Worklog Ginger's Wii Portable Worklog

GingerOfOz

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I'd have to look. It's like 6 years old, but I've been super happy with the quality I get out of it.
 

GingerOfOz

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@Stitches here's a diagram of my charge and play. The charger outputs 1.2 amps.

DELETED TO PREVENT CONFUSION
(You need two Jack's because you need a power supply and a charger plugged in at the same time!)

If this is wrong, then I'll delete it to prevent confusion.
 
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Stitches

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@Stitches here's a diagram of my charge and play. The charger outputs 1.2 amps.

View attachment 2953

If this is wrong, then I'll delete it to prevent confusion.
Well, you have "charge" and "play" on the SPDT marked backwards. The left pin on the DPDT should be charge, right should be play. Other than that, this should work. Just to be sure, what are the voltage and current ratings of the switches you're using? If the charge/play selector SPDT can't pass on enough current during "play" mode, that might cause the issues.

Maybe to test, wire the DC jack straight to the console voltage in and connect your wall power. If the issue doesn't persist, it's the switch.

Besides that, it's a neat idea. I like it.
 

GingerOfOz

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Case is pretty much final. Had to remove the Waluigi speaker holes because the printer couldn't print holes that small. Other than that, the only noticeable difference is that I put screw holes and memed the back of my case.
2017-06-17 (2).png
2017-06-15 (1).png
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Unfortunately, I will not be able to use the good 3D printer (I checked, its a uPrint SE @Gman ) until October. Which isn't conducive to me finishing in time for the contest. I will probably end up using @Chaos 's service to get my case printed, which means that I'll have to probably modify my case to make up for the lack of dissolvable support material.

I built protobuild 2 and everything still works. I installed my regulators where they will be for the final design. I also wired up the GC+ and I didn't fry it! Yay! I accidentally messed with the ranges, but I'm sure that'll get fixed. I think that one of my buttons isn't working, so I'm trying to find a way to test that they all still work. That's not a huge worry right now though.

20170617_213004.jpg

(Why would I test anything else after that glorious announcement...)

I tried soldering to my batteries, but it just wasn't working. Rather than spend more time on them with a soldering iron, I think I'll just play it safe and put some contacts into my case for the batteries.

I also figured out the issue with my charge and play, and the issue is that my setup uses more than 1.2 amps, which is what my charger provides. My new soldering station provides 1 amp of DC power, and my Wii booted up just fine until it got the home screen, and then the power supply shut itself off. So RIP charge and play I guess...

Speaking of my new station, it works pretty well, but I'm worried about the tips. I've had three of them go black and near unusable. I tin my tip, use a wet sponge, and turn off the iron when I'm not using it. I generally run it at around 350C, and go up to around 380C when I need to strip enamel wire. I'm not doing anything different from my mediocre iron, so do you guys have any tips (pun not really intended)?

Thanks!
 

Nick

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You should put warios whole face on the back if possible. I do dig the mustache though. And that case is beautiful. :D
 
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You should put warios whole face on the back if possible. I do dig the mustache though. And that case is beautiful. :D
But it's waluigi?
 

GingerOfOz

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T R I G G E R E D

I'd considered printing out a nose and gluing it over the fan vent, but I didn't think I could make anything that looked good enough. I whole face is most definitely outside of my artistic ability.
 
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@GingerOfOz a good name for this portable should be WalWiigi portable ;)
 

Nick

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T R I G G E R E D.
Lol. My bad mistyped what I ment. :facepalm:
Could you get a sticker of some sort and clear coat over it? For the air vent hole just paint everything seen inside the color of the nose?

Either way though this portable will look amazing and I'm excited to see how it turns out.
 

GingerOfOz

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Lol. My bad mistyped what I ment. :facepalm:
Could you get a sticker of some sort and clear coat over it? For the air vent hole just paint everything seen inside the color of the nose?

Either way though this portable will look amazing and I'm excited to see how it turns out.
I could do that, but I want it to turn out more dreamy than memey. I'm glad you like it!
 

GingerOfOz

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Well, the past couple days have been pretty busy, so here's an update:

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The case came in. It looked pretty fresh.

Decided to make it fresher.

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Didn't really work out that well.

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Children, never put a 3D printed case out in the sun to dry. It warps the part if it isn't flat. Badly. My loving father moved my drying case out into the middle of the yard because he hated the smell. This picture was taken after I spent several hours carefully bending it back without snapping it. It now takes considerably less force to keep it flat. With luck, when it is screwed together, it will remain in position.

Ran out of purple paint. That sucks. Didn't use primer. That was stupid. Use primer boys and girls. It would have looked a lot better with it.

20170702_214216.jpg


Colored stuff gold cuz gold looks cool. Back looks terrible thanks to a botched bondo job, and a general lack of aesthetic ability. Lessons were learned. I will likely draw a stache or something on the back because it looks rather bare.

