- Joined
- Dec 16, 2016
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- Location
- The Oregon Wildlands
- Portables
- just so many i am so cool
The WaluWiigi is just about finished at this point, so I figure It's time to show off my ideas for my next portable. Apologies for the essay y’all are about to read (or not) but condensing 4 months worth of brainstorming into something brief is kinda tricky.
As you may have guessed by the title, this next project is going to be Wind Waker themed. I can't really make a coherent argument for why WW is my favorite Zelda game, but it's the one I have the most fond memories of. Also, I refuse to start a project that doesn't have at least two Ws in the name. I'm not entirely satisfied with the name, so if anyone has some better ideas, feel more than welcome to share them. But that's enough sentimentality, here's the plan.
THE PLAN:
So I've been following everyone's projects very closely, and it's become clear to me that the ideal portable is a GameCube portable built into a clamshell Altoids tin. If that doesn't work out, then I'll try this instead.
The Case:
This is the only part of the project that I have any solid progress on at this point. I'm using Inventor like I did before, but this time I'm going to use a fun little helper called common sense. It's difficult to use and can be somewhat unwieldy, but I think it'll make this case considerably more...errr... gooder than the WaluWiigi's case. The case is still in the early stages, but here are some pics.
The case is going to be made up of several pieces. You'll have the front, as well as another piece that attaches to the front. This extra piece will be used to hold down the screen and the driver board. The back piece will be similar to the WWiigi, but will definitely have holders for my 18650s and my trimmed Wii. Speaking of holder, this case is going to have screwposts designed INTO the case! No need to thank me for sharing this wonderful revelation, I'm a genius, I know. :sadpreg:
Button guides are what I’m working on designing right now. They’re a pain, but they’re going to be worth the effort.
The biggest difference is going to be the level of planning that goes into my case. This case is considerably smaller than my old one, which means that repeating any of my old mistakes will result in project failure. Even with good planning, this is going to be a tight fit. I have barely enough vertical space to fit a five inch screen, and just enough horizontal space for an OMGWTF and 4 18650s. This portable will likely be a little bit thicker than the WaluWiigi, but it won’t have those grips (which incidentally, the WWgii didn’t even need. Yay, planning…). The WWgii was basically a box to shove all my stuff inside and glue down. That isn't going to happen again.
One of the issues with constraining my size so much is that I don't have very much room for controls. With my testing of the WWgii, I’ve found that it’s difficult for me to adjust to a DS layout on GC games. I’d originally thought that I would use my portable for SNES/NES stuff more, but now that I’m close to using it, it’s pretty clear that it’s going to be used for pretty much nothing but GC. So I want to use a GC layout on this project, but I don’t have nearly enough space, so I’m going to go with a modified layout quite similar to Shank’s PWii pocket. I feel like if at least A and B are really close to how they normally are, then I should pick up on a modified layout fairly quickly. I do have enough space for DS buttons though, so worse case scenario I can still use those.
3DS sliders are the plan again. I toyed with the idea of using tiny joysticks like Gman’s most recent PS2p, but 3DS sticks haven’t bothered me at all. So I’ll keep it basic for now.
PCBs:
I’m planning on using GC+, the WiiHUD amp, PowerMii full, and any other spicy memes that the other cool people here make if they become available in the next 6 months or so. I expect this project to take a decent amount of time, so waiting isn’t a worry for me. I’ve also been toying with the idea of designing my own PCBs, and at this point I think I have solid ideas down for three boards.
Not to scale and all that good stuff. This is just a rough sketch to show general placement for things.
Board 1: This board will go on the ABXY/ C-Stick side of the portable. It will have mounting spots for ABXY, a connector for the slider, a spot for a speaker, an IR LED, pads for the R trigger and Z button, and another FFC connector to go to a similar board on the other side of my portable (Board 2). This board will connect to Board 3 as well, likely through two FFCs. I plan on having this board contain all of the spots to mount GC+ components to, so that way I have less wires floating around in my portable and one less little board to find a spot for.
Board 2: This board is on the opposite side, and contains mounting spots for Dpad tacts, pads for the L trigger, the other speaker and IR LED, and a connector for the control stick. It’ll connect to Board 1 via FFC magic.
