Worklog Rii

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Hello all! this is my first work log and I will certainly do my best!

A bit of background on most online games my name is Red_ so I called this the Rii to nod to that and I thought it was funny sounding. I have built one portable in the past from a raspberry pi but this is a different beast entirely. I built that originally to be able to play ocarina of time because my friends always made fun of me for not playing a Zelda game all the way through before and what better way to show them up than by making a gaming system? from there my goal has been to play every canon Zelda game in the order they came out and I can only go up to N64 on the other emulator and I can play the rest on this! after ocarina of time I played Zelda 1 and I'm on Zelda 2 and its a pain but I made a commitment! anyways, on to the build!

Here is the spec list for this project I had ordered everything in advance to get set and ready to go in preparation.

  • OMGWTF trim
  • 5 inch 16:9 800x480
  • original Gamecube button layout including original analog sticks
  • homemade 2s2p 2800mah lipo packs
  • controller and memory card ports
  • internal (possibly external?) 128 GB Kingston USB adapter storage
  • Dual speakers
  • possible headphone jack?
  • dual tact L and R buttons
  • GC+ for easier controller connectivity
  • IR LEDs for Wii games
  • HDMI out for use with modern tv's
  • 3D printed case

so, from the photos, you can see that I have the Wii all trimmed out with the OMGWTF trim and portableize mii all set up. I will say since I have had limited experience with using an air station I did have quite a difficult time with the relocation of the U10 chip into the proper place. however, while I did destroy one Wii in the process it was probably for the best since that one was a 6 layer board and gave me the perfect excuse to get a 4 layer board for better efficiency overall. I used the destroyed Wii as practice for the hot air station and as soon as I was comfortable enough I moved on to the 4 layer board. Once I relocated the chip as instructed everything powered on perfectly! what a relief. from here I was able to trim the board down to the correct size. I started at 180 grit sandpaper and went all the way down to 2500 which I know is overkill I just liked how smooth it was and it most certainly will not have internal shorts between layers. for testing purposes, I kept the output port on so I can easily connect to a tv. honestly, I was not sure if that would work or not but as I will mention later, with the custom regulators it worked great. I tried my best to make the regulators as neat and compact as possible and I will be changing them a little bit to be even more compact but overall I am very pleased with how well they turned out all wires will be trimmed to fit more appropriately in the case. the outputs worked immediately with these and I was able to test using a bench power supply and once everything is hooked up it pulls about 1 amp in GameCube games and slightly less in the home screen. (thought it would draw more in-game compared to idle but it works so meh).

So as mentioned in the list of features for this the screen is 5 inches 16:9 but unfortunately, I couldn't really find a good one so I got a car backup screen which should work fine. definitely not ideal since I need to use a boost converter to get 12v and that takes space but everything should fit in the casing. it also extraordinarily important to have HDMI out on this and my plan for this is to use an av to HDMI converter and use a switch to swap the av input from either the screen or the HDMI. it's a bit bigger than I hoped for and in the modeling process it's being a bit of a pain to know where it will go but I have a few ideas I want to try to make it work. the adapter just takes 5v which I already have from the custom regulators. I always thought it was so cool how on my first ever portable with a raspberry pi I could output to anything so I really want that to be a prime feature. especially with all the controller ports, I will have for future multiplayer sessions with the boys. I will put a photo of my original emulator here as well for reference but I will have a different execution.

I'm currently on 3D modeling of the case and I can say that trying to copy the Gamecube controller is a major pain. its really hard to get just right but I believe I got it down after a few iterations. I just got to make sure I have the tolerances right so the buttons slide nicely. I got them a little too tight on this iteration. I also accidentally made the guides too tall which doesn't allow for the internal buttons to get pressed but that's easily fixable for the next iteration. From the bitbuilt store, I bought the GC+ board, the audio amp, and a bunch of buttons typically used for dual tact on the triggers but like them a lot, and they aren't obnoxiously loud so I will just tie the two outputs together and just them for everything underneath. the holes on the bottoms of the original buttons for the GameCube are too big though so I will have to cover them up so they can still be used. In terms of overall case design, it's a bit thicker than I wanted but I don't see that getting better and overall I'm still very happy with it. I want to exaggerate the curves more though since I think it will look nice and I should have the internal room to do so.

Stay tuned for more! I'm full steam ahead on this and I'm so excited to play some games on it!
 

