Gamecube Portable

Mooper

Mooper

Member
Finally finished my first portable, and man does it feel good!

So here it is:

oFgNCdZh.jpg


Must touch
ssFkikvh.jpg


Features:
Custom vacuum formed case based on Ashen's revolution
Wasp fusion with swiss auto boot
5" Dalian good display LCD
GCVideo lite outputting beautiful 480p through VGA
Zenloc's custom regulators
11.1v 6800mah battery pack (6x3400mah) roughly 4h50m of battery life
TI BQ24170 evaluation board, allowing charge and play using only one power jack. Charges the batteries from dead to full in about 4.5 hours (system off).
Daftmike's low battery indicator with charge indicator integrated.
Internal 128mb memory card and sd gecko.
Pam8403 audio amplifier + 2W speakers with switching headphone jack.
Trimmed Official controller, 3DS sliders, dual tact L&R, dual 3v rumble motors.

Worklog

Special Thanks to:

Ashen, Emu_kid, Unseen, Zenloc, "Sir *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing asshole" Megalomaniac, Bentomo,
Blargaman, Shockslayer, RedmagnusX, Hailrazer, Daftmike, Sonyqrio.

You all helped me in one way or another. Be it a guide or a single post that sparked an idea.

Video
 
AWESOME!!!! :mrgreen:

Any info on the TI BQ24170 evaluation board you were using? I used a charger circuit from batterspace in my GameCubeSD model but the size isn't ideal.
 
Here's the datasheet for the eval board:
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/sluu463/sluu463.pdf

It's got all the formulas and instructions on how to change the charge current, adapter current, overvoltage and undervoltage limits. You'll also find the schematics and a bill of materials if you wanted to make your own board. There's images of each layer, so you know exactly where you can cut the board to save space. I did a minimal cut, but I also have it at stock values. So if you wanted to use the max 4A charge rate, I would do some temperature measurements before doing any trimming. You can see how I trimmed the board in my worklog.


Also:
"The bq2410 EVM board requires a regulated supply approximately 1 V minimum above the regulated voltage of the battery pack to a maximum input voltage of 16 Vdc." When you plug in the adapter the charging will begin and the system will switch to the voltage of the adapter. So you need to make sure your system/regulators/screen can be powered by the voltage of the lowest point of your battery and the adapter.

For the charge indicator, I just removed the LED from the board and wired leads to the red LED on my low battery circuit. When I plug it in, the low battery circuit gets the 14V from the adapter. It changes to the green LED and then the red LED gets powered by the eval board to show the charge status.

Here's the datasheet for bq24170 itself:
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/bq24170.pdf
There's examples of various uses and schematics in there.
 
Thanks for the info on the board. Would be interesting to see if we could make our own. 100 bucks for a charging circuit is way to expensive.... :shock:

Great to see some of Ashens inspired work :cool:

Any plans for another model?
 
LOCtronics said:
Any plans for another model?
Click to expand...

Not another model just yet. I do want to make another like this one, and improve where I can.
The mold I used for this one was made by hand with a jigsaw and beltsander to get the two sides as identical as possible.

For the next one, I'm gonna try to be more precise. :tophat:

8mC939vh.jpg
 
Aurelio said:
This is soooo nice! Congrats! I'm including the charge and play with one jack only in my GCp, too :)
Click to expand...

Curious, do you plan to use the eval board or are you in the midst of designing your own board around the bq24170?

I only ask because I've been working on my own design but have been running into issues. If you're well read when it comes to the bq24170, would you mind taking a look at my schematic?
 
I know modding is for the sake of doing it but why not just have a 12v power line that goes into the portable that powers an internal charger and the console at the same time rather than doing all of this? I've seen circuits before that charge batteries just like a wall charger but run off of things like 12v rather than wall power.
 
Mooper said:
Aurelio said:
This is soooo nice! Congrats! I'm including the charge and play with one jack only in my GCp, too :)
Click to expand...

Curious, do you plan to use the eval board or are you in the midst of designing your own board around the bq24170?

I only ask because I've been working on my own design but have been running into issues. If you're well read when it comes to the bq24170, would you mind taking a look at my schematic?
Click to expand...

I'm working on a custom PCB, but I'm not using the bq24170. If you want you can send me your schematic and I will be glad to try to help you (even though I'm not using the bq24170, I'm using another TI ic which is pretty similar, but a bit more powerful) :)
 
Fluxedo said:
I know modding is for the sake of doing it but why not just have a 12v power line that goes into the portable that powers an internal charger and the console at the same time rather than doing all of this? I've seen circuits before that charge batteries just like a wall charger but run off of things like 12v rather than wall power.
Click to expand...
Then you would still need a switch for switching off the batteries and on the wall power. With this evaluation board you can just plug it in or out and the board routes the voltage from the batteries or the wall adapter.

The two common camcorder battery chargers I have have 12-24V and came with a car adapter, but they are pretty large.
 
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