Worklog Wii Classic Edition

[Chickacruh]

I had a conversation in the BitBuilt discord and it should be fine. Probably. I hope so. In the scenario it doesn't work I will use a PMS. As for a public version optimal for the widest audience I might make a change to something else, or I just put the whole 4-layer suite in there and tell people they need to get that. I don't know how many people would be interested in making this anyway

 

[Chickacruh]

I decided today to make a scale stand for the Wii. It’s purely optional and for aesthetics, but I think it’s a nice thing to have.



It’s not shown in any of the photos but I also do have the channel in the stand for the bottom air vent. I have a feeling it will be important to have the bottom vent open for thermal reasons.

I also went ahead and fixed up the ports on the back. It’s not a mini HDMI port instead of a full-sized HDMI port. It does look a little off though. I didn’t have a mini HDMI port for comparison, all I have are normal HDMI ports to reference, so it looks off, but I will refine that later.



Finally, I started putting together the assembly on the front for the buttons. The GameCube ports really do not leave a lot of space for the power and reset buttons, so I tried to find the lowest profile switches I could. I ended up going with the EVQQ2D02W switches in the model. They are small and soldering them is going to be more of a pain than I wanted. I might just end up ordering a pack of various small switched on Amazon and then figure out from there which one works best.



With how much of a tight fit things are in this build it’s not going to have as much wide appeal as I hoped, but hopefully since it uses parts that can be bought online like the PMS PD 3 and not an OMEGA trim some people will be interested in trying to make one. At least it should be easier to put together than the Wiiclipse.

 

[Chickacruh]

Yeah so it really is starting to feel like things are coming along in this design. I started modeling the air duct where air is channeled out through the disc slot. I think it looks pretty cool, and I like how you can see the heat sink through the disc slot.



Since I couldn’t find any fans that would fit particularly great in the Wii, I decided to just throw the blower fan from the Wiiclipse. I hope that a duct directly channeling the air out the front will be enough and the fan will just take in air from around it that circulates in from the nearby vents. There just isn’t a good way to make more ducts that channel air directly from the vents on the Wii.



I got the model for the HDMI board in the ElectronAVE kit from ElectronShepherd. There just isn’t enough space there for both the RVL-PSU and it at the same time, so I opted to move the RVL-PSU to the other half of the case. At the end of the day this is probably for the best. Sure I will have to have longer wires running from the regulators to the Wii, but there is a lot more empty space on the other half of the case, which would make it much easier to swap over to the RVL-PMS if the RVL-PSU wont work.

Additionally it frees up a free space by the Wii where I can put the bluetooth module and perhaps the mx chip. Would putting wifi into this case be possible? Like I’m sure there is a way to cram the wifi module and the antenna in there, but will it even be able to work well if the antenna are crammed into a tiny space instead of over a larger area?

Finally I was able to refine the ports on the back. I was indeed way off with my old cad for the HDMI port, but now it’s looking good.



Is it too late for me to enter this project into the summer building contest? I didn’t realize how much I would like how this project is going.

 

[icy_system]

This is looking really good! I like the air duct in the disk slot.

I think you have to have paid the fee before June 30th for the contest.

 

[Chickacruh]

Oh well, I probably wouldn't win anyway. Do you think there will be enough air flow?

 

[icy_system]

Hmm, I can't see exactly from the pictures, but you do want to have almost all of the heatsink free to go through

I would also add an intake for that fan if you don't have it already

 

[Chickacruh]

The intake for the fan is through the existing vent holes on the Wii. The problem is it's going to be hard to design ducts that run to those

 

[Stitches]

Yeah, unfortunately you have missed the registration date for this year

 

[Chickacruh]

I’m running out of things to add to the cad model. I’m going to have to start printing and testing tolerances and fits soon. First of all, I went ahead and added the acrylic ring that will glow inside the disc slot. You can kinda see it in this photo.



Then I wanted to start working on the way the case itself goes together. I have all the mounting points for all of the components in the case, but not with the case mounting to itself. So I had the idea that with the front part of the case, I can attach it with screws and then hide the screw holes under the sd card slot door. I think then I’ll just use some magnets to make the door attach. I also added this ridge on the top. The idea is that the front will hook on the top and then screw at the bottom to secure it. I’m not sure if it will work, but we will see.



I went ahead and modeled the parts for the magnets on the sd card slot door. I put 2 magnets on there to make it so it can only be attached in the correct orientation.



I also went ahead and added these reciprocating ridges of sorts around the rest of the case to help hold the case together and align things.



I also added a screw hole on the back. I thought maybe you can use one of the stickers on the Wii that cover up its screws to cover up the screw here too, so that’s why there is a square indent around it.



The cad model might be white, but I plan to print it in black like a black Wii or the Wiiclipse because I think it looks cooler. I’ll print some models and showcase that in my next post.

 

[Chickacruh]

Things are getting real. Literally



I went ahead and printed the case out, and WOW this thing is tiny. I always understood the scale of it, but it's one thing looking at the numbers on a computer screen and actually holding it in your hands. Of course it's not as small as the Short Stack, but it is still small. Here are some photos for reference, even one next to a deck of cards.

