Worklog WiiSPii build

[DullBoy]

Hello All,
This year I decided to make my attempt at building StonedEdge's WiiSPii since I've had the PCBs for over a year just lying around on my desk staring at me. Around the time I purchased the PCBs I also ordered what was in stock from the BOM that he linked when he open sourced his build. When I went to attempt this build I realized I was missing a ton of parts, so a little over a month ago I scoured through his BOM, rev1.4_front/back.txt files to try and determine everything I was missing.

I also looked for any and all pictures I could find of his assembled custom board to use as a reference as the .txt files locations on the PCB didn't match the silkscreen on any of the revisions he had put up on his github. I believe I have managed to recreate the entire assembly as well as program the three PICs on the board using the PICKIT3 and the precompiled code he had in his files.

It is quite a beautiful board
Here are some close ups of the front of the PCB

I have reached a point where I am not sure how to progress, attempting to plug the board into my pc with a usb-a to usb-c cable I can't seem to get the SD card to showup. I also realize this may not necessarily be something that was made possible with this board and have yet to fully determine this.

My next step is to cut down a wii and attempt my first lmao trim, I will likely be going for the V2 of the trim as that seems like it is the most applicable version due to shape and simplicity of the cuts/edges of the board.

If anyone has any tips, pointers or corrections based off my provided photos, I'm all ears!

 

[JamesPi]

Really hyped to see a new build of this beautiful portable!

 

[DullBoy]

So somewhat minimal update here

After tracing the voltage lines from the chips leading to the SD card, I realized they weren't receiving the 5V they were supposed to. I probed around and narrowed my issue down to the DC converter in the top right of the board between the two large capacitors. I hit it with my hot air and added some more chipquik and manged to get a solid connection on all of the traces it seems.

New problem, all of my voltage rails don't seem to be outputting any of their voltages. I am almost certain I was getting the proper outputs previously, but it is possible I'm mistaken. When I was testing different cables to try and troubleshoot my SD card issues I had plugged the board into a usb-c to usb-c port on my motherboard and I seemed to smell a plastic burning smell and immediately unplugged it. I am not certain that it is related to my voltage rail issues.
I tried replacing my BQ25895 but that didn't seem to have any affect on my issue. I also had replaced my STL6P3LLH6 as it wasn't outputting 5V to the "charge" pad that leads to the BQs VBUS, this didn't change anything in that regard.

If anyone has any idea why the STL6P3LLH6 wouldn't be outputting 5V I'd love the insight. I'm now wondering if the TPS61232DRCR is the main culprit for the rail issue, and I don't currently have a replacement to test this.

 

[DullBoy]

Replaced the BQ25895RTWR with the BQ25895MRTWT as I had both and that seems to have fixed the issue with the rails not being supplied any voltage, they still aren't outputting anything, though that seems to be a PIC16F1525K42T-I/JQ issue. When using the power switch, which self resets to open (on-mom), there is no change in anything that I can see.

 

[DullBoy]

So I've managed to solve my power rail issue, I forgot to disable reset mode in mplabs for the PIC16F15324T-I/JQ, and also every other PIC but I haven't gotten to those yet in terms of testing.
In my poking around trying to solve the power rail issue, I've inadvertently managed to revert my 5V charge fix as well as the SD card issue. I'm somewhat at a loss with where I managed to mess that up, I've tried resoldering the BQ as well as the STUSB4500 but haven't managed to bring that back to life. I will continue to poke around tomorrow and see if I can fix this.
In my messing around, after fixing the rails, I realized my power led was working I decided to take a look at the charge led as it wasn't working previously (I know this was related to the PIC being disabled and only realized after), I then managed to lose it when my tweezers decided to lose their grip. Of course I only had one so I will be ordering a new one at some point.

 

[DullBoy]

Managed to get the SD card reading again, seems like the usbc connector had some legs that maybe weren't soldered too well so reheating that seemed to fix the issue.

The 5V charge still is giving me issues, I tried pulling the BQ off again and added more solder to the gnd pad which didn't seem to have any affect, neither did adding more solder to any of the legs on either the BQ or STUSB4500. My next attempt was by removing the mosfet STL6P3LLH6 that's responsible for the 5V charge and pulling some solder off the large pad and replacing the mosfet. This seemed to somewhat fix the issue, except the voltages were all over the place on the SW pins to the large inductor. I would plug in my usbc cable and it would read around 2.5-2.7V and then unplugging the cable and flipping it 180 would cause the voltage to read slightly higher rapidly going from 2.8-3V. I again tried pulling off the mosfet and replacing it again which had no affect. I may replace BQ again because I may have a spare and would like to see if that has any impact, but I'm assuming it won't.

I may need to take a day off and try to recoup my brain matter.

 

[DullBoy]

Kind of a bigger update, I think I’ve fixed the battery issue, I believe I overcooked the BQ and Stusb4500 with my hot air station when trying to troubleshoot. Replaced both and everything seems fine so far.

I started on my Wii trim and originally just went straight into the LMAO which was definitely a bad idea in hindsight. I think mostly because when sanding I had removed my tape, which I believe may have allowed things to build up under the the gpu/cpu and thus it wouldn’t boot.


I spent a couple days trying to troubleshoot it and last night I finally decided to give up on it. In taking a break from my first trim, I worked on prepping the new board and verifying all my relocations. Everything was working properly so I outlined a larger OMGWTF on the back for the trim. I also taped the hell out of the front and back of the board.


This trim was a success

I marked the back with a slightly larger LMAOv2 trim and taped the hell out of the back and front again, cut sanded and hooked up the WIISPII board and had a successful trim!

So tomorrow I’ll spend the day wiring up the wii to the RVL-DD and changing out the wiring for situating everything into the case

 

[DullBoy]

Screen works!

I did initially run into an issue where the 3.3v rail was being pulled down to 1.18-1.2 volts and I was trying so hard to figure what could possibly be affecting it. I spent an hour or so troubleshooting all the wires I had added to the pms and after disconnecting each one and trying to understand why the MX wires or the sound wires would cause an issue, I realized I should try the gulikit Hall effect sticks. For whatever reason this worked! I remember StonedEdge mentioning they didn’t work with his build for whatever reason and realized those are what I had ordered like a year or two ago for this project (I have ordered what I think are close to oem). I disconnected them and after a few moments that felt like an eternity, I saw the screen boot up! I think I may need to update my files on my sd card as I know there was a new file for the RVL-DD that kept the chatter on, I think, the sda scl lines down, which may improve the screen boot up time but I will have to check. I’m on a trip to Florida this weekend until Monday so I’ll just have to daydream about working on this while I’m there.

Next I think will be button testing and wiring up the batteries when I get back! And maybe figuring out the pesky charge led. And figuring out where to wire up the fan



Wii spaghetti!