GBA SPi-Zero with custom AIO board [Battery Update]

[Helder]

Verry Nice !

But how is the lcd still working after you removed capacitors and else ?

I was able to back engineer what the board was doing, and what parts were not really necessary. The BW screen is intended to plug into the 12V jack in a car, so it needed a lot of input filtering and a step down converter to get the 5V. I'm providing it a nice clean 5V so the extra input inductor and capacitors were not necessary, and the step down regulator was removed.

There's a boost regulator on there also, but i was able to find thinner replacement components (inductor and diode) of the same values. I also replaced the oscillator with a different 27MHz crystal.

Not an easy undertaking, but was necessary to be able to fit it into the shell

Nice job on the board and removing the unnecessary components for this build which will also apply to the GBZ builds. Mind making a little guide showing what to remove and what SMD components you used in place of the electorlytics ? People with some decent soldering capabilities would appreciate this. Also can't this screen run off of 3.3v?

[codeman0624]

Nice job on the board and removing the unnecessary components for this build which will also apply to the GBZ builds. Mind making a little guide showing what to remove and what SMD components you used in place of the electorlytics ? People with some decent soldering capabilities would appreciate this. Also can't this screen run off of 3.3v?

I have one other variant 9 board I was planning on making a modification guide for. I'll include links to all the parts I used for replacing.

I believe the board and screen could run off of a 3.3V input, it would just take some more exploring and experimenting now how to get this to work. I didn't take the time to go that far with the modification, since my microcontroller and the RPi wanted 5V anyway, so I just stuck with that.

[mrdude42]

Amazing job with this project so far! Have you considered using the newer compute module instead of a pi zero?

[codeman0624]

Amazing job with this project so far! Have you considered using the newer compute module instead of a pi zero?

Thanks!

I have thought about putting the CM3 in there. It looks like it would be snug, but should fit nicely. What's holding me back is the amount of effort necessary to get it to work. It would have to be a pretty major board re-design to put in a USB capable microcontroller with joystick capabilities, and getting the CM3 adapter and all the support circuitry it needs.

So it is a possibility, but definitely much longer term.

[Fireblast950]

So I want add onto this build but I'm having such a hard time doing so lol. Basically I want to be able to add on an aux port so you can have head phones for it and I want to keep the mini HDMI from the pi zero w so I could hook this up to my living room TV and play on it. I understanding that I'm trying to get the best of both worlds with a mobile and at-home console here but If it's possible to make I want it so badly.

Any advice on finding that sort of space within the shell? NOTE: Im totally fine with having this stick out in the back and also the front. I was thinking possibly switching the position of the battery and the pi in order to get the space I need to have the normal pi zero w outputs sticking out of the cartridge end and have a Aux port and a usb 2.0 sticking out of the back. Thoughts?

[codeman0624]

So I want add onto this build but I'm having such a hard time doing so lol. Basically I want to be able to add on an aux port so you can have head phones for it and I want to keep the mini HDMI from the pi zero w so I could hook this up to my living room TV and play on it. I understanding that I'm trying to get the best of both worlds with a mobile and at-home console here but If it's possible to make I want it so badly.

Any advice on finding that sort of space within the shell? NOTE: Im totally fine with having this stick out in the back and also the front. I was thinking possibly switching the position of the battery and the pi in order to get the space I need to have the normal pi zero w outputs sticking out of the cartridge end and have a Aux port and a usb 2.0 sticking out of the back. Thoughts?

You could definitely put the Pi down into the cartridge slot, it fits in there as well. I decided to put the Pi where I did because I felt I could fit a bigger battery into the cart slot, so I kept that area empty. If you did put it into the cart slot, you wouldn't even need a USB 2.0 port anywhere else, since you would already have access to the USB port on the Pi itself.

Space is very hard to come by in the SP shell. I do have headphone support on my board, but I didn't install the headphone jack because it would have resulted in a smaller battery. I had planned to drill a hole below the volume slider for the headphone jack. It looks like it would fit just fine, but I haven't tried it yet.

[moosepr]

Yeah good effort! If you can make the move to spi, and actually remove the 5v boost, you could get up to 8 hours from that 2000mah battery!

[redled]

Making the screen fit into the shell was the biggest challenge. ... So there was a lot of component removal and replacement to get the driver board thin enough to fit.

Original board on the left, modified on the right, showing how much thinner everything is now:

Did you replace components, or just remove and solder together? Can you talk a little more about this process and how it's done, I'm undertaking a GSP Pi Zero and very interested making the board super thin like yours!

[codeman0624]

Did you replace components, or just remove and solder together? Can you talk a little more about this process and how it's done, I'm undertaking a GSP Pi Zero and very interested making the board super thin like yours!

I actually made a guide in the hardware section describing the Variant 9 board and what components you can just remove and which ones need to be replaced:
http://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3793

[Dturtleboy88]

If u sell the aio how much do you think it will be. $100? Or higher?