Popcorn's GBZ

[Popcorn]

Hey guys,

I thought I'd start a post to share my progress. Firstly, I have to say that before this, I've never used a dremel in my entire life. But all things considered, I'm fairly excited with this build and finishing this damn thing.



First thing was bleaching this old crusty thing. The only problem is that Berlin weather is spotty at best. It's rare to get a good solid 5 hours of sunshine. Luckily, I got 3 hours and left it for another 3 under the clouds. It turned out ok, but could even go for alittle bit longer. It's good enough for now.



Next thing is next. Hacking this thing up with the Dremel. It was pretty fun. I made a couple of mistakes (like the right side of the bezel) but all in all it's ok.





Here I'm trying to figure out how to make a hinge out of little pieces of plastic left over from the SNES knock off controller.

I decided to go with the 10000mah battery. Which is big. I had to sacrifice one of the battery bay screw posts. And because the battery runs up about 72cm high, that means I couldn't place the Pi along the side with the HDMI exposed. It also meant I had to abandon the cartridge slot. Sucks. But, then this at least gave me some space for the shoulder buttons that Chiz did. I moved mine up so that I could keep the center right screw well. Since I'm missing one of the screw posts from the battery cage, this is needed to secure it shut. So, a second reason that the Pi is not suppose to go along that right side. Guess it wasn't meant to be.


Here you can see that I added the centre right screw peg on the bottom right of the screen. I didn't use the metal bracket for those pegs that Wermy did. I just screwed them in with screws all the way on the faceplate side, and then placed big globs of glue where they go and pressed the back and front sides of the case together with some weight on top and just waited a few minutes for it to dry. Then unscrewed and then added a bit more reinforcement glue. Works great! Also, I finished mounting the rubber conductive nub on one of the back shoulder buttons using literally bits of leftover plastic and hot glue. It's ghetto and it took alot of positioning but it works great and feels solid.



I have just enough room, about 1mm clearance, to put a long screwdriver beside the battery and screw that screw pole down. Phew



I goofed on the right side of the bezel, but irl it doesn't look too bad. Plus, I'm going to put one of Solder's screen protectors on it so I'll be able to cover it up.

That's it for now.

[dirtybeagles]

Talk about POWER!!!! love how you did 10000. I am not that brave and just went for a 5000.

[Retrohead95]

I'm very interested to see how the 10k mah battery works out. I was thinking about using one if I decide to stick with the PI 3.

[Fleder]

Why stop there?! Why not filling the whole GB Case with a battery and create a add on package that includes the rest

[Popcorn]

Why stop there?! Why not filling the whole GB Case with a battery and create a add on package that includes the rest

haha.. is my battery too much?

today, i figured out how to place my Pi Zero on the opposite side to map my HDMI port and also the USB port. Hurray! So now the only thing I'm going to lose is the cartridge slot. Everything else is intact.

[Fleder]

haha.. is my battery too much?

today, i figured out how to place my Pi Zero on the opposite side to map my HDMI port and also the USB port. Hurray! So now the only thing I'm going to lose is the cartridge slot. Everything else is intact.

No, if it fits, why not!

I guess we are not using the brightness wheel, so you can use the whole left side?
I might have a problem mounting mine to the right side, because of my display board.

[Kilren]

[spoiler="Build"]Hey guys,

I thought I'd start a post to share my progress. Firstly, I have to say that before this, I've never used a dremel in my entire life. But all things considered, I'm fairly excited with this build and finishing this damn thing.



First thing was bleaching this old crusty thing. The only problem is that Berlin weather is spotty at best. It's rare to get a good solid 5 hours of sunshine. Luckily, I got 3 hours and left it for another 3 under the clouds. It turned out ok, but could even go for alittle bit longer. It's good enough for now.



Next thing is next. Hacking this thing up with the Dremel. It was pretty fun. I made a couple of mistakes (like the right side of the bezel) but all in all it's ok.





Here I'm trying to figure out how to make a hinge out of little pieces of plastic left over from the SNES knock off controller.