Overall, the case design is pretty much perfect. Everything fits perfectly, I have almost no wiggle room on the thickness. I should have added screw posts into my design, but hopefully gluing/ epoxying some in will work. It doesn't look that good though. This was a learning experience, and in the future my cases will look much better.

Old audio amp went all brokely-okely. Ordered a new one from Aurelio. Supposedly it's supposed to be kinda cool or something.

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Soldered batteries to the PCB. It works. Pro tip: Don't try to use solder that is >20 years old and has an unknown background. It ruined 3 iron tips and made soldering to batteries impossible. New solder fixed me right up though.

I've done countless other little things as well. This part of the project is way more work than I had expected. Now that the case is here, I now have to endlessly tweak and rewire all sorts of things in order to fit everything in there and route things to where they need to go. this is definitely not my favorite part of the project.

I leave early Wednesday morning for a two and a half week trip. I plan to pretty much work nonstop until we leave. With luck, the amp will come in on Tuesday, I'll get everything all wired up, and have a cool new toy to show off. Granted, I remember thinking my project could be wrapped up in May. And every time I've felt like "I'm almost done!" I ended up working on it for another month.

I think I know why a good portable costs so much money now.

Question time! I'm probably going to go with a charge OR play circuit, and I wanted to know if the power supply had to be 7.4v like my battery pack. Could it be 12v, assuming the insides of my portable are good with that, or would that mess with the batteries or something?

Thanks guys!
 

cheese

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You should get a charger rated for the voltage of your batteries to charge your batteries. If you wanna just run your portable on wall power not doing anything with the batteries, then anything the regs can handle will be fine.
 

GingerOfOz

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You should get a charger rated for the voltage of your batteries to charge your batteries. If you wanna just run your portable on wall power not doing anything with the batteries, then anything the regs can handle will be fine.
I already have a charger rated for my batteries, so I'm good there. Thanks!
 

GingerOfOz

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sorry too bump but i really want this thread on the top

I've been out of town for the past couple of weeks, but I just got back into town and back into business. Before I left, I put together an acceptable build to take on my trip, but I chose to leave it at home due the fact that I have lots of little cousins with lots of hands that are good at getting into my stuff, and I decided that finding my portable at the bottom of the stairs in pieces would be moderately demoralizing. I would have felt more comfortable taking it if the back cover would stay on, but unfortunately its warped nature made it so that there was no way screw posts would hold it in place. Chaos is helping me print out a new back, and it should arrive sometime next week. This takes care of my biggest problem, and I should have this all wrapped up in time for the contest!

In the meantime, I've been mounting everything into my case. All GameCube controls are in there (with the exception of a start button), the charging port is secured, the screen is secured, and I've begun wiring up my old amp. The old amp had a stupid issue on my end that I fixed, but I did order a fresh amp from Aurelio that I'm excited to have in the final build. I'm holding off on installing that so that I can be sure that the rest of my project is good to go before adding those cool features in. I've also decided to add a GC port out to connect an external controller, because I currently have a switch that does nothing in my portable. As far as how it feels, the control sticks and ABXY buttons feel great! The shoulder buttons feel pretty "eh" though, and I will definitely use a different design for shoulder buttons in the future. The Dpad just feels bad though, and I think I'm going to pull it out, sand down the hole it fits in some more, and remount it.

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Internals thus far are definitely no bueno. I should have spent more time on the case and incorporated more screw posts and various supports to hold other things. Ah well, at least I'l have plenty of room to improve for the next one!

Good luck to the rest of you who are working on a contest entry, I'm excited to see everyone's completed product!
 

GingerOfOz

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We are almost done.

20170726_083334.jpg


Yesterday I worked on the project for eight hours straight. The Discord voice chat is a great motivator. Between my last update and today, I've virtually finished my project. All of my necessary internals are in there and working. Sound works beautifully (Those speakers in the BOM are super powerful, use them), all controls work and are mounted, my battery system charges and powers without a hitch, and everything fits in the case! With room to spare! I just need to secure my volume/start buttons, put epoxy on some stuff, and put the back on to have a fully functional portable Wii! Internals are pretty spaghetti, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did have a few setbacks. I had to completely rewire my GC+ due to a mysterious short that appeared on the 3.3V line, but desoldering, cleaning the pads, and reattaching everything solved that issue. You probably didn't notice, but my 5V reg has moved from up by my Bluetooth module to over above my amp. This is because it was causing interference with my USB line, and was making it so my Wii wouldn't boot into Postloader. And of course, last night after I got it all working, it fell off the shelf I had it on to test on my TV. I caught it after it fell two feet, and miraculously the only damage was 2 loose ground wires and a trigger falling off. I'm proud of myself for catching the portable and letting my iPad fall to the ground.

Since I will probably have some extra time, I plan to build a P1 GC port into the back of my portable (I'll put it in that triangle spot that keeps the OMGWTF from being a rectangle), building in a low-battery indicator, and maybe putting in rumble from a Wiimote.

The next post you see about this should be my formal submission to the contest! Godspeed to my fellow procrastinators!
 
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