The 2nd RetroPie Boy

[Blargaman91]

After a not-so-long break I am back to recreate The RetroPie Boy from before because that one was bad. That portbale doesn't exist anymore as most of its parts will be used again in this system. This time, I am not using some weird case that's not a case and is difficult to work with; I am using an SL-53 because I guess I have a thing for SL cases. I haven't used anything else in my completed systems.

Instead of making it black like most electronic devices on the market, I want to paint it Rustoleum's "Brilliant Blue", which looks like this:

This one will also have HDMI out, I hope. That just depends on whether I can get the wiring down or not. That stuff is tiny. Other than that, it should remain basically the same; 3.5" composite display, USB Logitech controller, 3DS sliders, DS Lite buttons, HMDX amp with iPad Mini speakers. I might try to fit a bigger battery because the one I used before only lasts 1.5 hours.

July 13, 2015:
I didn't do much on this day. So far it's only case work.

Here's the plain case and some parts to be frankencased:

After the frankencasing:

I am using only superglue to bond the plastic parts to the case because the holes are thin enough and it really holds strong. JB Weld failed me and I can't use epoxy putty because it doesn't conform like liquid. Superglue is pretty hard to sand, though.

There's more done at the moment but it will be posted later.

 

[Blargaman91]

July 15, 2015:

I've done a bunch of sanding and cutting and a little painting. After the painting is complete the case work will be done. I have opted not to include HDMI because the wiring is intense and if I'm going to be using an HD TV I have better means of emulating consoles.

Some pictures of the front and sides before painting:
Bottom:

A headphone jack hole, two volume buttons holes, one screen brightness button hole, and two speakers grill which are each three holes. The speaker grill holes are a little out of place and not perfectly straight, but since I'm doing everything by hand I didn't expect it to be perfect.

Top:

A DC jack hole, mini-USB port hole, microSD card hole, reset button hole, full-size USB port hole, and two unfinished shoulder button holes. The shoulder buttons will be GameCube B buttons painted black, which are similar to shoulder buttons I've used in the past.

Front:

Some new things I've added are the 3DS slider holes, the screen-size cutout, the slot above the screen where the 4 battery indicator LEDs will shine through, the DS Lite start and select buttons, a button hole for the Logitech controller's Mode button, which switches the functions of the main analog stick and the D-pad, and an LED hole to indicate if the Mode button is pressed. The is the picture taken just before painting after all the sanding was done.

Now, I've put on a couple coats of paint and none of them are going to well. I still don't have a very good spray paint techniques, and it doesn't help that the only paint I have is glossy paint, which shows off every imperfection. I'll try to sand much more after this dries.

After a couple of coats:

There is hot glue filling the button holes and tape covering the other holes so that paint doesn't go where I don't want it to go.

 

[Blargaman91]

July 16, 2015:

I've put a lot of coats of paint on the front and it still hasn't turned out very well. There's been wrinkling and splotching despite trying to do it all neatly. I still don't have a handle on this spray painting, I guess. Here's the case after sanding dried paint, just before the final coat; I really love the way it looks matte with the gloss sanded off, but unfortunately it can't stay that way:

No other progress so far. All of the internals are sitting, waiting to be put in the case. My 2000 mAh li-po battery doesn't last nearly long enough, so I'm considering trying to fit some li-ion batteries I have instead, but I kind of doubt they'll fit.

 

[Blargaman91]

July 17, 2015:

Pictures of tbe completed case:

I'm going to let it cure in front a heater for a while longer so I might not be doing anything with it today. I think I won't use Rustoleum anymore. I can't be that bad at spray painting, and I've heard plenty of accounts claiming Krylon is better.

 

[Blargaman91]

July 18, 2015:

I've put a bunch of stuff in the front case and I've only encountered two problems so far. One, The d-pad hole is just a millimeter too far right, which makes my screen unable to sit perfectly center. There's a little bit of a black bar visible on the left side of the screen and some pixels are cut off on the right side. It's shifted to the right. Two, it seems I've gotten isopropyl alcohol inside the screen while removing hot glue and it permanently damaged the screen. I can't get a new screen right now but when I do it probably won't be anything like the one I have now, which is a huge pain.