Board 3: Board 3 is the only board on the back half of my portable. The plan is for it to partially frame my OMGWTF trim, and fill in that little triangle wedge that you chop off with this PCB. This PCB will have ports for power/charging, headphones, a power switch (a button would be cool, but I don’t think I’m ready for that quite yet), as well as ~ 5 tact switches that would be pressable from outside the portable. Ideally, I’d set up a system where pushing one button toggles the controls from being BT sync, reset, volume up and volume down to my screen controls, quite similar to how JacksonS built his SP 2.0 with the three controller options, but on a much simpler level. I’ve done some basic research into this, and it looks very doable. I’d also like to include an internal USB port with it accessible through a micro-usb port on the bottom of my case. I’ve come to despise having a flash drive jutting out of my portable, and I don’t want to have to take my case apart every time I want to add another picture of Doom as my wallpaper. So this seems like an ideal solution to me. I’m still working out the details on this, but I’m fairly certain I can pull it off.
My main goal with using these PCBs is making my internals a lot nicer. It looks like I’ll be able to connect everything the front half and back half together with just two FFC cables - one for the higher amp power lines, and the other for everything else. This sounds like heaven to me, so I’m going to roll with it.
Aesthetics:
*DISCLAIMER: THIS PORTABLE HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ABOMINATION KNOWN AS “TINGLE”
Green and gold boys. It’ll be pretty. I also have a pretty crazy idea for my back plate, but I’m going to keep it under wraps for now so that if it doesn’t work out, I’m the only one that’ll be dissapointed.
I also plan on getting some custom made GameCube buttons to use in this portable, as I plan on it being quite pretty. I’ll likely have them made in a gold color, in order to augment the green that the rest on my case is going to be.
That's about all I have to share for now. I'm in the process of doing an OMGWTF trim, so hopefully I'll have good news about that in the next few days. I also just want to thank all of you who have offered advice and support and during this past year. If it wasn't for this amazing community, none of this would have ever been possible for me.
Tl,dr (and who could blame you?): I’m making a new portable, it’s going to have my own PCBs, it’s going to be smaller, it’s going to be green, it hopefully won’t suck, thank
As you may have guessed by the title, this next project is going to be Wind Waker themed. I can't really make a coherent argument for why WW is my favorite Zelda game, but it's the one I have the most fond memories of. Also, I refuse to start a project that doesn't have at least two Ws in the name. I'm not entirely satisfied with the name, so if anyone has some better ideas, feel more than welcome to share them. But that's enough sentimentality, here's the plan.
THE PLAN:
So I've been following everyone's projects very closely, and it's become clear to me that the ideal portable is a GameCube portable built into a clamshell Altoids tin. If that doesn't work out, then I'll try this instead.
The Case:
This is the only part of the project that I have any solid progress on at this point. I'm using Inventor like I did before, but this time I'm going to use a fun little helper called common sense. It's difficult to use and can be somewhat unwieldy, but I think it'll make this case considerably more...errr... gooder than the WaluWiigi's case. The case is still in the early stages, but here are some pics.
The case is going to be made up of several pieces. You'll have the front, as well as another piece that attaches to the front. This extra piece will be used to hold down the screen and the driver board. The back piece will be similar to the WWiigi, but will definitely have holders for my 18650s and my trimmed Wii. Speaking of holder, this case is going to have screwposts designed INTO the case! No need to thank me for sharing this wonderful revelation, I'm a genius, I know. :sadpreg:
Button guides are what I’m working on designing right now. They’re a pain, but they’re going to be worth the effort.
The biggest difference is going to be the level of planning that goes into my case. This case is considerably smaller than my old one, which means that repeating any of my old mistakes will result in project failure. Even with good planning, this is going to be a tight fit. I have barely enough vertical space to fit a five inch screen, and just enough horizontal space for an OMGWTF and 4 18650s. This portable will likely be a little bit thicker than the WaluWiigi, but it won’t have those grips (which incidentally, the WWgii didn’t even need. Yay, planning…). The WWgii was basically a box to shove all my stuff inside and glue down. That isn't going to happen again.
