gameboy

First, I started by drilling a small hole in the center of the gameboy case and the center of the D-Pad like so:

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Then I slowly made the hole bigger till I had my desired size (I used a 10mm drill):

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Then test-fitted the analog stick inside (not glued in):

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I was satisfied, so I did the same for the bottom left:

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And here you can see how you're supposed to hold it:

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(It kind of reminds me of holding an Nintendo 64 controller)
And the spots turned out to be comfortable as I suggested in my first post! (:

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 8:41 am
by Zero
A good start there. I bought a clear case as well a while ago and I've been trying to think of ideas to make it look nice through the casing before I start on it. Thinking of just using 2 different coloured wire but have a feeling it would need to be really neat to look good. I also like plain unpopulated circuit boards so your stripped down pi should look good through your housing.

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 8:54 am
by hme53
How long did it take completely strip down the pi3

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:30 am
by sotasystems
hme53 wrote:How long did it take completely strip down the pi3
I didn't really look at the time, but I am guessing maybe 1 or maybe even 2 hours

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:34 am
by CaptainDurden
but why 2 sticks??

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:09 am
by sotasystems
CaptainDurden wrote:but why 2 sticks??
Well, I personaly wanted 2 because I am used to use the left one as main 'walking' stick (e.g. Ocarina of time), and the other one as C-Stick similar to the Nintendo Gamecube. (:

Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:23 am
by sotasystems
So, my friend helped me a little with cutting out the bezel for the display, the USB charging port and the battery compartment

The USB-Mini breakout I had didn't fit by default, so I had to trim it:

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Since the VCC pin was out of where I needed it and was cut off, I decided to take my glass-fibre pen and remove the PCB's protective film, so the pure copper is exposed. I then cut off the data pins because I don't actualy need that and I'm going to solder a bridge to VCC and GND there for easier access.

Also, the Tetris cartridge is literaly so brittle that it is hard to handle it and it breaks really easily, but oh well. It's just used to cover up anyways and you only really need to see the front side, so it is ok:

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Also, here my friend helped me ALOT with the bezel and the port (Thanks mate! :D):

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Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:49 am
by sotasystems
The screen and a few other small things came in today, and I wanted to test it out, so I soldered the wires to the coressponding PP's on the Pi:

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The screen won't work on 5V out of the box, so I had to solder a bridge to VCC and the power regulator IC, and now it works like a charm :) :

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Re: Sota's Game Pi 3 / Raspberry Boy 3 [Raspberry Pi 3 Game Boy] (WIP)

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 7:05 am
by sotasystems
I temporarily soldered in an usb-port to my pi and tested it with my PS3 controller and Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64 :)

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