Quick note, these prints are out of PLA using an FDM printer, but I do want to have the final prints be out of resin on an SLA printer.

So my goal with this initial test was to make sure the case fits together and feels sturdy enough. And I was really surprised to find that things snapped together really well on the first print. This was really surprising because I thought I was going to have to go in and tweak the tolerances, but for the most part it just worked. Shocking considering there basically are no tolerances in my CAD. The part that didn't work was the hook I tried to make to keep the front on. That just didn't work, but at this scale I think I can get away with just the 2 screws where the sd card slot door is.



Also trying to insert the GameCube Ports didn't feel quite right. I haven't cut out the ports yet so I can't put them in properly, so I just inserted them from the other side, so I went ahead and tweaked that too. After those tweaks I still had an issue where I didn't have enough room around the holes for the screws in the sd card slot area, so I couldn't get the screws in, so I ended up just putting some blue tack in there to keep it together.



I had to tweak the holes for the GameCube Ports a little more, but they finally fit in there right. I probably will have to tweak it more once I start mounting them inside of the case, but it's looking good for now. Finally I could get all of the screws in, one in the back and two in the front. I was worried it wouldn't be enough, but this feels pretty sturdy so far, and I think it will only feel more sturdy after the PCBs are put in. I also have a few more tweaks in mind.



My printer isn't very fast, so printing these models took a while. Now that I am working in the real work I expect things to move slower, and I won't be giving updates as often, but I won't fall off the face of the earth like I did with the Wiiclipse. As of now, I have 3 little Wii cases kicking around. I had to reprint all the parts because I kept on tweaking each of them. At this rate, I'll have at least 8 empty shells I can stack on top of a Wii to show that 8 of these could fit in the space of one Wii.



That's all I have for now, what do you guys think?

 

[Stitches]

Very smol, very gud

 

[Chickacruh]

I went ahead and took the scraps from the trimmed motherboard of the Wiiclipse and removed the Gamecube ports from it using my Dremel.



After a bit of sanding and some further trimming of things that stuck out too far, it fit into the case nicely, and just like I wanted, the spacing is perfect to allow for 4 wavebird receivers to plug in, just like a normal Wii or Gamecube. It looks absolutely hilarious on such a tiny build.



I want to make sure everything fits and works well before I really start to solder and assemble things. Now that the ElectronAVE kit and the PMS PD 3 came in, I could finally test the fir, and after some adjustment it all fits in there nicely. Well, except the PMS PD 3. The legs on the button stick out further than I would like, so the board doesn't quite fit correctly. I do plan on removing it and using a different button on the front of the Wii, but I'm not quite ready to modify this board yet. I want to get the Wii modded first.



Since my assortment of tiny buttons arrived, I tried to work more on the buttons and button mounts on the front of the build, but the buttons are so small that I couldn't get my printer to print them well enough. My printer isn't accurate enough for such tiny things. I will wait until my college's maker-space opens up so I can tweak it further if needed using their SLA printers.



I also took the opportunity to test out the Wii stand I designed. It worked as intended and it looks just like the normal Wii in its stand but smaller. It's so cute! I thought I wouldn't use the stand, but I actually like how it looks so I think I will end up using it.



last but not least, for kicks and giggles I printed out the case for the Short Stack. It is indeed the size of a deck of cards, but my project really isn't too much larger than that. So maybe I am not making the world's smallest scale Wii, but it looks like I am making the world's smallest scale Wii with full sized Gamecube ports.



P.S. I know the Kawaii technically has full sized Gamecube ports, but it is not the same shape as a Wii and also the ports are much closer together than normal so using accessories like the Wavebird will just block off other ports.

 

[Chickacruh]

It took longer than expected but I finally installed the ElectronAVE hdmi mod.

I started with exposing the vias and tinning them



Then I attached the mod board



At this point I attached the rest of the wires to test it, but it wasn't working. That was a big letdown, but I pushed through and found there was one joint to the via that didn't quite connect so I re-flowed that which fixed the connection issue. More troubling one of the pads on the board didn't connect to the mod chip. so I had to manually run a wire from the via to the chip. This was difficult, annoying, and tedious, but I eventually got it connected without any bridges. Here is what the current soldering job looks like.



And miraculously, it works now! The image looks clean and the menu works too! It really is a shame that I had to make such a careful manual connection between a via and the mod chip, because now I am really weary about trimming this Wii.



I may be a bit of a coward for this, but I think I won't trim this Wii to put into the Wii Classic Edition. I'll just keep it as my main, uncut Wii. I'll just figure something else out for the Wii Classic edition. I think I will use the ElectronAnalog like Lemoncake suggested. I don't have the money to get another full hdmi mod right now. We will see.

P.S. There is no way I would have been able to do this without the equipment that I used from my college. I want to thank them for letting me use their equipment for this.

 

[Stitches]

Well done! Even with the help of a flex PCB, those things can be quite painful to install.