Another RetroPie portable

[Blargaman91]

I'm putting this thread here somewhat as a placeholder for now. Just today I started designing a new case for the same RetroPie portable I built a while ago with an SL-53 from Polycase. This time, I wanted to 3D print it, although I've never done that before and do not have immediate access to a printer.

I don't know when I'll actually get to start building it, but I will surely reuse a lot of parts from the last one (which is still assembled but not working too well) so I hopefully won't have to wait for a bunch of things in the mail at any point.

The front case so far:

Made using Autodesk Inventor. I might upload the file once it's done in case anyone wants look at it/use it. It is pretty simple.
Edit: I would love any suggestions regarding the design. I don't exactly know what I'm doing.

 

[Fluxedo]

What printer do you think you'll be using? You may need to change some stuff about your build depending on the printer.

 

[wallydawg]

Yeah this might be a difficult print unless you cut the model up into pieces and assemble it afterwards. Most solid case parts are printed upside-down to save filament (wouldn't make sense to waste so much making supports if printed right side up) so that radius you have on the edges looks like it would turn out super grody.

If the printer you will eventually use has a big enough volume to print the desired size, i'd just make the front piece separate with no side depth and add in some grooves to notch the sides in place. If you are printing ABS you can melt some additional ABS plastic (from failed prints or other plastic cases I'm sure you've acquired over the years) and melt it in a glass jar to make a slurry type glue that will fuse it together like one solid piece.

 

[Blargaman91]

Okay, thanks. I don't have a printer myself so I'm hoping to have someone print it for me. I've changed the design into a couple different 3D models so I can print the parts separately and there's no overhang.

 

[MarcTheStrong]

Hey bro I need your help... Im trying to find the best controllers that have a PCB thats easy to cut without ruining the board. I have a Logitech USB gamepad that I took apart but the back of the PCB for the ABXY button side of the controller have alot of components on it.

BTW this will be my 1st Rasberry Pi project.

I'm putting this thread here somewhat as a placeholder for now. Just today I started designing a new case for the same RetroPie portable I built a while ago with an SL-53 from Polycase. This time, I wanted to 3D print it, although I've never done that before and do not have immediate access to a printer.

I don't know when I'll actually get to start building it, but I will surely reuse a lot of parts from the last one (which is still assembled but not working too well) so I hopefully won't have to wait for a bunch of things in the mail at any point.

The front case so far:

Made using Autodesk Inventor. I might upload the file once it's done in case anyone wants look at it/use it. It is pretty simple.
Edit: I would love any suggestions regarding the design. I don't exactly know what I'm doing.

 

[Fluxedo]

I may even do some serious re design on the shape. Printers seem to have a hard time doing extremely precise curves over and over again. I would recommend printing 100% infill edges and dremeling / sanding them down afterwards. But, this is still all dependent on what printer you use. Good luck!

 

[Blargaman91]

I would recommend printing 100% infill edges and dremeling / sanding them down afterwards.

What does infill mean? Like printing it with perpendicular edges and sanding it down?

I have a Logitech USB gamepad that I took apart but the back of the PCB for the ABXY button side of the controller have alot of components on it.

I used a Logitech gamepad (F310) the last time. It was just the worst, as I mentioned in another work log. Essentially, a normal controller has GND as the common for every button, so you wire ever button to GND. On that Logitech controller, there are about 5 different commons on the board and different buttons use different commons, so in the end you have nearly twice as many wires going to the buttons than you would normally have.
The way that the joysticks work on that controller is also abnormal and 3DS sliders just will not work with it. I tried writing my own code to convert the signal, then even using RDC's converter, and nothing works. Find another controller if you can, or find a small USB converter that lets you use something easier like a Nintendo or Playstation controller. You might be able to just wire buttons and joysticks directly to the Pi's GPIO pins and program it; I couldn't help you with that.

 

[C4RB0]

Here are two options to add controls without buying an actual controller:

Wiring tact switches to the GPIO pins directly (note that this doesn't allow you to use an analog stick):
https://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming ... spberry-pi

Using a Teensy to build a custom controller (it's possible to add an analog stick, even though it's not mentioned in the article and you also don't need to buy the SNES controller, just use tact switches as buttons):
https://learn.adafruit.com/usb-snes-gamepad?view=all

 

[DuHasst0]

Teensy is a great way too go, and retropie picks it up out of the box once programmed.

 

[DefaultLik]

I'm working on some portable raspberry pi too but i can't get the **** software to work
Working with a Pi Zero, and a Waveshare 3.5" TFT LCD (So i cant use all them GPIOs). But since I want to make my own controller, or rather I don't want to buy one just to kill it, I want to make a custom controller. I tried Adafruit-Retrogame (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Retrogame) today without any success. I will open a Worklog thread some time soon hopefully. At least I got the TFT up and running

**Edit**
I have installed Retrogame but it won't recognise any button I press

EditEdit
Working with RetroPi atm. I started out with Recallbox but failed to install the drivers for the TFT correctly