Posts Tagged ‘portable’

IMAG1557For the past 3 or 4 years now, the Raspberry Pi has been a huge asset to the maker communities across the world. Within the past couple of months, a new, more powerful version of the Pi has come to market and I felt it was time to get my hands one.

For those who don’t know, the Raspberry Pi is basically a mini Lynx based computer system that is about the size of a credit card with a decent amount of power to run basic programs for a variety of different applications. One of those applications that holds great interest to me since it first came out though was its ability to run retro gaming emulators, which of course then transitioned into a portable gaming system.

The only downside was that the emulation was limited to about the Super Nintendo and prior consoles due to it’s hardware limits. But now, the Pi 2 is on the market with 6X the speed of the original and 2X the RAM. This has made it capable of running PS1 and N64 games at full speed which has now peaked my interest. And the best part, the system itself is only $35.

But, this of course is going to have its learning curves. I’ve never even used Lynx and there is a fair amount of coding that has to go into place to make this work as a portable system, but tutorials are vast on You Tube and the only issue I see is going to have the time to do it. I’ve just about completed the N64 portable commission (hopefully closing it up this weekend) and after that is complete, I have to finish off my OUYA project. So it’s most likely going to take some time before I get to this, but I really do want to see how something like this would come out and the designs are already being made for it.

So maybe by the end of the year I can start to play around with this, but at this pace I don’t really know how long it’s going to take to get to it. But at least I’ve got the idea in place and we’ll see how she turns out when it happens.

Word seems to have gotten out about the work I’ve been doing for other modders and in the last week alone I’ve taken on over 5 new case jobs for 3 different modders doing console commissions for other people as well. Now this doesn’t sound like a lot but compared to previous numbers of 1 or 2 jobs a month, 5 in a week is quite the increase.

The job above is a simple case cut from a Poly Case SL-68 for MBB forum member [Gman] who runs a small operation known a [Gman Modz]. He’s been doing some pretty impressive work as of late and I’m glad to be helping him out with some of his projects. This one was a run of 3 cases, all cut the same and are for Portable Nintendo 64’s. Given the size of these cases, it will be quite impressive to see these completed.

That said, I am also in the process of doing a full vacuumed-formed custom Portable Game Cube casing which will have a surprising similarity to another console on the market today. Stay tuned for that one!

Now that the SNES-001 Advance’s fire is slowly burning down, it was time to start up a new project. Well this isn’t it, in fact this wasn’t even really meant to be a project in itself, but of course once I get an idea in my head, I have a nasty habit of letting it take me over.

With that said, this project was supposed to just be replacing the main screens protection cover as this Game Boy Advance was a bit roughed up. Bought from a friend of mine in a bulk deal, this unit was one of the first portable gaming units I owned outside of the original 1989 DMG version of the Game Boy. As it was first released in 2000, the technology was far superior to the Game Boy on it’s own, including having more power than the SNES which came out in 1992.

There was just one thing I did not care for with this unit though and that’s the fact that even after 11 years, Nintendo did not see the need to install a back light for the screen, a problem they hastily corrected with the Game Boy Advance SP. This of course led to the idea of adding a light to the screen of this unit to help with the issue.

Deciding to take the system a part and find out how much room I actually had to work with in the case seemed like the next logical step after deciding that 4 – 3mm bright white LED’s could light the screen up a bit. But of course this led to another problem as these units were powered only by 2 AA batteries. The addition of 4 LED’s at 3V and 20mAh each would greatly decrease the life of the batteries, so a new battery source would be required. And when a new source is added, a new method on how to replenish that source is needed. So taking apart an old Black Berry for the Mini-USB jack was quite fun and provided that medium for getting power from the charger to the battery.

So everything is now cut, spaced, painted and ready to get put into place, but I’m waiting on the right size resistors to arrive as for the 5V/3mm LED’s I did not have the correct rating on hand. Now I only hope that once all the wiring is in place, I’ll have enough room to close up the unit. It’s looking good so far, but I’ll keep you up to date and as always, check the MBB forums for more info!

The final solutions to this project include:
4- 3mm Bright White LED’s
1- 7.4v 2000mAh Li-Ion Camcorder battery with a 7805 linear regulator
1- Custom Red, White and Black paint job
1- New Screen Protector
1- Mini USB jack for battery recharge.

Well, audio and video through a controller wire works! My proof of concept is good. All that’s left to do now is wire up the controller and all the tact switches. As always please check out the forums for more info, but enjoy the video, though it’s a bit shaky and pretty short!

That’s right, a new project! Since all the upgrade to our home’s electrical system has been completed, I now have an adequate power supply to my work shop and Vacuum Former! This is going to cut down greatly on set up time and will really make the whole experience more enjoyable.

With that said, he’s the front half case shell of the new portable. This is probably one of the smallest and sleekest that I’ve made and it uses that same mold that my Mario/Zelda portable used. I don’t have the back formed yet as I’m not sure how thick it’s going to need to be but the front half looks like most will be able to fit in it as it is. So I may be able to make this overall thickness a little more than an 1″! But the foot print of the Sega 3 is very small.

But in any case, here’s the pic and I’ll be updating you as I go along!