Kitsen
.
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2018
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Hi there,
I was inspired from this thread to mod my N3DS.
In a previous thread I asked to get a 18650 or a li-po in the 3DS, in the end I will install my own charging circuitry for a lipo, install an audio Bluetooth transmitter inside and hopefully install a USB mod to access the SD card without removing it from the console (lots of plans!).
For now I wanted to start small and install the Bluetooth transmitter (carrying earbuds just for the 3ds is getting annoying).
I started by ordering one of these and took it apart.
I have another N3ds that I fried by accident. I will use it for all the fitting test for the new pieces, which allows me to make sure everything fits nicely before installing in on the real N3DS.
I took the power button flex cable from the broken 3DS and soldered it to the transmitter, which gives me a very slim button!
(I discovered kapton tape and I'm scared or creating a short so I will be using it heavily throughout this mod to make poor man flex cables.)
Then I tried to take out the status led on the Bluetooth to locate them next to the charging light...
Iron was too big and I melted them leaving only the damaged pads. I had a flashlight from the dollar store lying around, I cut its board down to just have two small boards with the LEDs pads on them and soldered it to the - and + point of the status LED with fresh solder and magnet wires.
Tested the lights and it's perfect!
Now I checked on my broken 3DS if there was enough space to add the two makeshifts led boards next to the charging LED and the space was too tight...
I started thinking about how I could make space or cut a hole to let the status LED show, until I remembered about that super useless Status LED Nintendo placed at the hinge.
There's plenty of room for both in there and the result is pretty good!
Update:
Last night as soon as I got home I started working on this.
I took a piece of plastic that was meant the hold the power button on the broken 3ds shell and glued it to the new case, I also trimmed the glass for the infra-red sensor to give me more room to put my switch in.
Then the most stress full part, piercing the hole. It's not as clean as I would have wanted it but it's not too bad.
With the button installed it looks fairly good!
Now that the on/off switch is in, Time to place the board and solder the power and audio connection.
I have fewer pictures for these last steps because I got pretty excited at the thoughts of being done with this.
Here the transmitter placed on the motherboard (again with a shit ton of Kapton tape) and a close up of the power connections.
And here's everything all snug together with the cut out but with the back plate on it doesn't show.
for the connections to the audio here's what I have done
I soldered to the ground and right point here, but soldered to the left point on the other side.
That will allow me to only have the Bluetooth audio when I use this jig to bridge the connection.
The rest of the time I can take the jig out, use the speaker or regular headphones if need be.
All in all it works fairly well, but I think the Bluetooth board I used doesn't have great audio plus with the motherboard and everything else between me and the antenna, it doesn't have a great signal either.
There's also a LOT of noise on the audio so I might try with thicker wires than magnet ones
I will order another board to replace it and maybe look into extending the antenna.
Update:
Got myself a new board!
New Board is installed and the signal is already much much much better, so I'd definitely recommend this one over the others, the extra 10$ is worth it.
Since it's Bluetooth 4.2 it will drain much less power away from the device, so far battery life not very affected compared the previous board.
it is much bigger though so I had to cut a bigger whole out the back for it to fit.
here's a pic of the internal spaghetti
But again with the backplate installed, no one would be the wiser
As I side bonus you can pair it with 2 audio devices (dunno when it would come handy but hey, you never know).
Next step is installing my own charging circuitry for a lipo and replacing the charging board with a USB micro.
(I read a bunch online that the 3DS can manage with 5V input but I prefer to be safe and use a charging board, and i'll hook the orange charging light to the board.)
I was also thinking about boosting the volume by bridging the resistor but on N3DS it's so compact that for now I'll manage without.
I'll make a video of it in action fairly soon and maybe tiddy up this post a bit (is it better to use links or spoiler tabs?)
Thank you for your time
I was inspired from this thread to mod my N3DS.
In a previous thread I asked to get a 18650 or a li-po in the 3DS, in the end I will install my own charging circuitry for a lipo, install an audio Bluetooth transmitter inside and hopefully install a USB mod to access the SD card without removing it from the console (lots of plans!).
For now I wanted to start small and install the Bluetooth transmitter (carrying earbuds just for the 3ds is getting annoying).
I started by ordering one of these and took it apart.
I have another N3ds that I fried by accident. I will use it for all the fitting test for the new pieces, which allows me to make sure everything fits nicely before installing in on the real N3DS.
I took the power button flex cable from the broken 3DS and soldered it to the transmitter, which gives me a very slim button!
(I discovered kapton tape and I'm scared or creating a short so I will be using it heavily throughout this mod to make poor man flex cables.)
Then I tried to take out the status led on the Bluetooth to locate them next to the charging light...
Iron was too big and I melted them leaving only the damaged pads. I had a flashlight from the dollar store lying around, I cut its board down to just have two small boards with the LEDs pads on them and soldered it to the - and + point of the status LED with fresh solder and magnet wires.
Tested the lights and it's perfect!
Now I checked on my broken 3DS if there was enough space to add the two makeshifts led boards next to the charging LED and the space was too tight...
I started thinking about how I could make space or cut a hole to let the status LED show, until I remembered about that super useless Status LED Nintendo placed at the hinge.
There's plenty of room for both in there and the result is pretty good!
Update:
Last night as soon as I got home I started working on this.
I took a piece of plastic that was meant the hold the power button on the broken 3ds shell and glued it to the new case, I also trimmed the glass for the infra-red sensor to give me more room to put my switch in.
Then the most stress full part, piercing the hole. It's not as clean as I would have wanted it but it's not too bad.
With the button installed it looks fairly good!
Now that the on/off switch is in, Time to place the board and solder the power and audio connection.
I have fewer pictures for these last steps because I got pretty excited at the thoughts of being done with this.
Here the transmitter placed on the motherboard (again with a shit ton of Kapton tape) and a close up of the power connections.
And here's everything all snug together with the cut out but with the back plate on it doesn't show.
for the connections to the audio here's what I have done
I soldered to the ground and right point here, but soldered to the left point on the other side.
That will allow me to only have the Bluetooth audio when I use this jig to bridge the connection.
The rest of the time I can take the jig out, use the speaker or regular headphones if need be.
All in all it works fairly well, but I think the Bluetooth board I used doesn't have great audio plus with the motherboard and everything else between me and the antenna, it doesn't have a great signal either.
There's also a LOT of noise on the audio so I might try with thicker wires than magnet ones
I will order another board to replace it and maybe look into extending the antenna.
Update:
Got myself a new board!
New Board is installed and the signal is already much much much better, so I'd definitely recommend this one over the others, the extra 10$ is worth it.
Since it's Bluetooth 4.2 it will drain much less power away from the device, so far battery life not very affected compared the previous board.
it is much bigger though so I had to cut a bigger whole out the back for it to fit.
here's a pic of the internal spaghetti
But again with the backplate installed, no one would be the wiser
As I side bonus you can pair it with 2 audio devices (dunno when it would come handy but hey, you never know).
Next step is installing my own charging circuitry for a lipo and replacing the charging board with a USB micro.
(I read a bunch online that the 3DS can manage with 5V input but I prefer to be safe and use a charging board, and i'll hook the orange charging light to the board.)
I was also thinking about boosting the volume by bridging the resistor but on N3DS it's so compact that for now I'll manage without.
I'll make a video of it in action fairly soon and maybe tiddy up this post a bit (is it better to use links or spoiler tabs?)
Thank you for your time
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