Worklog [2026 summer build contest] The ReviveMii, a modern altoids tin portable wii

Diztance

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Hi guys!
About 5 or 6 years ago a video by the name of “Kill Mii: Portable Wii in an Altoids Tin” came across my youtube feed. It was so fascinating to me that people were able to cram a fully working Wii and everything else necessary to play it inside such a small form factor. 4 years later I built my first Wii portable, a G-Wii. But as with most people in this community, I’m not one to really play on a portable console at all. So, I’ve always stayed fascinated by the idea of throwing out all ergonomics and just making something that technically works, which is the precise definition of the Kill Mii by shank. So with this worklog, I plan to make my own Kill Mii and call it the…

REVIVE MII

It’s called the revive Mii because shank called it the kill Mii because he hated making it, but the small amount of work that i have done so far has been really fun. So I figured I’d call it the opposite of the kill Mii.

My goals:

  • Make a fully self contained wii portable inside an altoids tin
  • Have the lid fully close and remain on the hinge unlike shank’s design (thus making it slightly smaller)
  • Have proper triggers on the top of the console, no face buttons for triggers
  • Have proper face buttons using 3ds button pads
  • Have at least double the battery life of shank’s Kill Mii (so at least 20 minutes)
  • With longer battery life, adequate cooling for longer play time is also a must
  • Undervolted wii for maximum battery and cooling performance
  • Overall be cleaner with cuts than the Kill Mii by using a fibre laser or water jet

Stretch goals:
  • The ability to plug in the console and play it for as long as you want without overheating
  • An hour of battery life. This might be possible, key word: “might”
  • Internal bluetooth and infrared lights for wiimotes like in Shank’s design
  • Hollywood 2 gpu board for even better cooling. This is more of a budget constraint
  • Power button, rather than a power switch.
  • Headphone jack
  • Dual tact triggers
  • Temperature controlled fan. (30x30x7mm fans are loud, so I want it to only go full speed when its hot)

What I have so far:

I have an early revision of the circuit board that I will be using to wire the gc+ 2 to the gold contacts for the 3ds buttons (see images). I plan to also add the rvl amp to this board, but I’m not sure if I’ll have space.
I have a general idea of all the internals that I will be using. All the images below will be of the stuff I've scouted so far. This will be far from a feature rich design, mainly because of my inexperience with components and such.

I plan to use 2 small high c batteries totalling to about 2200mah and an off the shelf battery charging circuit with a built in usb c port. Since im using the shelf usb c charger, it will be impossible to use the usb c port for data transfer aswell, but that’s ok because I plan to make the micro sc card slot accessible as soon as you hinge open the tin.

For cooling I’m going to be using a 30x30x7mm heatsink and fan that exhaust out the top. Which is also where the triggers will be. The triggers are probably going to be one of the trickier parts of this build. In the kill me, the triggers are just face buttons. Which makes it near impossible to do any real gaming on it. For the revive mii, I want it to be actually possible to do anything you could on a full portable, so the triggers must be accessible by the index fingers. I thought about putting them on the back of the console, but there just isnt room. So they’ll have to go on the top. I’m not a million percent sure where they are going to fit, but they are a must for me, so I will make room somehow. I have some plans to make them dual tact using a bar on a hinge, but I cant confirm it will work, so it's in the stretch goals.

Unfortunately the screen will be the same crappy composite screen that shank used because i guess making a better 2 inch hobby screen just isnt in the cards for any factories in China.

And finally, the Wii itself will be an omega trim. If you’ve watched the original kill mii video, you probably noticed that shank used a LMAO trim (before it was even called a LMAO trim) and although shank expressed concerns about space when i told him I’d be using an omega, i do believe it will fit and be better overall as it will give me more space on the bottom of the tin for the charging and data circuitry.

Anyways, wish me luck!
 
