I just finished my Gameboy Zero build and wanted to stop by and say thanks to all contributors on this forum - it was a very valuable resource for my take on the project
When I saw wermys build video on youtube (i'm not even sure what took me there...), I just thought, wow, thats a cool idea. And so I started my own build.
Being interested in woodworking, I thought of building the case out of plywood instead of using an original or after market Gameboy case. So, without further ado, here are the pics: As you can see, its a bit messy but everything fit in there eventually. The case was built to match the size of an original Gameboy DMG but I think its slightly longer. I wanted the battery compartment to be flat on the back, but when I put the batteries in the first time, I realized there was no space for a lid... so I placed the lid on top, which actually feels quite good in the hand. Its a bit heavy though, so not the best solution for longer gaming sessions
Here's a list of the components I used:
- Raspberry Pi Zero v1.3
- C-Berry 2.8" LCD Display (connected to the spi bus on the pi, using fbcp)
- Arduino Pro Micro (inside the game cartridge) - used for power management and some other control stuff
- self built audio amplifier board based on a lm4861 chip - audio is a filtered pwm signal (large board under the pi, didn't have smaller components on hand...)
- the buttons and rubber pads were salvaged from a cheap snes controller knock off
- Adafruit Power Boost 500, powered from 3 AA batteries or NiMH rechargeable batteries
- a whole bunch of switches, small tranistors, wire,...
At this point i can't say something about the battery life. So far it seems to hold up very well. I played and tested quite a bit on the first charge now and the NiMH's seem to be far from being drained, but we'll see. I desoldered all leds from the powerboost and the arduino, which saves a few mA and i run the screen at ~60% brightness. So essentially tried my best to not waste any power unnecessarily.
The whole build took me about 5 months to complete (with pauses of course and rarely whole days spent on it). The majority of the work was in the case.
So, i hope you like my (as far as i know) rather unique attempt on the build.
Cheers
Andi