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If it's a car backup lcd, it's gonna suck on viewing angles, but if you show a picture of the motherboard we might be able to help you Run of it off less volt
 
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I will say since I have had limited experience with using an air station I did have quite a difficult time with the relocation of the U12 chip into he proper place.
Is that a typo, or did you relocate the wrong IC? You need to relocate the U10 or U9 chip.
 
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heyo! yeah, that's a typo my bad. sorry about that, I will edit my post and fix that. and sure I can upload a photo of it! I certainly know its not the best choice but from what I can see it has brightness control which is a definite must since my previous portable didn't have that for quite a while and it sucked. blinding by night too dim for day. by the way, I'm also confused about the buttons on this screen. it has only two wires going to the button PCB and I don't know how it's going about interpreting the different buttons. I would have expected 4 wires connecting it to the mainboard so if anyone can explain that that'd be really cool too.
 

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cheese

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Each of the buttons has a resistor on them, so when you press one button it's X resistance, another is Y resistance, and the last is Z resistance, and the screen measures the resistance to see which button is pressed
 
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oh, I saw the resistors on there and thought it was some type of voltage divider but I have never seen anything like that before on something like this but that's really neat! thanks!
 
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Finally! I did it!!

20200424_202536.jpg


Personally, My least favorite part of making any portable is the case of internal design. I think its really cool! but it takes me forever to get everything just how I want it. I finished the biggest part, which is designing all the screw posts and arranging all the parts inside the case and I found a way to fit the av to HDMI converter in the case as well which is wonderful! there was a good place behind the screen that was nice and empty which I knew was there but I just needed a place to mount it. which possible screw posts were not possible due to the screen being there. the way I managed to place it should work though since in a few spots it's hanging over a place where I can put a couple of screw posts and the screen itself can help hold it in as well with a spacer and double-sided tape to make up the small gap. most of the heavy lifting a strain will be put on the screw posts though with the tape just preventing sag.

AV and other mounting.PNG


I will say that there is one small caveat to me saying "all" the screw posts. honestly, a difficult part coming soon is the mounts for the L, R and Z buttons. I made the holes for all of them in the rough size I want them to be but I couldn't quite figure out mounting for the PCB and for holding the buttons in place since the A, B, X, Y buttons are in the way. I think there is room to mount them with this issue but I also wanted to have this thing in my hands and see if the rest of the components fit in place properly.

My first iteration of this case in the original post was very rudimentary and was just general placement of the face buttons and main internal electronics and when it was designed I did not have the screen in yet. As a result, when the screen came in and I put in it wasn't a perfect fit but it looked beautiful because it was so close to fitting! Some of the screen was hidden behind the model's bezel so that had to be made bigger and the screen's bezel also interfered with the D-pad guide so that had to be trimmed a bit in order to fit but now with the proper dimensions it should work just fine. I also made a way for the screen to be secured in place with a small overhang that fits over the edge of the screen inside on one side and a screw post on the other which I plan to have a small plastic piece be able to slide in snuggly over under the screen. on the top and bottom there are convenient screw posts to prevent it from slipping and on top of the screen is recessed into the case 1.5mm to make it look more flush with the top of the case and to make it more snug.

Capture.PNG


In the first photo attached you will see that I am now printing in black petg vs the blue petg that it was earlier. This is because I plan to have the final iteration of this is that really nice blue color and I only have so much. so, in order to save on it, I used the black instead. this case is only held together with 4 screws and I am not sure if petg is rigid enough to keep it from sagging so that's why I wanted the same material to test.
 

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Quakers

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3d print looks pretty promising so far! I'll defenitly keep my eyes on this thread during the contest. Can't wait to see the final product!
 
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Alright here's a pretty big update for you all.

So over the summer, I redirected a fair amount of my time another project then came back to this afterward. this was mainly because 3D modeling the case for this has been quite a challenge for me mostly in regards to where the mounting holes go and their proper heights this along with figuring out ways to mount l and r buttons made me put this down for a while so I can just get my mind off of it for a while. about 3 weeks ago is when I came back to this project with a lot of gusto! the case got about 3 or 4 more revisions until I get it all to an acceptable point. I'm doing my best to make the wire management reasonable as well in case something decides to break in the future.

