Kordar's Pi3 B+ Powered Game Boy Zero

[kordar99]

I finally put the finishing touches on my Pi3 powered gameboy. Just in time for the PiBoy DMG to come out and make all of this effort a waste.

1Pi3.jpg (2.11 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

2Pi3.jpg (1.8 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

3Pi3.jpg (2.5 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

4Pi3.jpg (2.83 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

Still, I enjoyed the planning and building process and I am quite pleased with the final results.

I built this one using a Pi3 B+ which I hacked to pieces. It was actually quite easy and I used a couple guides I found on this site to do it. Just take a little bit off at a time and it'll be alright. I used a tinkerboy DPI adapter, which was somewhat of a pain because using it for a Pi3 requires you to attach the power directly to the board from the power supply. Still, the screen looks amazing, although it is a bit bright.

Next, I used a Tinkerboy V3 PCB because it took a lot of the difficulty out of setting up audio, controls and battery monitoring. The board is responsive and the battery monitoring feature is a serious plus.

I used a Tinkerboy powerswitch for the safe shutdown; I haven't had any trouble with power yet, and it appears to feed the screen, Pi, PCB and a fan with no difficulty. I modified Tinkerboy's safe shutdown script to work with the battery monitoring by changing GPIO 10.

6Pi3.jpg (2.82 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

I used a Tinkerboy speaker and Helder's Power battery to power the handheld. I can get about 4 hours of playtime, which is pretty incredible.

I did find that the system was overheating; I originally used a extra large heatsink for cooling, which kept the system at about 70' celsius; still too hot. So, I used a small fan and a transistor to set up a temperature operated cooling system which keeps the system at 50'.

I made a custom mount for the Pi 3 using cut off screw mounts from the gameboy case; I also made a custom face plate for the USB and Volume wheel which attaches to the top of the Pi to reduce wire length.

5Pi3.jpg (2.88 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

Finally, I wanted four back buttons but space was of a concern; so, I used a hard piece of plastic taken from a computer charger and some squishy tactile buttons to create a rear button board similar to Hoolyhoo's. If I had known that this part existed I would have just used it, but unfortunately I had already glued it in place when I found out. I used the button wells from a off-brand USB SNES control pad to place the buttons in, and I think that It works really well, although I would have spaced them further apart had I known there would have been more room available.

7Pi3.jpg (3.65 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

8Pi3.jpg (2.16 MiB) Viewed 2994 times

Overall, this project was a long one that was equal parts great success and horrible frustration. I spent many quarantined hours cutting, trimming, sanding, soldering and testing configurations. This handheld has everything I could want, including safe shutdown, Battery monitoring, custom fan script, extra buttons for PS1 games, and a 128 GB SD card for every game possible.

10/10 would suffer through again.

[Spyder]

There is still something about building it yourself rather than just plugging in a part that makes this so much more enjoyable. Looks great

[kordar99]

Thanks Spyder! I actually used your Gaboze Build to assist with the completion of my (hacked up) Gaboze. I thoroughly enjoyed building them all, and I have a Pi 4 8 Gig which is sort of just BEGGING to be modded.

[Ziploc99]

Very nice, well done.