Worklog Summer Contest 2025 - GBA Shaped Controller

[Rocoloco321]

Hello BitBuilt fellas I have decided to participate on the summer contest with my (technically) first electronics project. A GBA Shaped game controller.

Spoiler: A bit of history

I've had a GBA with a broken screen laying around for a good while and I have been wondering what to do with it for quite some time. The first thing that came to mind is turn it into a game controller, so back then I grabbed my soldering iron and soldered 11 wires directly to the motherboard's test points to a controller board I had laying around. The end result was anything but pretty, the wires were too short so the external board was left hanging in the air, pressing a button pressed everything (soldering a resistor between the controller and gba's ground fixed it) and the usb cable was faulty so the controller kept getting disconnected. If I get to find a photo of this monstrosity, I will make sure to update the thread and add it. Now I'm ready to give closure to this idea.

Features:

• Powered by an ESP32
• Either add the missing buttons from a modern controller (LR2, Analogue Sticks, X and Y) or program the ESP32 to handle them trough "mode switching"
• 3D printed front shell since the controller won't have a working screen
• The same shape and size as a stock gba
• Eventually move to custom pcbs
• Maybe add a battery to make it wireless?

I hope I can finish the project on time, and I wish the best of lucks to the other participants

 

[turknatr]

I'm wondering what you're planning to do with the screen-area on this GBA lookalike? I'm dreaming of you integrating some sort of screen and display stills or animations, VMU-style. That'd be dope!

 

[Rocoloco321]

[ QUOTE="turknatr, post: 73334, member: 53426"]
I'm wondering what you're planning to do with the screen-area on this GBA lookalike? I'm dreaming of you integrating some sort of screen and display stills or animations, VMU-style. That'd be dope!
[/QUOTE]
While I was intending to use the screen area to fit the extra buttons/sticks if I go that route, now that you mention it I could add one of those tiny .96 inch screens to add stuff like a battery indicator and stuff

 

[Rocoloco321]

Here is the first update for this project. I got the A, B, L and R buttons working. The next update is probably going to have everything soldered directly to the GBA motherboard test pins.