Worklog First Portable Wii

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Hey all, recently my school schedule opened up nice so I'm going to try to make a portable wii to keep myself busy. I'm not super concerned about most of the details at the moment, right now I'm looking into making a functional trimmed motherboard to start. Once I get that working I'll move on to picking the exact screen, audio amp, controller parts etc.

I'm leaning towards purchasing the RVL Power Management System and the USB C Charging + Internal USB Drive to start out. It's expensive but also looks like the end-all be-all solution to confusing charging circuits and such. I've picked out a couple of 18650's from Samsung, I'd like to know if these would work properly with the power management system. https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/samsung-35e?variant=37119891832983

One more thing; Should I invest in a hot air reflow system or can I just stick with solder wick for relocating the U10 (and other intimidating de-soldering jobs)? I've heard different things from different people and I don't want to spend 60 bucks on the hot air reflow if I don't really have to.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help me out with details! I'm new to working with electronics, and this is a bit daunting. I'm excited to see what I can make and what I can learn from this!
 
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Those batteries should do great! And yes you should invest in a good soldering iron and hot air. Actually a good deal for this just got posted by another member:

Good luck on your build my friend! A lot of great people here to reply and assist. Also feel free to check out all the forums. I creep a lot.. it's encouraged haha!
 
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Thank you! I'll keep posting what I get done. Probably gonna be a bit before I actually get into it because I need everything to ship. I'll be sure to check out the forums in my spare time as well.
 
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I've now installed BBloader and a few games onto a fresh wii, and everything is working to my liking. I did not enable the vga option, but I'm now wondering if I should have. I'm pretty sure I'd be easily able to redo the installation to make that happen, but should I? I've heard that using vga minimizes the amount of total conversions and ends up having the best quality. Ideally I'd keep testing for now with composite on and then redo the installer and turn on vga when my supplies have arrived.

I do have a vga monitor here at home, would I have to take a vga cable and solder it to the motherboard in places or is there some sort of adapter I have to buy?

btw I was looking at this screen https://www.buydisplay.com/5-inch-lcd-screen-tft-module-800x480-vga-video-av-driver-board, any thoughts?
 
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Personally I would recommend adding VGA, and that screen would work. The screen that you are looking at comes with an adapter that connects the board to a VGA connect
 
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I actually did end up choosing a different screen from aliexpress, it's basically the same in every way except it's 3.5", a bit more suitable for this project

My supplies are arriving so I'll be working on this by saturday. It says the screen will take months to ship though. Guess I can take my time on everything else.
 
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yea, as long as you have most of the parts, you should be able to build the rest of it by the time it arrives
 
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I'm working on the board for the first time today, kind of exciting. I've been looking at this diagram for vga output and I don't know where to put the ground wires from the vga cable. I see a 5 and a 6 near mode, do those correspond to the same ground as the other diagram on the trimming guide?
Annotation 2020-09-03 161726.png

Also, hsync and vsync are very daunting lol. Def gonna put that off until I really have a good grip on my soldering iron
 

Luca

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I'm working on the board for the first time today, kind of exciting. I've been looking at this diagram for vga output and I don't know where to put the ground wires from the vga cable. I see a 5 and a 6 near mode, do those correspond to the same ground as the other diagram on the trimming guide?View attachment 15878
Also, hsync and vsync are very daunting lol. Def gonna put that off until I really have a good grip on my soldering iron
In a portable, ground is ground so you can just connect any ground spot to the VGA output. Also definitely use magnet wire or similar for those H and V sync pins. GL!
 
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Thank you! I'll keep all of that in mind.

I'm putting off further work until next week, I purchased a stationary magnifying glass with light so I can get a better look at what I'm doing, and a cleaning station for my soldering iron. I'll do another progress update sometime after Thursday.
 
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This isnt super important but I just successfully soldered for the first time
20210210_145540.jpg

This is 3.3v to mode. I went further up for mode bc I wanted more space :/
 
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Officially part of the vga club!
20210212_122608.jpg
20210212_122439.jpg
Screenshot_20210212-122512_Video Player.jpg

I know, ugly cardboard cable gore... this is a temporary cable so

I actually pulled it off! Considering I first touched a soldering iron a week ago (and I hardly used it until 2 days ago!) I'm quite happy with myself here. Onward and upward I guess

None of my other parts have come in yet sadly. I also found out the audio amp I ordered has no volume control. Is it possible to do that externally or should I find a different amp? Thanks
 

Luca

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Considering I first touched a soldering iron a week ago (and I hardly used it until 2 days ago!) I'm quite happy with myself here.
Ayy good job! Looks good.
Is it possible to do that externally or should I find a different amp? Thanks
You could solder in a potentiometer in between the amp and the speakers:
1613156788737.png

You wouldn't be able to make it any louder than it is now, though.
 
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Almost a month later and my parts I ordered off of the bitbuilt store have arrived! Back to work :D

Unfortunately I immediately ran into a problem. I've relocated the U10 and now when I turn on the wii I don't get any signal on the screen, the only indication that the wii is on is the green light. Here are some pictures:

Removal site:
16152325749799038769855864804955.jpg


U10 final placement:
16152325965624160433181340072364.jpg


Wire connection in the back, plus vga stuff
16152326393166803471617388077113.jpg


Lcd board:
16152326659122250180652983490457.jpg


Hopefully I can get a diagnosis on my problem here, hoping its an easy fix and I'm overlooking something. I think its quite possible my AVE is messed up because I had to redo those tiny connections a few times. I dont want to touch it again until I know the U10 works though.

I also tested plugging in the normal video out 10 seconds after the console boots, nothing.
 

CrazyGadget

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Portables
???
A couple things worth noting here:

1. It looks like you didn't scratch the appropriate trace for the U10 relocation (since this is an untrimmed board). Go over the U10 guide and scratch that trace.
2. There's a lot of flux residue all over the board. Make sure to clean that up with some IPA.
3. For your VGA wires, you need to tightly twist each color signal with a ground.
4. Note that VS and HS are swapped on that driver board (the silkscreen is wrong, same with Power and Menu).

A great thing to reference for all of this stuff (minus the swapped silkscreen) is the G-Boy manual. A lot of the information there applies to a lot of other portables.
 
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Good news: I managed to fix it. The problem was bridged pins on the AVE, easy fix.

Bad news:
16160933845932994552537499111721.jpg

Hehe. Quite embarrassing

New wii coming in in a few days. Found a great deal for one on Ebay, with shipping it came out to $20 :D

I also fried the main board for my screen because I wasn't paying attention to the dc connector I used, I was unfortunately under the assumption they all supplied the same voltage and amperage

Minor setbacks
 
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Successful trim finally!
16167827682583113454854821557148.jpg


Not pretty lol. I'll do cable management later

I'm having a pretty severe issue regarding bbloader though. Almosy every time I switch to a different menu with the c stick or try to load a game the system freezes up. What could be causing this? My only guess is that the usb wires are too long or not twisted properly. Wondering if it could be more serious
 
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