sudomod

I have something worth showing off, I think. Nothing too revolutionary, but at least it turned out.

My first build, not so much... I went through Wermy's original guide, using a common knockoff pcb kit. it came out pretty rough, but it worked. I used a little too much hot glue around the switch, and my solution - tighten the screws! - turned out to crack the screen, so I only had it working and closed up for about 20 minutes before this:
so, I pulled out all the parts (yay, hot glue) and moved on to my next build... A tricked out A+ one! ... which hit a wall when the four-button bracket in back bumped up against the pi, where it was...

and moved on to a new zero build, that I could (hopefully this time) finish successfully. I did - sort of - the case doesn't actually sit quite right on the lower left because I had to rewire some stuff form my original plan, and can't really remove any of the battery compartment... but at least this is *mostly* good. I worked pretty hard on getting all the case mods to be clean (and then after the reworking, messed up a few, but, again, still mostly happy with it):
I know a lot of people do the black/white thing, but maybe this is a slightly different take. I used the handheld legend buttons, with some retro-modding black silicon. the buttons have clear outer shells with white inners, and the black pads, which give it a neat outline effect:
I wired up the trust fire aa style batteries in the original compartment:
hdmi on the side, and the card reader in the cartridge. usb and sound pot on the normal spot. i just let the powerboost led shine through the case instead of wiring up any leds anywhere, and used a barrel connector for the power.

That looks good, great job.
Tell us about the AA bateries. Used a step-down converter?

correia5022 wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:41 pm

That looks good, great job.
Tell us about the AA bateries. Used a step-down converter?

thanks!

They are lithium-ion 14500s, just shaped like the AAs. You wire them up in parallel (connect all the positive terminals together, and all the negative together, then just connect those at your PSU battery pins). These put out 3.7v at about 900mAh each, but you have to get good ones, or they might have lower output.

Since they are connected in parallel, the current is increased, so you get 4 x 900 = 3600mAh, or about the same as one of those lion square packs.

I mostly liked that it meant keeping the battery compartment in-tact, and made it really easy to swap out the batteries (and you can get an external charger too, if you really want to keep charged and it ready-to-go). I did shave down a couple tabs in there, and then drilled holes to poke the tabs from the terminals through, but that's about it in there for customizing.

Ah ok, i thought they were real AA not 14500 li-ion. Very nice!

very nice, I really like the handheld legend two part buttons, too bad they don't have an XY variant!

rodocop wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:07 am

very nice, I really like the handheld legend two part buttons, too bad they don't have an XY variant!

i know, right? i wonder if they get many requests. i almost e-mailed and asked.

I like the style a lot. Very clean look.