One of the issues with constraining my size so much is that I don't have very much room for controls. With my testing of the WWgii, I’ve found that it’s difficult for me to adjust to a DS layout on GC games. I’d originally thought that I would use my portable for SNES/NES stuff more, but now that I’m close to using it, it’s pretty clear that it’s going to be used for pretty much nothing but GC. So I want to use a GC layout on this project, but I don’t have nearly enough space, so I’m going to go with a modified layout quite similar to Shank’s PWii pocket. I feel like if at least A and B are really close to how they normally are, then I should pick up on a modified layout fairly quickly. I do have enough space for DS buttons though, so worse case scenario I can still use those.
3DS sliders are the plan again. I toyed with the idea of using tiny joysticks like Gman’s most recent PS2p, but 3DS sticks haven’t bothered me at all. So I’ll keep it basic for now.
PCBs:
I’m planning on using GC+, the WiiHUD amp, PowerMii full, and any other spicy memes that the other cool people here make if they become available in the next 6 months or so. I expect this project to take a decent amount of time, so waiting isn’t a worry for me. I’ve also been toying with the idea of designing my own PCBs, and at this point I think I have solid ideas down for three boards.
Not to scale and all that good stuff. This is just a rough sketch to show general placement for things.
Board 1: This board will go on the ABXY/ C-Stick side of the portable. It will have mounting spots for ABXY, a connector for the slider, a spot for a speaker, an IR LED, pads for the R trigger and Z button, and another FFC connector to go to a similar board on the other side of my portable (Board 2). This board will connect to Board 3 as well, likely through two FFCs. I plan on having this board contain all of the spots to mount GC+ components to, so that way I have less wires floating around in my portable and one less little board to find a spot for.
Board 2: This board is on the opposite side, and contains mounting spots for Dpad tacts, pads for the L trigger, the other speaker and IR LED, and a connector for the control stick. It’ll connect to Board 1 via FFC magic.
Board 3: Board 3 is the only board on the back half of my portable. The plan is for it to partially frame my OMGWTF trim, and fill in that little triangle wedge that you chop off with this PCB. This PCB will have ports for power/charging, headphones, a power switch (a button would be cool, but I don’t think I’m ready for that quite yet), as well as ~ 5 tact switches that would be pressable from outside the portable. Ideally, I’d set up a system where pushing one button toggles the controls from being BT sync, reset, volume up and volume down to my screen controls, quite similar to how JacksonS built his SP 2.0 with the three controller options, but on a much simpler level. I’ve done some basic research into this, and it looks very doable. I’d also like to include an internal USB port with it accessible through a micro-usb port on the bottom of my case. I’ve come to despise having a flash drive jutting out of my portable, and I don’t want to have to take my case apart every time I want to add another picture of Doom as my wallpaper. So this seems like an ideal solution to me. I’m still working out the details on this, but I’m fairly certain I can pull it off.
My main goal with using these PCBs is making my internals a lot nicer. It looks like I’ll be able to connect everything the front half and back half together with just two FFC cables - one for the higher amp power lines, and the other for everything else. This sounds like heaven to me, so I’m going to roll with it.
Aesthetics:
*DISCLAIMER: THIS PORTABLE HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ABOMINATION KNOWN AS “TINGLE”
Green and gold boys. It’ll be pretty. I also have a pretty crazy idea for my back plate, but I’m going to keep it under wraps for now so that if it doesn’t work out, I’m the only one that’ll be dissapointed.
I also plan on getting some custom made GameCube buttons to use in this portable, as I plan on it being quite pretty. I’ll likely have them made in a gold color, in order to augment the green that the rest on my case is going to be.
That's about all I have to share for now. I'm in the process of doing an OMGWTF trim, so hopefully I'll have good news about that in the next few days. I also just want to thank all of you who have offered advice and support and during this past year. If it wasn't for this amazing community, none of this would have ever been possible for me.
Tl,dr (and who could blame you?): I’m making a new portable, it’s going to have my own PCBs, it’s going to be smaller, it’s going to be green, it hopefully won’t suck, thank
!
