Worklog [2023 Contest Entry] The Chicken Nugget Boy!

[Retro95]

Hey everybody. MadMorda has inspired me to also make a whacky summer contest entry with hacking and slashing and hot glue.

I'm going to make a Gameboy out of the Chinese chicken nugget Tetris game that is coming in happy meals overseas.

I already ordered a chicken nugget for import on eBay and in the time it takes to get delivered I'll work on ideas to get a Gameboy or a raspberry pi in there to play games.

 

[icy_system]

Good luck retro. I'll be following this post.

 

[leftbrainstrain]

If you're looking for something inexpensive to go with the chicken nugget / McDonald's theme, the Atgames Genesis portables were not very good, but still played Genesis roms. ... or you could sacrifice a Nintendo DS and get it to play the McDonald's DS training game?

Looking forward to the silliness.

 

[biothundernxt]

Do you have any idea what the dimensions are?

 

[Retro95]

Do you have any idea what the dimensions are?

No I can't seem to find anything reliable online. I'm sure I'm one of the few to Google "McDonald's chicken nugget Tetris game internal dimensions"

I'll just have to measure everything once it's in my hands. Based on photos of people holding it, it appears to be at least 70-80 percent the size of a game boy color.

I decided to go with the raspberry pi ZeroW board since it's 5v and only 180ma and emulates GBA/GBC/GB very well.

With 600mah I should be able to pull some decent game time. For battery charging and voltage regulation from 3.7v to 5v I went with the Adufruit Power booster 1000.

I'm still not apposed to doing a Gameboy Sp trim. Just not finding a lot of information on performing that plus it will likely draw more power than the ZeroW

 

[Zini]

How will the controls work? Will you use one of the three smaller buttons as A/B?

 

[Retro95]

I'm going to physically cut the main button in half and use each half with its own tactile buttons underneath to do A/B so I can avoid cutting up the enclosure for another button.

Like this:

 

[Zini]

Makes sense. I've never seen someone do that before so I'll be watching this thread real close.

 

[Retro95]

Makes sense. I've never seen someone do that before so I'll be watching this thread real close.

I'm hoping it will make for some real nice finger rolling from holding B down to pressing A to perform a running jump.

Guess we'll see!

 

[Adan]

I would replace the Dpad with the 3DS C stick and put the speaker where the main button is.

 

[Retro95]

Working on my prototype while I wait for my chicken nugget to come in the mail.

I got my raspberry pi ZeroW in the mail. And I built a basic controller on blank PCB to get a feel for wiring custom controls to the GPIO pins on the pi.

I'm going to wire everything on this acrylic so I can make sure I have everything 100% working before I start troubleshooting it while it's in the nugget..

First step was just getting it to run some Gameboy games. That took several hours. I had never used a raspberry pi before. I got it to load GBA just fine and mapped everything to a USB controller.

Next steps are:
-wire custom buttons to GPIO pins
-get video output to a small 2 inch IPS
-wire up battery management system
-audio?!

As for audio, it was a bit of an oversight. I didn't realize it only has audio channels on the HDMI output. Fortunately there is a way to program the audio from the HDMI port to go to 2 configurable GPIO pins, or solder on the back side of the HDMI port and tap into the digital audio, but either way you have to feed it through an audio amplifier.

Good thing 4layer makes a fantastic audio amplifier!!!

 

[Adan]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3196 for power stuff
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3346 for audio
you can probably get both elsewhere for cheaper or make your own and combine them but just some suggestions

 

[Retro95]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3196 for power stuff
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3346 for audio
you can probably get both elsewhere for cheaper or make your own and combine them but just some suggestions

I actually already got the Adafruit battery 1000 system for the charge and play.

As for audio options. Debating using the 4layer U-AMP or a MAX98357 or something by Adafruit. Lots of options.

 

[Retro95]

I got controls working using a script file called GPIOnext to assign buttons to specific GPIO pins and then binding them in RetroPie


I still need to get video to a tiny screen working. I can go with either GPIO pins or the included Tv AV out on the pi zero.

I will make this decision once I get the nugget in my hands and can select an appropriate screen size. I guess if I get a pi specific board I'll do GPIO or if I have to go generic I'll do AV.

Until then, I guess I can work on getting audio off the board to a speaker.

 

[Adan]

RPi.GPIO

A module to control Raspberry Pi GPIO channels

pypi.org

 

[Retro95]

I have received QTY 1 Nug via USPS.

I really have been romanticizing over the idea of keeping the battery tray and putting two 10440(AAA size) 300mah 3.7v cells in it to keep the Gameboy battery nostalgia, but goodness gracious does it take up a lot of room in the enclosure...


I'm sure cutting it out so the door still mounts flush and installing a 600-800mah flat pack LiPO would be a far better use of the real estate I have.

 

[Stitches]

Wow that nugg is chonkier than I thought it would be. For some reason I assumed it was going to be more keychain sized

 

[Retro95]

Wow that nugg is chonkier than I thought it would be. For some reason I assumed it was going to be more keychain sized

I know right? You hear "chicken nugget" and think "oh it must be near the size of a chicken nugget" but it's pretty close to the size of a Gameboy color

 

[Stitches]

You know GingerofOz put a Wii in a GBC sized case once. He had to give it a slightly extended dumpy to fit the lithium cells, but if he can get a whole ass Wii portable in that form factor I expect you'll have all the room you need!

 

[Adan]

Well nuggs aren’t usually uniform thickness so you could probably fit at least 1 18650 cell.