I decided to go with the 10000mah battery. Which is big. I had to sacrifice one of the battery bay screw posts. And because the battery runs up about 72cm high, that means I couldn't place the Pi along the side with the HDMI exposed. It also meant I had to abandon the cartridge slot. Sucks. But, then this at least gave me some space for the shoulder buttons that Chiz did. I moved mine up so that I could keep the center right screw well. Since I'm missing one of the screw posts from the battery cage, this is needed to secure it shut. So, a second reason that the Pi is not suppose to go along that right side. Guess it wasn't meant to be.


Here you can see that I added the centre right screw peg on the bottom right of the screen. I didn't use the metal bracket for those pegs that Wermy did. I just screwed them in with screws all the way on the faceplate side, and then placed big globs of glue where they go and pressed the back and front sides of the case together with some weight on top and just waited a few minutes for it to dry. Then unscrewed and then added a bit more reinforcement glue. Works great! Also, I finished mounting the rubber conductive nub on one of the back shoulder buttons using literally bits of leftover plastic and hot glue. It's ghetto and it took alot of positioning but it works great and feels solid.



I have just enough room, about 1mm clearance, to put a long screwdriver beside the battery and screw that screw pole down. Phew



I goofed on the right side of the bezel, but irl it doesn't look too bad. Plus, I'm going to put one of Solder's screen protectors on it so I'll be able to cover it up.

That's it for now.[/spoiler]

This is quite entertaining to follow! Going to be fun to see all your components fit in with that monster of a battery! Looking good so far. The bezel isn't too noticable, especially once you cover it up with that screen protector like you said.

[Popcorn]

More progress...



Here's my glued down button wells using the SNES knock-off buttons. (I like the colour combination for 4 buttons better than the OEM DMG purple colour. The top part of X is right against the screen, but that's ok. I put a bit of glue underneath so that the button doesn't get stuck underneath the screen when being pressed and I just put the bottom half of the button well and it works just fine. Feels super solid!



Here, I have to trim the conductive rubber pad just alittle bit where the screen is so that when the gamepad PCB is installed, it doesn't get sandwiched and add tension. That makes the button feel a bit different than the others. Now they all feel the same.



Here's my ridiculous job resoldering on the cables from Chiz's octopus usb hub. I spent a grueling 3 solid hours and I only managed to get 1 functioning port. I'm going to continue working on the other 3 ports another day.



Here, I called in the big guns (no pun) for help. My friend is the head of production at an analog modular synth company. He helped me desolder the headphone jack and the volume pot using a super high-end desolderer. He ended up having to crank up the temperature to over 700F to melt the solder. There's no way I could have done this by myself.



Here I remember to take a photo of the temperature gauge a few moments after it started cooling down. It was way hotter before.



Here's me doing some space management.



I have the Pi positioned on the other side with an HDMI adapter so that the plug will be a regular HDMI connection. Woot!



Here's the front side of the shell pretty much complete. Audio, Gamepad and teensy, and Screen are all installed and tested and ready to go. I wrapped everything in Kapton tape too.



Here's my messy hot glue job. I had to dremel the glue down a bit to give the Pi a bit more clearance. Also, here's the main power switch and my emergency latching switch (for my graceful shutdowns project) installed. I put the latching switch here because I was hoping that the plastic tab of the power switch when in the ON position would cover up the hole from the inside so that the latching switch would be inaccessible. That would be a great failsafe to make sure that you can only kill the power when the GBZ is already OFF. However, it didn't work out the way I planned because there's a little indent in the tab so you can still hit it. I might revisit it and add something to the plastic on the inside so you can't hit it while On. But I'll leave it for another day.



And here's the pinhole I made for hitting the emergency latching switch. Works great! I might terminate the blue powerboost LED here as a fiber pinhole as well. It will be my 'standby mode status' light. Speaking of fiber, you can see my Pi activity light fiber line sticking out of the cartridge slot there.

That's it for now...

[DirtyBullets]

thought the 2nd pic was you over melted the covers lol.

was wondering how you was gonna fit it all in with that battery but on closer i see the power socket on the pi is rubbing on the battery, maybe remove the connector to avoid rubbing cos Nintendo is designed to last forever

keep it up and loving the HDMI extension you did with the adapter

[Mad_Duke]

Hei man

Great job. Can't wait to see it finished (gracefully)

Where did you get that battery? I'm thinking for my second (Intel Compute SticK) build to change places between the now Pi and battery so I'll need something fatter, but not so long (as my current 10.000 mAh one).