Oh boy, where do I begin...? OwO
I posted a short blog entry of my Gameboy Color XXL, but I was exhausted, it was late, and I had work in the morning... SO! I wanted to share with you all my Gameboy Color XXL I've been building since June. It all started when I bought a Raspberry Pi 3 in May for my birthday, as a gift to myself; Something to tinker with. They are hugely popular, so I wanted to build something to play retro games on. Then I realized I had an Anime convention in October, and I had plenty of time to build a large Gameboy Color I could mount to my chest, and people could walk up and play it!
HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE!?!?
So I first gathered the needed materials from Walmart to throw together a rough prototype using foam board, hot glue, and an Exact-o knife. The assembly took roughly 5 hours. It was crude, it was flawed, and it was ugly... But that's okay! Prototypes are just that -
You find the flaws and fix them!
After showing the prototype off in a prior Blog entry, someone suggested I make the controller detachable. So I took their suggestion and did that with the final build. In the prototype, I had the speakers pointing upwards, and mounted to my chest would mean my ears get that full audio, and not the person playing the game. Not wanting to go deaf, I widened the final build to have the speakers mounted facing out the front towards the player on either side of the LCD screen. I used MDF as the build material so it would be light but durable. The sides, top, and bottom are half an inch thick, with the front and back panels being quarter of an inch thick. Wood glue, nails, and corner brackets made this thing a stable fortress to be reckoned with. I painted it a metallic purple, and went over it with a matte clearcoat.
The Raspberry Pi 3 is running RetroPie based on Debian Jesse, with Emulation Station as the frontend GUI, and Retroarch emulators on the backend. It contains NES, SNES, Gameboy/Color/Advance, PlayStation 1, Sega Gamegear, and Sega Genesis games, all on an 8GB microSD card. I also have DOOM II and Kodi installed. The LCD is a 7-inch Waveshare HDMI LCD that is USB powered, and a touchscreen (I do not have the touch functionality enabled). The entire unit is a solderless design, using just USB and HDMI connections for everything. I wanted it this way so anyone could build one, with no soldering skills required. There is a 50,000 mAh powerbank inside made by
PocketJuice that powers both the LCD, USB speakers, and the Raspberry Pi 3. But I have the LCD and Raspberry Pi 3 going through a USB voltage and amperage meter first, so I can always see the power usage. The speakers have a power+Volume dial on the right side of the Gameboy Color XXL. The powerbank has 4 green LEDs in a circle (like the Xbox 360) as a battery indicator. The power Button is in the center of those LEDs. The gamepad is just a cheap $3 USB SNES pad from AliExpress. The USB Speakers were found at Goodwill, which is a secondhand store. I have spent a total of $267.44 on parts over the months, buying stuff as I need it. The back panel folds open to give easy access to the components, including the Raspberry Pi 3's microSD card.
Pictures:
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Xdqwerty:
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Sicklyboy:
