MajinShagy's First Portable

[MajinShagy]

Hello Everyone!

I want to start by saying thanks to all the member here because I have learned a lot from just reading the forums.

I decided to use a PS2 as my first portable after some long thought. I want to make a GCp eventually as well. Here is a List of the Parts I have so far.

Working List:
PS2 silver 79001 Motherboard
AGPtech GH21 7" LCD monitor
Wii U Gamepad HardCase (I plan on frankencasing)
Battery Pack from my old Dell Laptop. (6 3.7v cells, currently wired for 11.1v with a protection circuit)
Speakers/Headphone Jack ????
Not Sure on a Controller Yet Either

So I wanted to due the Hellraizer Volt Mod and keep my disk drive, but the problem I'm having is the monitor I'm going to use doesn't like anything below 9v. So i either use the battery as is and get a step-down for the PS2, or ReWire the battery pack to 7.4v and get a boost converter for the monitor. Any Suggestions?

 

[Lightning]

Welcome Welcome!!

Its really nice to see interest in the PS2 beginning to renew

PS2 runs fine at 9 volts in, the usual 8.5 is stepped down to voltages ranging from 5 to 1.2 in some cases, and only used for the power LED otherwise, so a 0.5 variance is more than acceptable, don't bother using a complex regulator setup, just use 9 volts.

Also, and I seem to say this to everyone, but that 7" LCD is 16:9, whereas the majority of PS2 games are 4, and as a result will look distorted on that screen. It also has only composite input, which is the lowest possible picture quality you can get. Just something to be aware of

It looks like you've got a good start already, particularly with the battery setup, laptop batteries offer a lot of advantages. I'd recommend using this regulator; http://www.aliexpress.com/item/PTN78020 ... sstype=600
its a little on the expensive side, but it's very easy to configure to a constant 9 volts, and can handle a lot of current draw

Good luck with your project, We're looking forward to see what you build!!

 

[MajinShagy]

Thanks for your help. I guess running everything at 9 volts makes sense. I'm still looking into how to charge the battery pack. I've looked and looked some more. Without buying a $65 external battery charger from Dell (crazy) I have no idea. The laptop i Took the battery from is long gone. Everything else in this project I can kind of understand, but lipo batteries make me nervous.

 

[watsug]

You can buy protection circuits from other places, and rewire the battery cells to that. Also, old laptop batteries usually have degraded performance from being used for a long time.

If you are in the US, www.batteryspace.com seem to be the place to go.

 

[MajinShagy]

Does anyone know if I hook up a 12 volt DC supply to the B+ and B- directly to the protection circuit PCB if that will be OK to charge it? I don't always trust YouTube videos blindly, but there is a guy who charged a laptop battery like that. I thought you needed a special charger for lipo batteries?

 

[MajinShagy]

So I have been doing a lot more research on the forums and seen Lightning post something about using a raspberry pi as an SMB server instead of using a disk drive or USB stick.

I was thinking about maybe changing my portable into a dual purpose PS2/Android tablet. I could use a Odriod XU4 or C1+ as a samba SMB server while still keeping the functionality of the android OS. I would have to replace the screen with something like THIS. It has touch and HDMI for the pi and vga or composite for the PS2.

I was thinking I could split the PS2 controller somehow and use THIS to wire it to the pi for games.

It seems like a lot to fit in my case and battery power would be interesting.

Thoughts?

 

[Lightning]

Dang dude those Odroid devices are bad ass!! The SMB idea is a good one, and I admit I tossed around the idea of a combo system as well.

Implementation is the tricky part though, switching from video sources should be simple, the LCD driver board has that functionality. However that board does not appear to have audio capability, so volume control may be a bit tricky

As for the controller, my suggestion is that instead of using that clunky converter, just get yourself a little pro micro from sparkfun or similar:

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12640

You can program these to whatever configuration you want, and what you would then do is wire each button in parallel with both boards, so that pressing a button will work on both boards. Now, because both the PS2 and the Odroid will be active at the same time, you need to put a selector switch in the main power lines for the controller boards, so that only one may receive power at a time, and you can choose which with the switch

that's how I'd do it anyway

 

[MajinShagy]

So a few new updates.

I've looked into using a few other SBCs (Banana Pi M3 or Orange Pi Plus2) for the Android side of the build, but the support for the other devices is almost non-existent. The Odroid Board have the best software support and offer somewhat open source support for Touch Screen drivers.

I found a USB Audio Adapter that will work in Android for the Odroid Boards. I would have to open the case and solder it directly for space concerns. The other problem I would have is a limited number of USB ports. I need one for the Audio Driver, the Controller, and the Touch Screen. This means a USB hub of some kind.

As far as the USB controller, I like the idea of using the micro pro, but if i open up and slim down one of THESE I should be OK.

I already broke off the Ethernet port on my motherboard because I didn't think I would need it. Guess I with try and solder a cable straight to it so I can and get SMB working.

More to come soon, this might be a long project as I am taking college classes and working as well. I am super excited to finally get it started though.

 

[Lightning]

Sorry, I'm still not getting how you plan to wire up the PS2 controller using that adapter, does the Odroid have drivers to accept input from it?

 

[MajinShagy]

The adapter displays as a standard HID input. I was reading somewhere that you can just a generic driver in windows so I'm going to order one and try it. If it doesn't work I'm only out like $7.

 

[MajinShagy]

Now THIS is interesting. It solves my problem with the Odroid passing audio through HDMI and also gives me an integrated Speaker solution. There is a spot for audio input as well, so I'm wondering if I could pass the PS2 audio through it as well.

For another $20 i can add a resistive touch or for $50 I can add a capacitive touch.

 

[Armorant]

It is too expensive choise to buy that LED with board. Anyway it is not support SoG. I have this contorol board and even there is a mark telling it has AV IN, its not working at all. PAL/SECAM or NTSC. Both not working. Maybe there is a bad firmware that cut it interface out.
The cheeper solution is to buy that (it works well even from 4 Volts, so the 5V would be fine):
http://ru.aliexpress.com/item/Free-ship ... 15106.html
And yes, it is the same board you want to buy. It does not accept CVBS. Only VGA. But there must be way to solve SoG problem and soon I hope I will find an easy way to make RGBHV.
###
Also if anyone want to have SoG compatible contol board should find with NOVATEK NT68676UFG 1536-EB AY5MK chip on it. At least on board M.NT68676.2 SoG VGA works well.
This is that board:
http://ru.aliexpress.com/item/HDMI-DVI- ... b045f9edee
###
There is a small chance that board also would supports SoG input (its name Vst29.03):
http://ru.aliexpress.com/item/Original- ... 273.2hZQ3A
Also vst59 might support SoG.

 

[MajinShagy]

@Armorant Thanks for the information. After shearching arround some more I found THIS. Much better price and has proper audio in.

Thanks Again for your help!

 

[Armorant]

Yep, that one I have myself (I mean control board). Best choice. It support SoG and can accept even 59.9mHz signal (important part if you use converter as I do). It runs from 12V and it is bad, but I dont know what type of LCD you will have. The inverter needs 12V to feed the CCFL lamp inside LCD.
The direct VGA SoG connection between Sony and that control board is easy way, yeah, but you have to deal with:
-PS2 home menu will be absolutely green. You would see all elements and options, but they all will be green/dark green.
-To soulve it you has to use GS mode selector to choose VGA. All will back to normal.
-But, with GSM loaded the games start to work slow (not every, at least I have few of them with that problem). Try Tales of Legendia with any alternative GSM mode and you will see the difference.
-PS1 games if I remember right will be unvisible, I mean they are not VGA supported. I can be wrong, one of my tested video connections have this type of problems, but I dont remember what exactly test is was).
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And before I adviced 7 inch LED with simple board as a cheep solution. It works great with digital signal (HDMI) and owful with analog (VGA). Red color is corrupted. Dont know the right english word to describe the way it works.)
####
Does anyone can make Gerber or Eagle projects? For custom PCB creation of cource).

 

[MajinShagy]

The lamp in the panel is a "9S2P WLED" is says is a 3.3v. It should be able to be powered from a 5V source. *fingers crossed*

 

[Armorant]

Smart choice. Probably it needs 5 Volts.

 

[MajinShagy]

Minor Update.

I went to a local used game store and picked up a GameStop brand that should work great as a controller as it has a carbon printed button design. Thanks to pnxbwood's Thread it has wiring schematics too.

http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=11428

They also had one of the twin blue USB adapter for $3. can't beat it. There is a video on YouTube of someone using one on an Android Device. I won't know if it will work until I get my Odroid XU4.