Lots of little bits of progress have been made.
Haven't done a whole lot with CAD. Made a testbed with basically every hole I think will be on my case and then printed it. Every single hole came out too small except for the DPDT switch hole. I changed the dimensions and sweet talked my electronics teacher into letting me use the super duper 3D printer for the testbed, so hopefully the holes will be more accurate. I'll probably have the better one printed on Tuesday. Here's a picture of the testbed that failed:
Haven't done much with the main case, but I did design a custom L/R trigger.
The hole in the bottom is so that I can put my tact switches inside so that they take up less space in the actual case.
Flash drive came in. Put 100ish gigs of info on it before I remembered that it needed to be formatted. And that I was using the only non USB 3.0 port on my laptop. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Fixing that right now.
The Wii U Gamepad buttons are just what I wanted, but the pads that relay the information lack good portablizing functions. Should have expected that, it's Nintendo I'm dealing with anyways. The solution? I realized I had a moderately mediocre Bluetooth controller (Ipega 9021) that I could use for parts, so I dismantled it. It was built to be destroyed. The ABXY pads on the controller match up perfectly with the ABXY pads on my Gamepad buttons, plus it has lots of test pads to solder onto, as well as ground in random places, which makes it super easy to cut up and use it how I want. So I'll get that dremel tip from my Projects teacher on Tuesday, cut the controller up, and solder it to the GC+. I won't be able to use the D-Pad pads on the controller, because it used a giant, garbage, X-Box 360 d-pad. The joysticks on that controller are also trash, so that's where they'll go.
I hate desoldering. It sucks. Got my hands on some solder wick, so I've been getting rid of the giant, useless ports on my screen board. Which meant that I desoldered it halfway and then pulled it out with a pair of pliers. Good enough.
And finally, what I'm most excited about... my batteries work!
It turns out that "Battery will protect be charge when load to release protection mode" means "connect your batteries in the PCB to something that will drain them. This will disable protection mode and allow your batteries to charge". Maybe I should have known that, but I didn't. Once they were working, I wired up the Charge and Play diagram and got the whole system working! I modified the diagram by putting in a SPDT switch and only using one charging port. This way, I can fluidly move from playing and charging to just charging, and only have to have one charging port on the portable.
Once I get that dremel tip, I'll also go ahead and remove the PCB from the battery holder. That's the only part I care about, and this will also allow me to stick the batteries wherever it's most convenient.
My commission from SS will be arriving soon, so after that the fun will really begin. Track also ends this week, so I'll suddenly have another 3 hours every day to devote to this project.
We're getting somewhere!!
*exhale*
EDIT: Forgot to mention that my dad came back from a work conference with a bunch of Pi Zero stuff, so after this project I might make a small portable with my leftover tact switches. (Wari0 confirmed?)