Elite Wii U Gamepad with RetroPi 3
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:19 pm
First things first, parts you’ll need or want to consider for your use. This is the list of things I used:
• Wii U Gamepad (Case and Buttons) http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_nkw=O ... 2749.l2658
• 6.5” LCD http://www.ebay.com/itm/201227576171?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Teensy 2.0 http://www.ebay.com/itm/191981137603?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Digitizer (use original Wii U gamepad if possible as it comes with the black bezel).http://www.ebay.com/itm/162251255451?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Flat ribbon HDMI http://www.ebay.com/itm/252508906577?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Pre-soldered PCB and adapters (you can get unsoldered, but it’s a pain in the ass to solder correctly, save yourself some trouble and get them pre-soldered.) http://www.ebay.com/itm/201713692785?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• LCD bracket http://www.ebay.com/itm/support-chassie ... Sw8aNXGTUw
• USB Sound Card https://www.amazon.com/Channel-External ... SOUND+card
• PCB 3.5mm headphone jack http://www.frys.com/product/1922701?sou ... fgodc_AKBg
• Sound Amp http://www.ebay.com/itm/201372728692?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• B503 Potentiometer http://www.ebay.com/itm/112193635426?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Replacement Wii U Gamepad Shoulder Buttons (Unless your Gamepad came with already) http://www.ebay.com/itm/291798176257?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• uBoost (Turns out this is only 1000MAH so you might want to reconsider your options here.) http://www.ebay.com/itm/272429165680?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Battery Charging board (I never ended up using this) https://www.amazon.com/Lithium-Battery- ... B00AUDQWXQ
• Power boost 1000 Basic https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-PowerBo ... B00R3QWEAS
• 10 conductor ribbon cable (I suggest 30 gauge AWG for data connections and I personally used 26 solid coopers for anything with power.)
• USB type A female Jack. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Solder- ... emale+jack
• OEM Screws http://www.ebay.com/itm/162251270128?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
• Pi 3 (I’m assuming you have already installed Retro Pie on an SD and are familiar with this, adding Roms, Retroarch, flipping the screen 180 degrees like I had to, and making the USB sound card the default. There are tutorials on this on the web but I would be more than happy to help guide you.
• SD Card, your choice in size.
• Xbox Elite Replacement kit
As for tools:
• Soldering Iron, your choice. I used a cheap one from Harbor freight that I had from a previous project. You might want to consider a heavy duty one so you can break down some of the above parts.
• Rotary tool. Again, I used Harbor freight for a cheap rotary tool. You’ll need this for filling down the Wii U gamepad and bracket for space.
• Screw driver set and tri-wing screw driver.
• Pliers
• Electrical tape.
• Wire strippers.
• Hot glue gun
• USB Keyboard
Step 1: Ordering parts and tools. If you don’t have them, order them now. Most of the parts are from China so (for me at least) it can take up to several weeks for things to start arriving. Do your best to check everything works once it arrives and if it doesn’t, ask for a replacement or refund. I know this might be impossible to do for everything, but do what you can.
Step 2: After you receive everything or start getting items in. Start with the Wii U gamepad. Grab your pad and rotary tool and start stripping it down, grinding out almost everything down on the rear of the case. Most of this you don’t need and is taking up space. Remove the stylus holder and battery casing. Also, anything on the back end that is screwed to the rear of the case you can axe. Keep the parts for later if you need. But I just hacked as much as I could. Be careful not to get rid of the screw hole parts. That should be the only thing you need from the back really. I believe there are about ten total.
Everything in green can go, meaning you can file down/remove from the housing. Leaving your case looking something similar to the below.
Get your case looking like this without ruining the exterior case integrity and you’re off to a good start. Be careful doing so, depending on your rotary tool or dermal, things could get grinded down too much. So take your time and go slow.
Step 3: Time to strip down your Pi 3 so it takes as little space as possible. The best way to probably do this is to get a soldering iron that heats up high enough to melt the solder on the Pi. I am not sure what temp this is, but I wasn’t able to do it with my iron so I had to take it apart as delicately as I could. First I started with the Ethernet port. I basically got an exact-o knife, and started removing the chrome shell around the port. It helped to grab your plyers and break off the underside mounts that were soldered on. Once you get the shell/cover off you should be able to jiggle the port back and forth, heating up the pins and eventually breaking it away.
You will then need to move on to the USB ports and the headphone jacks. Using the same method you used to remove the port, whatever way you decide is best. Then comes the camera and GPIO pins. For these I attempted again to unsolder them with no luck. For the pins and camera port, I ended up taking my plyers, and essentially crushing the plastics and removing all the pins for the GPIO that I did not need. I left two pins for my power and ground, this would make it easier to solder to without the risk of bridging to other pins. If you can find a better way to do this, then I suggest you go down that route. This is what I ended up doing to clear the Pi. I also got rid of the two ports on the LCD board as well.
After all was said and done, my Pi and LCD board looked like the above picture. Of course before you move forward with anything else I suggest you fire them both up and test. Confirm they are still working and you should be ready to move on. In order to test this you will want/need to wire up one of your female USB jacks in order to connect your USB keyboard and properly shut down. Otherwise you run the risk of corrupting your SD card. At this point I suggest you skip down to STEP 9.
Step 4: This next step is a lot easier than what you previously went through with the PCB board. Take your bracket, which should look something like the below, and modify it by cutting out portions (to allow for the LCD ribbon and joystick wires) as well as grinding it down portions that stick out and would cause anything you mount to it to be uneven.
In the end mine looked something like this. I’m sure I didn’t have to modify it as much as I did. But at the time that’s what I decided on as to allow the most amount of space.
Step 5: Time to wire up the joysticks. As you will notice, there are five wires that each joystick uses. See diagram below for what each does.
Now these come with a plastic connector on the end that we need to get rid of. Grabbing your trusty plyers, grab hold of the plastic ends and press so that the plastic breaks and the wires can be removed without cutting them short. They are really short to begin with so we want to make sure we preserve as much of the wires as we can.
This is what I ended up with on each joystick. Don’t splice like I did. Instead use butt-splices, or inline splice, using your wires. I used this method (shown) first because I like to twist my cables. However this is when I realized the 28gauge ribbon cables might have been too big. Looking back I would have gone with a smaller gauge, 30G or something. In any case, I ended up undoing this because the Pi was pressed up against those splices, it was basically taking up to much room and made it difficult to handle the wire. So I ended up going with Butt splices. Easier to move and less space.