shesaysidontlisten GBZ First Build Log [WIP]

[shesaysidontlisten]

So I have been lurking for a long while after stumbling onto wermy's build videos on YouTube several months back. As soon as I watched them I knew I had to build one. I grew up on NES, SNES and Gameboy with a little Genesis peppered in at a friend's house. The problem is that I have never soldered a thing in my life. This build (which will likely include a lot of failure) is gonna be a trial, but I'm very excited.

As a side note, I'm very thankful there are so many amazing people here who will help when I inevitably screw up. I'm gonna be leaning on you nice people pretty hard.

Funny story already, though. I go on Amazon and start picking things out. I'll do another post with links to the items so helpful people can point out wrong parts and potential problems. Anyway, I order some wire, elecrical odds and ends for practice, some mini boards, helping hands, tip cleaner and a soldering iron set. This was on Wednesday. Thank goodness for Prime so I can play around on the weekend and do my first solders, I think. So Friday morning a get one box from FedEx, then one from USPS. Then I check my orders. One item having shipping issues (they used a regional shipper that didn't have the best reviews). I'll give you a guess on which it is. Anyone guess the soldering iron set? The one damn thing that makes all the rest useful! That's life, right?

I'm one of those "gotta have it now" people, so I swing by the hardware store and find a Weller set for 20 bucks. Only 25 Watts, not adjustable and without any of the toys the other Amazon one comes with. No stand, extra tips, etc. I kept the receipt and other life stuff got in the way, so I'll just return it Monday. Amazon still doesn't know when it'll get here, but I can be (reluctantly) patient.

For now I am just poking wires and stuff into one of my mini boards so I have a bunch of things lined up to solder when I finally get it.

Some decisions yet to be made:

• USB on the side? Why? Not sure what I'll use it for.

• Can I get away with no USB hub and still do audio right?

• What's the biggest battery mA I can do?

• Why did all the AIO's have to be sold out when I got the bug? (Rhetorical)

• Stereo headphone jack worth the extra effort, or just mono for now?

For now attached is unsoldered and useless Frankenboard.

SpoilerShow

20170917_111448-665x665.jpg (108.9 KiB) Viewed 7277 times

PS, my helping hands didn't come with covers for the clips and I can't find them online for the life of me. Anyone have any ideas?

[ICMF]

• USB on the side? Why? Not sure what I'll use it for.

• Can I get away with no USB hub and still do audio right?

• What's the biggest battery mA I can do?

• Why did all the AIO's have to be sold out when I got the bug? (Rhetorical)

• Stereo headphone jack worth the extra effort, or just mono for now?

PS, my helping hands didn't come with covers for the clips and I can't find them online for the life of me. Anyone have any ideas?

Going in order...

- Lets you plug in a keyboard/mouse or a second gamepad. The keyboard/mouse makes it easier to configure things once built if you don't have access to the SD card (IMO: better solution is to make the SD card accessible...). Second gamepad lets you do two player, though (again IMO), two players, on a 3/5" screen, when one of you has to be holding the Gameboy sounds like a miserable experience.
- It depends what you want to incorporate, and how you want to incorporate it. The Pi0 only has one USB port. Controls can be done either by USB or through the GPIO pins. Audio can be done either by USB or through the GPIO pins. An external USB port needs to connect via USB. So if you want to connect more than one thing via USB, you'll need a hub. If you only connect one thing via USB, you're fine. (you don't have to connect *anything* via USB, in fact)
-Depends on your specific build, and how much modification you're willing to do. If you use Kite's AIO and hollow out the shell - lose the battery bay, grind out the cartridge area - you can cram a pretty massive cell in there. If you want something that will fit inside the existing battery bay, you're a lot more limited. You should be able to find a 3000 - 4000 mAh cell for the battery bay pretty easily. If you modify the case, you should be able to find a 6000mAh cell that'll fit.
-They're popular, and being made by enthusiasts in their spare time, so the numbers are low. Keep an eye on the forum here, as they do come up for sale fairly often.
-IMO, mono is fine. Most of the games you'll be playing either already are in mono, or they don't have amazing stereo sound anyway.

PS: Wrap them in electrical tape, or slide some heat shrink tubing over them (or silicone tubing, or wire sheathing, or rubber bolt caps). If Wermy uses rubber caps from toggle switches on his: viewtopic.php?t=132

[shesaysidontlisten]

- Lets you plug in a keyboard/mouse or a second gamepad. The keyboard/mouse makes it easier to configure things once built if you don't have access to the SD card (IMO: better solution is to make the SD card accessible...). Second gamepad lets you do two player, though (again IMO), two players, on a 3/5" screen, when one of you has to be holding the Gameboy sounds like a miserable experience.
- It depends what you want to incorporate, and how you want to incorporate it. The Pi0 only has one USB port. Controls can be done either by USB or through the GPIO pins. Audio can be done either by USB or through the GPIO pins. An external USB port needs to connect via USB. So if you want to connect more than one thing via USB, you'll need a hub. If you only connect one thing via USB, you're fine. (you don't have to connect *anything* via USB, in fact)
-Depends on your specific build, and how much modification you're willing to do. If you use Kite's AIO and hollow out the shell - lose the battery bay, grind out the cartridge area - you can cram a pretty massive cell in there. If you want something that will fit inside the existing battery bay, you're a lot more limited. You should be able to find a 3000 - 4000 mAh cell for the battery bay pretty easily. If you modify the case, you should be able to find a 6000mAh cell that'll fit.
-They're popular, and being made by enthusiasts in their spare time, so the numbers are low. Keep an eye on the forum here, as they do come up for sale fairly often.
-IMO, mono is fine. Most of the games you'll be playing either already are in mono, or they don't have amazing stereo sound anyway.

