Concept Idea: An All-in-One Wii Portable Carrier PCB?

[WillF]

Hey everyone,
I wanted to throw out an idea for discussion. I'm not a PCB designer, and I don't have the skills to design something like this myself, but I thought it could be an interesting project idea for someone in the community.
One of the biggest hurdles for new portable builders is the amount of wiring required between the trimmed Wii motherboard and all of the supporting boards. While custom PCBs like the GC+, RVL-PMS, U-Amp from 4LayerTech have made portablizing much easier, there is still a lot of wiring, planning, and troubleshooting involved from board to board.

My idea would be an "all-in-one carrier PCB" that acts as a central backbone for a Wii portable build.

The Wii motherboard would mount directly onto the PCB using designated solder pads and mounting locations. Rather than redesigning existing modules, the board would be designed to accept and integrate existing community hardware such as:

• GC+ controller board (to solder on like the way it's soldered on the Ashiida Controller PCBs)
• RVL-PMS
• U-Amp
• USB storage solutions
• SD card
• Battery connections
• Fan connections
• Speaker outputs
• Screen power and video connections

The goal would be to reduce point-to-point wiring and create a cleaner, more beginner-friendly assembly process.

Just want to see if that's an idea someone is willing to explore.

 

[Shank]

Funny enough, we have been working on something just like that for a while. It integrates basically everything you mentioned (minus GC+, which is optimal to have on its own board) plus more (like undervolting) on a single board, designed to fit on everything from the most basic trim to the most extreme of omega trims. It solders onto the front, and utilizes a flex to interface with all the required vias on the back of the Wii. The flex has two FFC connectors that each fan out video, power, audio, and more. The rest is accessed through JSTs. We showed off a prototype at MGC this past April, including a few upcoming builds that utilize it. Both the design and name are not final yet. We have no details on pricing or release date, but we hope to have good news on both soon.