My impression of the Yobo FC-16 Go

[PalmerTech]

Yeah, that is perfectly normal XCVG, almost all commercial LED backlights run in series at a fairly high voltage, an iPhone LED backlight is the same deal. Rewiring them is not very fun, though, they are on a very thin flexible ribbon. It would be sweet to find a small driver circuit for these LED backlights, it would make using a DS Lite backlight a lot easier on gameboys (The GB Pocket just happens, by a massive stroke of luck, to have an 18v source right on the power converter board). Would be useful for general LED mods, too, as it would be more efficient than running them all in parallel.

Hey Hail, if you need a 5v step up, check out those really cheap Energizer/Other brand AA to phone charger things you can pick up in pretty much any store for $10 or so. They have a really small, efficient 5v regulated step up circuit that can work as low as 2.1v, and works fine with a 3.7v li-po cell (Not tried any higher).

 

[XCVG]

Maybe there's a step-up somewhere on the board you could hack out?

 

[daftmike]

I've always used the MC34063 as my go-to switching reg chip, it only needs a few external components, and can boost, buck and invert voltages. I used to make little circuits with it on breadboard for prototyping, but I came across this ebay seller a little while ago:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MC34063-Based-Swi ... 5634561a99

It's a neat little board that follows the reference design, and is great for driving leds in series, i've used it with an lm317 current limiter to drive 20 leds in a 10s2p arrangement at 20mA per diode and it worked very well.

It's about 25mm square and has components 10mm or so high and works down to at least 3.7V. It'd also handle stepping-up 3.7V to 5V for a screen and is spec'd to handle at least 200mA but should be good for more like 500mA.

 

[PalmerTech]

Thanks a bunch! That seems to be pretty much exactly what I am looking for, thought it would be nice if a li-ion was in the recommended input voltage... Do you know if that would work?

 

[daftmike]

Yes, it works fine for sure with a single li-ion and should be good on a couple of AAs. Do you have a specific use in mind? I could do a quick test if you need it.

 

[PalmerTech]

I actually have no particular use in mind for li-ion, but I know it would be useful. I am really interested in using it to drive a DS Lite LED backlight strip from a gameboy pocket, which has a good 5v source, and the DMG, which has plenty of 5 and 6v sources all over. But running from a single li-ion cell would be a nice bonus.

 

[daftmike]

I don't know the Vf of the DS Lite backlight, but here it's running 10 blue leds in series(29.4V) from a single li-poly cell so it should handle it fine.

 

[Bibin]

I just got my FC-16 go.

Few notes!

1. Mine had the stupid tabs that prevent japanese games from going in. A few minutes later these have been removed, and the games work fine.

2. The D-pad was absolutely flax, but I made it a lot better. All I did was take it apart, and remove a small piece of paper covering the pivot P) and now it works extremely well. It's responsive, and diagonals are fine.

 

[TechScreen19]

The system is compatible with normal SNES games and Super FX games.

It's also compatible with Super GameBoy. So you can play GB on it.