sudomod

Hey guys!

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,...

The build runs on Retropie 4.1 and uses the GPIO for the button inputs. I originally intended to use the Arduino as a keyboard input, but the issue with the non working soldered USB connection stroke me and after several spent evenings trying to get it to work i ditched the idea.

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

Good job. Not easy at all with wood ^^

like it!!!!!

Now that's retro.....

This is what's called INOVATION!
Great build, everything looks great. i would love to see a real wood instead of plywood, maybe a next project?

you say the arduino used for power management and some other control stuff, can you specify please?

Damn, right when we could call a poor game boy a wooden game boy, you just killed the insult.

Thanks for the kind words

correia5022 wrote:you say the arduino used for power management and some other control stuff, can you specify please?

I use the Arduino for the save-shutdown circuit (i used the one posted in the first answer here). The Arduino keeps the power on even when the power switch is off. The other side of the power switch is wired as an input to the Arduino, so it knows when to issue a shutdown command to the pi (this is done pulling an gpio input via a transistor to ground, which then issues the "sudo shutdown -now" command). The Arduino also monitors the voltage on the tx-pin of the pi, so its able to cut the power when the pi has finished shutting down.

Besides the save shutdown the Arduino monitors the battery voltage and gives a status indication using the red LED on the front and shuts the pi down at a certain level to protect the batteries from over discharge. However, this didn't work as expected, and i have to look into this part again. Btw. the battery died yesterday after approximately 2,5-3 hours - at least the Arduino cut it off. The time seems quite reasonable and kind of expected, but i want to measure again to make sure everything works just right.

There are also two other minor functions the Arduino handles:
1. it gives a pwm signal for the lcd backlight, since i ran out of usable gpios for that purpose (or at least the command to dimm the backlight through the pi didn't work...)
2. the audio amp can be shutdown and my volume wheel has a switch built in. So the Arduino powers the amp on and off based on the status of the switch (which could be also wired directly, but...) and also during the power down phase to get rid of any 'plop' sounds.

So yeah, mostly little things, but they made my life a bit easier. I think most of it can also be done just with the pi and some other circuitry to get rid of the Arduino completely.

As to build on out of 'real' wood: yeah, I think this could really look decent But for now, I think one Gameboy is enough though. But there are certainly things I would do differently when I ever get around to building another one. Using another type of wood is one of them - not just for the looks of it, but the plywood very often splitted and chipped out, etc.

Cheers!
Andi

Andi wrote:Thanks for the kind words

correia5022 wrote:you say the arduino used for power management and some other control stuff, can you specify please?

I use the Arduino for the save-shutdown circuit (i used the one posted in the first answer here). The Arduino keeps the power on even when the power switch is off. The other side of the power switch is wired as an input to the Arduino, so it knows when to issue a shutdown command to the pi (this is done pulling an gpio input via a transistor to ground, which then issues the "sudo shutdown -now" command). The Arduino also monitors the voltage on the tx-pin of the pi, so its able to cut the power when the pi has finished shutting down.

Besides the save shutdown the Arduino monitors the battery voltage and gives a status indication using the red LED on the front and shuts the pi down at a certain level to protect the batteries from over discharge. However, this didn't work as expected, and i have to look into this part again. Btw. the battery died yesterday after approximately 2,5-3 hours - at least the Arduino cut it off. The time seems quite reasonable and kind of expected, but i want to measure again to make sure everything works just right.

There are also two other minor functions the Arduino handles:
1. it gives a pwm signal for the lcd backlight, since i ran out of usable gpios for that purpose (or at least the command to dimm the backlight through the pi didn't work...)
2. the audio amp can be shutdown and my volume wheel has a switch built in. So the Arduino powers the amp on and off based on the status of the switch (which could be also wired directly, but...) and also during the power down phase to get rid of any 'plop' sounds.

So yeah, mostly little things, but they made my life a bit easier. I think most of it can also be done just with the pi and some other circuitry to get rid of the Arduino completely.

As to build on out of 'real' wood: yeah, I think this could really look decent But for now, I think one Gameboy is enough though. But there are certainly things I would do differently when I ever get around to building another one. Using another type of wood is one of them - not just for the looks of it, but the plywood very often splitted and chipped out, etc.

Cheers!
Andi

Very cool, thanks for sharing

Great work! I've thought about doing something similar (even bought the 1/4" pieces of wood from Hobby Lobby already). One thing I would suggest to make it lighter and more comfortable in the hands is to sand the hell out of the case edges to make it more curved. It looks awesome as it is, but sanding might help with the comfort and functionality even more...

AcroGod wrote:Great work! I've thought about doing something similar (even bought the 1/4" pieces of wood from Hobby Lobby already). One thing I would suggest to make it lighter and more comfortable in the hands is to sand the hell out of the case edges to make it more curved. It looks awesome as it is, but sanding might help with the comfort and functionality even more...

I did round the edges a bit on the front and more on the back. I would recomment using a hand plane for that, because sanding that amount takes a fair bit of elbow grease
You could make the wood thinner at some places, but i wonder if the stability would suffer from that.

I'd love to see another version of a wooden case. So stop thinking about it and do it What kind of wood do you intend to use?