Matt's Pocket Build - WIP - Will take me a while

[Eccho]

I used to use Pspice years back, or electronics workbench... (showing my age now ) I'll have a play with that, thanks.

Depends if you used it when you were 10 or 30 years old

[YaYa]

I used to use Pspice years back, or electronics workbench... (showing my age now ) I'll have a play with that, thanks.

Depends if you used it when you were 10 or 30 years old

[mattc]

Update!

Shutdown testing is progressing well, stuff is starting to arrive from China and I’ve found an alternate supplier of the 2.6” 18bit DPI screen!

Just need to work out what connector I need, can’t be sure whether it’s .35 or .4 pitch from photos.

[mattc]

Boards are in



These are the usb sound card/hub designed to fit in the pocket.... it does, rather perfectly... and an 18bit dpi test board that is more or less a copy of one that kite made some time ago... I built this to play with dpi configs before transferring those across to the main test board.


Speaking of which:



The lipo charging/sharing works a treat but.... I've made some daft mistakes. My power lines are crossed and I had a via in slightly the wrong place, shorting my 3v3 line, that took me hours to work out.

To resolve this, I've done a bit of hot wiring and this will be followed by lots more testing before I risk my cm3 in it.

[codeman0624]

The lipo charging/sharing works a treat but.... I've made some daft mistakes. My power lines are crossed and I had a via in slightly the wrong place, shorting my 3v3 line, that took me hours to work out.

To resolve this, I've done a bit of hot wiring and this will be followed by lots more testing before I risk my cm3 in it.

This is looking very cool! What program do you use for doing your board layout? I'm sure it has a Design Rule Check (DRC) tool. That will tell you when wires are touching when they shouldn't be. Has saved me many times

[erik_gee]

Do you have components assembled in factory ?

[mattc]

This is looking very cool! What program do you use for doing your board layout? I'm sure it has a Design Rule Check (DRC) tool. That will tell you when wires are touching when they shouldn't be. Has saved me many times

Thanks, I use Eagle... used it for a while... somehow this one slipped through the DRC.. I need to look into that.

Do you have components assembled in factory ?

Not for prototyping, It's far too expensive and usually subject to minimum orders. Just take time with the trusty soldering iron & hot air gun.

[mattc]

ITS ALIVE!!!

Up and running retropie with wireless connectivity via a USB dongle plugged into the USB-A port.

Ive not got the screen functioning at this point as I've some config work to do to get the DPI working.

Next steps;

DPI config
Build the USB hub/sound card board.... plug that in to see it it works.
Cobble together some gpio controls.

Play sonic

Finish safe shutdown & power switching, or find a place for 2nd usb port

Put lessons learned into the final board, get a few printed, build them up.. and boom


Oh, and find a headphone socket that fits in the pocket... the one I have is too tall

[YaYa]

Play sonic

Ok you said the magic words
One of the best games ever.... SEEEEEEGAAAAAA

[mattc]

Wow... that config took longer than I expected

Safe to say I'm *NOT* a fan of the FAN5333 backlight driver. I more or less copied the adafruit tft friend design for a backlight.. the thing is garbage. I'd tried some fancy tricks with pwm dimming that failed miserably.

I'm now researching a better backlight driver.

Anyhow.. I've proved to myself that the concept of DPI works, I've had both 18 & 24 bit running. I now just need to re-do the test board for this with the new backlight circuitry and whilst I wait for the boards, get on with testing the USB hub & audio... sonic will have to wait a little while