It has been quite some time, but started working on this again in the last month.
I think the spirit of the summer competition motivated me to pick this project back up since this was last years submission. Not entering this year but in good faith would like to finish this project this summer.
Here was the assembled all in one driver board from last year:
While it looked nice, it didn’t work properly. Got the video to display one time only with artifacts with a weird error, then never again.
I always post about my failures, I’ve got nothing to hide lol. I’m just a humble hobbyist.
I redesigned the whole board using a different chipset to handle the video (MST703 instead of RTD2660) as I discovered it used less than half the power and didn’t get warm at all. It used VGA with the AVE integrated on board.
While it worked, I soon realized running power and video all through one unshielded FFC cable was no good and the video had issues. At least you can see my flex in the background worked just fine. Ignore the FFC cable, I cut it to fit properly just for testing haha.
I’m working on a new driver board that should fix all the issues I have discovered from all of this trial and error. I also went over many various layout guidelines for various circuits like HDMI, USB, etc to properly design everything again from scratch. It pays to make mistakes!
Huge shoutout to YveltalGriffin for my many questions that he has answered through the years!
On the bright side, last year I did successfully trim a Wii Mini OMEGA:
Sorry, couldn't find the photo showing it actually booting...
The flex did not look so good on a trimmed board but that’s okay because I’m scrapping it anyway for something else.
I made a couple discoveries along the way that I forgot to post about so might as well now.
1) You can see a red wire in the trim, and that is because Nintendo changed the design slightly where they repositioned the feed through capacitor and while cutting an OMEGA, it cuts through the 3.3v that connects to the feed through cap on the Wii Mini that doesn’t on the Hollywood 1 boards. You can either reconnect 3.3v or cut slightly further away to not cut through that trace.
2) The digital video vias are all the same except V0, which was moved so it slightly varies from the other 4 layer Wii boards and therefore is not compatible with current video flexes unless you run a jumper or make your own compatible flex.
3) Thankfully, Nintendo moved the USB vias and they are available to solder to on an OMEGA trim whereas the regular 4 layer Wii boards require you to scratch the fine traces and solder to those.
These are only the immediate things I noticed, there may be other changes that I didn’t notice right away.
From my research, if you want a Hollywood 2 Wii Mini, just check the serial number underneath and if it starts with an “HW2” then it should be a Hollywood 2 variant. Maybe that’s what the abbreviation stands for in the first place. Confirmed this theory with about 5 Wii Minis, plus a few other members confirmed this as well.
I never shared this on here back during the 2023 Summer Contest, but the whole reason I was building this was because it was the time when Waveshare released the first QLED screen on the market for projects like this.
https://www.waveshare.com/product/43h-800480-ips.htm?sku=24773
I have already posted another portable using a 5" QLED screen (
here), but was long after starting this build as this portable will feature the 4.3" 800x480 QLED screen whereas my other build used the 5" version.
And man let me tell you QLED is beautiful. Here are a few shots of the 4.3" QLED screen:
Even compares to OLED colors on the Switch OLED (QLED screen is definitely a warmer display as you can see):
Next, I designed a funky little power board to fit in the small space left above the Wii OMEGA in the case.
Which fits a little snug right above the Wii Mini OMEGA trim:
The Reg board will have a thermal pad/paste that will be screwed right on top of the heatsink so I’ll never have to worry about it overheating.
This build will also feature undervolting to maximize the battery life, which should be about 4 hours.
I’ve decided I’d like to change it up with the analog sticks, so I’ll be using modified Quest 2 sticks. They are definitely thicker, so I had to add a few more mm of thickness to the case but I think it is worth it. I visited these sticks previously and didn't like them and now I know why. The Quest sticks are pretty stiff in my opinion compared to modern day sticks that have much lighter tension, so the stiffness makes them feel kind of limited in range. Easy fix, I just replaced the spring internally with one from a Joycon stick and it feels buttery smooth now with greater feeling range than Joycon sticks. And they look great too:
This build I will have a proper built sealed soundbar chamber for higher quality audio as well. High quality audio really ups the experience with these projects. Here's a quick comparison from regular speakers to sealed chamber speakers:
Regular Speakers (doesn't have much bass/depth and very sharp sounding)
Speaker Soundbar Chamber (well rounded sound with a lot of bass/depth)
Last, the biggest hurdle that I need to tackle that I don't have an update on yet (still in the planning phase) is to have hall sensor triggers. They feel really nice in modern day controllers and with a click at the end of the trigger would make it feel close to the original Gamecube controller. I'm planning on have a PS5/Xbox type feel with a hinge design as opposed to the original sliding of the Gamecube controller. Luckily, StonedEdge has already done something similar and even shared his code on his github that I'll mess around with.
This was a long post, thanks for sticking around!