On the second to last version, I was able to roughly put a lot of things in and then on what is now the final version of the case (there may be one or two more in the future) I tried my best to model wire routing in the case to make it neater. it didn't come out as well as I'd like though but it will still function. At this point, I had to go to college in 4 or 5 days and my homemade spot welder decided that it would refuse to work and I could hardly test things because my archaic benchtop power supply could only supply 1.5 amps and as it turns out the Wii draws slightly more than that causing the Wii to flicker off after a few moments of it being on. especially if the voltage wasn't specifically dialed in. after days of time wasted trying to troubleshoot the spot welder, I finally had to give up and resort to soldering the nickel strips to the cell which I do not recommend at all due to the possibility of overheating the cells but it did work! unfortunately, I ran into too many issues and couldn't get it ready in time for when I left to go to college a week ago.

I was honestly ready to hand in the towel but as I logged in today I noticed that there was an extension to the deadline! in light of this, I'm about to pull out the soldering iron and see what I can do in the days to come to get this ready. currently, the main issues are that I cant get controllers to work, there is no audio at all, and the memory cards need to be wired up. I do get video and everything boots up just fine. I still have to test the HDMI out as well but I would assume that works. I hope I don't have to sacrifice cable management to get this done in time but I will do what I must! I gotta play twilight princess ya know?

In regards to the audio, I was certain I had everything wired up correctly. I'm not using i2s so I just have the left and right audio coming in from the Wii to the board sold on the bit built store along with ground and power of course and then the wires going to the corresponding speakers. perhaps my solder joints on the board aren't good and they came undone? I don't have a headphone jack hooked up at the time so I do have the sense wire grounded and I was just shorting the volume up to ground with some wire for testing. I will take a photo of it later today and post it.

As with the controllers I am especially confused. I was positive I had everything correct but the onboard gc+ isn't recognizing sending signals I presume or there must be a bad connection as a controller plugged into the ports doesn't work either whereas that controller worked in testing a while back. this is a top priority issue as well so I really hope I can figure it out so I can some more testing of other components. I currently have the data wire going to the controller port as well as the gc+ with no switch in between, can that be an issue? I have the same thing with my screen and HDMI converter. I didn't want to have an excess of switches and I didn't mind them active at the same time. I can't personally see this as an issue but if it is let me know.

Oh! a couple of things I forgot to mention was how in a couple of case designs the screen didn't fit too nicely and honestly, I saw this coming when I was trying to put the screen in but it was flexing quite a lot and it got totally smashed and was unusable so I had to order a new one. when I first put the logo on the portable I realized a few days later when I was gonna take a photo that it was upside down XD so good thing I noticed that before the final revision.

One other thing that is happening as well is that somehow the Bluetooth module has been misplaced in my parts bin and I couldn't find it at all, therefore, I won't be able to play Wii games by the time the competition is over but everything else should be functional.
 

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A_s6

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Alright here's a pretty big update for you all.

So over the summer, I redirected a fair amount of my time another project then came back to this afterward. this was mainly because 3D modeling the case for this has been quite a challenge for me mostly in regards to where the mounting holes go and their proper heights this along with figuring out ways to mount l and r buttons made me put this down for a while so I can just get my mind off of it for a while. about 3 weeks ago is when I came back to this project with a lot of gusto! the case got about 3 or 4 more revisions until I get it all to an acceptable point. I'm doing my best to make the wire management reasonable as well in case something decides to break in the future.

On the second to last version, I was able to roughly put a lot of things in and then on what is now the final version of the case (there may be one or two more in the future) I tried my best to model wire routing in the case to make it neater. it didn't come out as well as I'd like though but it will still function. At this point, I had to go to college in 4 or 5 days and my homemade spot welder decided that it would refuse to work and I could hardly test things because my archaic benchtop power supply could only supply 1.5 amps and as it turns out the Wii draws slightly more than that causing the Wii to flicker off after a few moments of it being on. especially if the voltage wasn't specifically dialed in. after days of time wasted trying to troubleshoot the spot welder, I finally had to give up and resort to soldering the nickel strips to the cell which I do not recommend at all due to the possibility of overheating the cells but it did work! unfortunately, I ran into too many issues and couldn't get it ready in time for when I left to go to college a week ago.

I was honestly ready to hand in the towel but as I logged in today I noticed that there was an extension to the deadline! in light of this, I'm about to pull out the soldering iron and see what I can do in the days to come to get this ready. currently, the main issues are that I cant get controllers to work, there is no audio at all, and the memory cards need to be wired up. I do get video and everything boots up just fine. I still have to test the HDMI out as well but I would assume that works. I hope I don't have to sacrifice cable management to get this done in time but I will do what I must! I gotta play twilight princess ya know?