PS: Wrap them in electrical tape, or slide some heat shrink tubing over them (or silicone tubing, or wire sheathing, or rubber bolt caps). If Wermy uses rubber caps from toggle switches on his: viewtopic.php?t=132

In order:

I'm gonna go ahead and nix second player altogether.
Do you mean the card in the pi or the ROM card? At this point I plan to gut a cartridge and have it removable to take advantage, so maybe that is enough access for modifications?

It's not clear to me if I can eliminate the hub with what I have planned. I am planning on using GPIO for controls and planned to do the same for audio. It's not real clear to me at this point if I can do that. I don't want to have to use a USB sound card if I don't have to. I plan to use the board USB for cartridge and that's it.

I don't want the case to be drastically externally modified. Ports widened and shoulders added, yes. Otherwise I want as big as will fit. I'm not doing anything above SNES, so hopefully I have reasonably lower power draw. I see a lot of 2500 and 3000mA batteries. What kind of life can I expect considering a BW screen and no extra USBs as I plan?

Believe me I am watching!

I think agree on the sound, at least for my first build. (Famous last words.). I still need an amplifier though, right? I am doing a volume dial and probably the adafruit speaker and then headphone port. I don't plan to make the HDMI usable either, though I'm fairly sure this wouldn't impact that anyway.

[jb32647]

Amplifiers are pretty cheap, they cost less than $2 on ebay. I recommend you get a 'switched' headphone jack, that automatically cuts audio to the speaker when headphones are plugged in. If you decide to use an off-the-shelf rheostat/pot as a volume knob you'll only need a single-gang one if you're just doing mono. Good luck with your build.

(PS. Remember to use a couple of 10R resistors when combining left and right audio to avoid excess signal interference.)

[ICMF]

2nd player - I agree. Just giving all the options.
Not quite sure what you mean by card in the pi or ROM card. I'm talking about the MicroSD card that contains your O/S, retropie, roms, etc. Over the life of the device, you will need to tweak Raspbian, and to do that, you'll need a keyboard. If the MicroSD card is readily accessible, you can just pull it out and plug it in to another Pi. If the MicroSD card is buried in the device, if you have a USB port, you can plug in a keyboard and open a terminal on the GBZ itself. Or if you configure the WiFi, you can SSH into your Pi.

TL;DR - it's a really good idea to have *some* way to access your operating system. Being able to plug in a keyboard is one convenient way to do that, but it's not MANDATORY and it's not the only way. (again, just mentioning your options here - it's a custom device, so the features are up to you)

If you use GPIO controls and audio, and especially if you're using a Pi0W (so you don't need any dongles), then no, you don't need the hub. I'm not sure what you mean by USB for cartridge - if you mean something like this: http://market.sudomod.com/micro-sd-cart ... filtering/ it gets wired to the MicroSD card slot, not USB. So you wouldn't be using *any* usb inputs.

Mods... yeah, no need to hack the outside, but opening up the battery compartment (inside) will let you fit some bigger cells. My best advice would jsut be to look through other peoples' builds for inspiration. I can't speak to battery time, as my build is fairly different.

Patience... then jump on it as soon as you get the chance.

You'll need an amp, yes.

[shesaysidontlisten]

Amplifiers are pretty cheap, they cost less than $2 on ebay. I recommend you get a 'switched' headphone jack, that automatically cuts audio to the speaker when headphones are plugged in. If you decide to use an off-the-shelf rheostat/pot as a volume knob you'll only need a single-gang one if you're just doing mono. Good luck with your build.

(PS. Remember to use a couple of 10R resistors when combining left and right audio to avoid excess signal interference.)

How do I know that an amplifier will work? Any chance you could link me an example? I am planning the cut off like you said.

Do you think the ferrite beads are worth doing?

[jb32647]

How do I know that an amplifier will work? Any chance you could link me an example? I am planning the cut off like you said.

Do you think the ferrite beads are worth doing?

This is the one I used in another project, and it works fine. I honestly didn't notice any difference when using ferrite beads, and if you're playing retro games, sound quality does not have to be perfect.

[shesaysidontlisten]

snip

So I guess I have been confused! No surprise there...

I had it in my head that people had the OS on the micro SD in the pi, then also had a second card reader (often in a gutted Gameboy cartridge) that contained the ROMs. They are only using one card total? How did I miss that? Are people unsoldering that micro reader?

If everything can live on a card in the cartridge then that seems plenty accessible to me.

[YaYa]

Unless you are using an USB card reader, you cannot have two SD ports run at the same time

[shesaysidontlisten]

Soldering iron set arrived! Yay! I still need to get a Dremel and the right bits. Weighing getting one at Harbor Freight (cheap tool store) or buying name brand. All it does is spin, so...