@bytethis said in NES Zero:

@yahmez Interesting build. What are you running for emulators ? Just out of curiosity, do you find it's easy to see such a small screen playing , and how long does the battery last ? Nice of you to provide the schematics.

For emulators, anything with the old school standard button layout of of d-pad, a, b, start, and select. The screen is tiny but Gameboy and Gameboy color are perfect. NES is pretty good although text is pretty much unreadable unless you're very familiar with the game. I've been using only NES games which I'm familiar with. The battery lasts about an hour and with the power boost I can charge and play at the same time.

@Alturis I didn't even think of that! My bad.
The case is 7.6 x 4.51 x 2.95 inches.

@DubiousEngineer

@stoutat Please provide more information as requested in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first. What's your system, what controller are you using, what game/emulator are you trying and it's not working ?

@cyperghost

From what little I know about it, the RS-97 is sort of the middle ground between the other two. It's not an open platform, but does have custom firmware being actively worked on. In my opinion, the ergonomics of a landscape-oriented device are always better than portrait, but superficially, I've really come to like the the look and feel of the original Game Boy. I do hope they release custom firmware for the new Bittboy, as I would love to play me some Sega Master System on the go.

@obsidianspider I suppose a smooth, injection molded part would not bind up the same, right? I wonder if there is a workaround for smoothing out this area such as a coating of epoxy or bondo that could be sanded nice and smooth without enlarging. Tedious and tiny, I know. Another thought would be to try a set of buttons you don’t care about and remove the orientation tabs. Maybe it’s the angled spots where the tabs are that bind up.

Why not set up a file server on the pi3 and have the piZero read from that directory for the roms and game saves. That way it will all be stored on the pi3 for OTG fun. You can have the pi3 host its one access point from the on board wifi and have the piZero connect to it. You can also have the piZero temp download the rom and save the game locally and once the game closes you can have it automatically sync the game saves using something like rsync.

Hope that wasn't too confusing but that all works! :)

@Dipkid nice one! Love the idea of the stick though the lid!

@celly

Very nice! I have a v1 myself, so I'll have to do a bit of soldering for this, but it definitely looks worth the effort. Then again, I may just buy a v2. I'm still training off and on in NES 'Tetris'. I went back to the drawing board with some new building strats and while I still haven't cracked 400K yet, I can reliably break 100K on most attempts and 200-300K+ somewhat frequently. The new play style and the speed in higher levels tops me out fairly fast at the moment, but I figure once it becomes routine, 400K+ won't be far behind. Again, those pics are great. Be sure to post back if you can as things progress. It's really nice to see this little guy getting some love.

@dd-indeed The connectors on the pi and on the screen are vertical, and they take way to much space, I will be lucky if I can fit them on the DMG-01 without bending them.

@Sendoushi

You'll probably need to get a different screen at the minimum, as those usually use something proprietary and you won't see drivers readily available. It's tough to gauge how much room is inside the case, but it might work. PSPs have been modded before, and this is essentially a knock-off of that.

@Pixel0501 not sure what you exactly mean, but every controller has its own config (at least for the ReteoArch cores/emulators). It's usually at /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/JOYSTICK_NAME.cfg.

Today I managed to test all of the components outside the case, and everything works with my test Pi. Running off the battery without a booster works just fine with a Zero.

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Cranking up the volume in RetroArch makes the piezo loud enough to hear for general gaming, even if it's not quite high fidelity.

Everything plays really nicely now that I'm using the board where I soldered to the chip pads instead of the old "make your own test pad" method.

Next up I need to make everything fit in the actual case. First up, removing unnecessary stuff from a Pi Zero. This looks awful, but it works. If anyone has tips on removing the USB ports, HDMI port, or camera connector in a cleaner manner, please let me know.

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Every little bit of thinness is going to help with this build.

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seeed is on my (long) list of recommended PCB shops. DFRobot is another... for small orders they are mostly pretty competitive with each other, just depends what fab features you need as some extras are more expensive than others. for instance, OSHPark is definitely one of the more expensive places, but they include ENIG finish in that price, which pushes the price up massively at PCBWay. it's definitely all horses for courses and worth shopping around

I think it deserves props for having six face buttons so you can play MegaDrive games properly, while still having the shoulder buttons for SNES.

@DIY.Engineering Thanks for getting back to me - I will reply to your email over the weekend. Appreciate it wasn't intentional - love your work. Cheers.

Very nice build!