In regards to the audio, I was certain I had everything wired up correctly. I'm not using i2s so I just have the left and right audio coming in from the Wii to the board sold on the bit built store along with ground and power of course and then the wires going to the corresponding speakers. perhaps my solder joints on the board aren't good and they came undone? I don't have a headphone jack hooked up at the time so I do have the sense wire grounded and I was just shorting the volume up to ground with some wire for testing. I will take a photo of it later today and post it.

As with the controllers I am especially confused. I was positive I had everything correct but the onboard gc+ isn't recognizing sending signals I presume or there must be a bad connection as a controller plugged into the ports doesn't work either whereas that controller worked in testing a while back. this is a top priority issue as well so I really hope I can figure it out so I can some more testing of other components. I currently have the data wire going to the controller port as well as the gc+ with no switch in between, can that be an issue? I have the same thing with my screen and HDMI converter. I didn't want to have an excess of switches and I didn't mind them active at the same time. I can't personally see this as an issue but if it is let me know.

Oh! a couple of things I forgot to mention was how in a couple of case designs the screen didn't fit too nicely and honestly, I saw this coming when I was trying to put the screen in but it was flexing quite a lot and it got totally smashed and was unusable so I had to order a new one. when I first put the logo on the portable I realized a few days later when I was gonna take a photo that it was upside down XD so good thing I noticed that before the final revision.

One other thing that is happening as well is that somehow the Bluetooth module has been misplaced in my parts bin and I couldn't find it at all, therefore, I won't be able to play Wii games by the time the competition is over but everything else should be functional.
with bbloader you can use gc2wiimote, so if you get that wii games will run without the bluetooth relocation.
 
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Is it possible to reflash when everything is already trimmed? I guess I don't see why not but if I remember correctly with portablize mii you needed to know a few things on the board that have since been trimmed away. Is that not necessary for bbloader?
 

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Is it possible to reflash when everything is already trimmed? I guess I don't see why not but if I remember correctly with portablize mii you needed to know a few things on the board that have since been trimmed away. Is that not necessary for bbloader?
bbloader has the same requirements as PM: u10 and custom regs, but with bbloader you don’t need bluetooth for wii games. AFAIK as long as you have home brew you can install bbloader. i think it’s all explained here: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/bbloader-v1-1-beta.3564/
 
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Alright small update.

So I was experiencing quite a lot of issues with the onboard controller again but not like the original issue. The original issue I had was that I wasn't getting any signal. I then resoldered the connection and it all seemed to work! But just as I was about to test the controller it stopped working again. For some reason the controller data was shorted to ground. I looked everywhere for signs of were it could be shorted taking parts off and I realised it was somewhere on the controller pcb. I was stumped for a whole day on this issue and it was hard to move on to anything else but just recently it hit me. I remember in the wii trimming guide that it was imperative to sand the edges of the board to ensure there was no shorting between layers but that wasn't done on the controller pcb because it just seemed to work but that has me investigating. I took a q tip with isopropyl and cleaned the edge where player 1 is and there was no more shorts! This was a large hurdle with little time left so we will see what I can do tonight to get this ready. A lot of things will hinge on me being able to do something about this tonight but there are no classes tomorrow so time for a late one!
 
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So what has transpired in the past 7 hours or so is just infuriating.

I got the controller ports required in and I powered on the system to see if everything worked and all seemed good but something I immediately noticed was that the y-axis on the analog stick didn't function at all. I tried *everything* to get it to work but the weirdest thing was that I could read the proper values with a multimeter and there was continuity to the gc+ 2.0. but if I swapped the inputs I found that the pin on the gc+ works for both the x and y-axis but didn't recognize my input somehow. through repeatedly testing continuity and checking the resistance I couldn't figure it out at all. I will say that towards the end of the night I noticed that the resistance was reading right so I changed out the analog stick to the only GameCube controller I had laying around and it still didn't work. I tried testing a bunch but I figured I would call it quits to think about it over the night. things are looking pretty dim for getting this done on time but I will see what I can do tomorrow. regardless I will continue with the project though.
 
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Alright so I have not made the entry for the contest but that is alright because I will finish this eventually! I took a look today with a rested mind and with some more testing I got the original analog stick to work but by that time I realized there was no way to get it ready in time but luckily I will not have to get a new analog stick. with this, the only thing needed to get done is the headphone jack wiring (literally 4 wires) the audio having output issues, and Gamecube memory card slot wiring. so all doable with a couple of good days work but expect more updates on this in the future. for now, enjoy some photos of how it is right now. she a bit chonky but I'm happy with it (as long as it promises to work in the future).
 

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