REVIVE MII

It’s called the revive Mii because shank called it the kill Mii because he hated making it, but the small amount of work that i have done so far has been really fun. So I figured I’d call it the opposite of the kill Mii.
Dude, I love the name. It's genius.
 
UPDATE 1: Cuts and composition

Progress: 50%

Hello, I know it's been a while since my initial post, but that time has not been wasted.

In the past month, I have nearly finalized the layout of the internals, ordered 95% of the parts (although not all have arrived yet, they will be replaced with paper in the pictures), and cut about 70% of the holes in the altoids tin.

So let's start with the internals. Below are some pictures of the layout

IMG_0186.webp

IMG_0185.webp


At the bottom, we have a 30x30x7mm heatsink and a fan of the same size in the top left with a copper plate over it. The 3.5mm jack is at the top right, I can't decide if I want it to protrude or carve out a section of the corner of the tin so you can fit a headphone plug. And at the bottom (in my scratchy handwriting) we will have two ultra slim dual tact triggers that i have designed, a cherry bomb battery charging board from flashfi.re, a pd trigger board, a panel mount usb c port, a power button board, and i will mount the power button on the side of the tin at the bottom here.

IMG_0187.webp


Ok so now for the two, yes, TWO batteries. After I bend the leads on the 3.5mm jack, it should fit snugly in the top right, and the larger battery fits perfectly above the bottom components. Then in the top right is also the rvl-amp

IMG_0188.webp


Finally, we have the wii. You can barely see the thundervolt sticking out from the bottom, this section of the thundervolt will be trimmed and the 1.15v capacitor will be replaced with a 6tps150mud to be smaller.

The layout of the top part is pretty self explanatory once you see the pictures of the cuts, so let's look at those.

IMG_0183.webp


Just today, I went to my brother’s university and he taught me how to use their waterjet cutter. I learned how to generate a dxf file using solidworks, and use it to generate a path for the cutting tool. The cuts turned out amazingly. There is a bit of a rough edge around them, but I have ordered a deburring tool to hopefully help with that. I'm a little reluctant to sand since i dont want to ruin the altoids paint job. As you can see, the face buttons are much larger than on the kill mii, using full sized 3ds buttons. However, I am using the membrane for the 3ds dpad on the face buttons, since the membrane for the abxy on the 3ds is too large for this. Thankfully, the buttons still remain far enough apart to keep steel running in between the buttons. Unfortunately, the speaker grill (shaped like a grave, which will be the logo for this project once I create it) is off centre. I would have had to shift the abxy to the right to centre the speaker, but then that would cause problems with clearance, so unfortunately it has to be a little off to the side.

I believe I mentioned in my initial post that I wanted to put bluetooth and ir leds in this as a stretch goal, but honestly, there really isn't the space. If I wasn't aiming for such a high battery life, it would be easy to accomplish that, but I would rather keep the 2 batteries over implementing a feature that I would never actually use.

What i still have to do:

I said that I had only done about 70% of the cuts, that is because I still have to do all the cuts on the sides. I couldn't do any of these cuts with the water jet, because if I did, the water would just shoot through and hit the tin on the other side. So I have to do these cuts manually. My plan is to 3D print something I can press up against the inside while I drill, then maybe use a jeweler’s saw to cut in between the holes.

The holes i have to cut are:

  • Fan exhaust hole
  • Power button hole
  • 3.5mm headphone jack hole
  • Volume up and down (although i might just use gamepad volume controls if i cant find the space for this)

The other big thing I have to do is actually undervolt my omega trim.
This cooling setup will not work well with a stock 4 layer wii, so undervolting is a must.

And then of course, there are all the little things which I won't bother to list but will probably take up many hours of my time.

So far, I do believe I picked the right name for this project, because this has been really fun so far. Learning how to use the waterjet and seeing how precise all the cuts are was so much fun today.

Side note: I have been filming most of my work so far, and I plan to make a youtube video documenting the making of this when it's done. So, stay tuned for that!

Anyways, until next time, stay minty.

  • Diztance
 
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