Controller board and 3DS2AN sitting above the screen:

Audio amp sitting alone above the controller parts:

And the front:

I don't think I've said it officially, but my D-pad consists of general rubber tact switches and my ABXY buttons are four GameCube Z buttons. The ABXY buttons feel like a mix between DS Lite and 3DS buttons because they're tactile but soft. The D-pad is just meh. I tried to use all the original DS Lite button parts last time and it failed miserably, so I opted not to again.

 

[Fluxedo]

Looks really good man awesome job.

 

[legofan623]

If they made white 3DS caps the color scheme would look really sweet, I'm sure the light-grey ones will be fine too though.

 

[Blargaman91]

If they made white 3DS caps the color scheme would look really sweet, I'm sure the light-grey ones will be fine too though.

Unfortunately the only caps I could find were the dark grey ones on eBay. But because they're rubber, they won't move correctly against the glossy surface and I have to use some other plastic caps. Those plastic caps are black. I may be able to paint them white if I ever get some good white paint.

 

[Blargaman91]

July 19, 2015:

This things is now semi-complete. I've closed it up, but currently I am missing the speakers and the mini-USB port for charge and play, which are both on the way. I just found out that the protection circuit I have cuts off the batteries around 3.5v, at which point they have at least 10% of their charge left. That sucks because that means the huge 5600 mAh batteries I managed to fit can only put out 5040 mAh in total.

Before closing anything:

Here it is looking nice and refined (it isn't as nice as I want you to think it is):

Bottom:

Top:

The L and R buttons are black, sadly. The white paint I have is old and absolutely terrible, meanwhile the black in Krylon and works very well. I had to use it.
And the L and R buttons holes are HUGE. I did a terrible job drilling those. Now I have to figure out some way to keep the buttons still as if the holes were small.

Once I have speakers I might make a video to demonstrate the console's speed with various emulators, such as N64 speed vs. GBA speed. I also want to swap out the Raspberry Pi inside for a Pi 2 in the future, which has the same dimensions but will be faster.

 

[legofan623]

Sexy. Fits in well with your Gamecube portables.

 

[Noah]

I have a Pi 2 on the way, I'll be making videos on emulation speed and whatnot when it gets here.

Everything is looking good! Looks a lot better than the last for sure

 

[Blargaman91]

I just finished testing the battery life and it ran for a continuous 4 hours and 10 minutes. I predicted 4 hours and 12 minutes, so that's right on the mark.

Edit: But it takes approximately 6 hours to charge completely. Why. I thought it would be a lot quicker than that considering I'm using a portable phone charger instead of the slow-charging smart chargers from batteryspace. If only I could implement smart charging like cell phones.

 

[Cllinw]

Fantastic job on this one. I do think you should go back and re color the nubs and shoulder buttons once you get paint. That color scheme would look really cool.

 

[Fluxedo]

One thing I've found to work if I over drill a button is to put a super small dab of superglue on the tact switch and place the button on it and left dry upside down. It's never failed and hasn't come loose for me with the stuff I've done it with

 

[Blargaman91]

One thing I've found to work if I over drill a button is to put a super small dab of superglue on the tact switch and place the button on it and left dry upside down. It's never failed and hasn't come loose for me with the stuff I've done it with

I actually did that before closing it up because I knew the L and R buttons holes were too big. The problem is that they're rubber tact switches, which means the buttons still wiggle and can be pushed down in the wrong way.

 

[Noah]

Got my Pi2 the other day and my god, this thing is amazing.

I've been using the release candidate of RP 3.0 and it's been emulating nearly every N64 game I throw at it.

Definitely can't wait to see how this one turns out, I know it'll be a beauty.

 

[Blargaman91]

I've been using the release candidate of RP 3.0 and it's been emulating nearly every N64 game I throw at it.

Really? N64 is mostly terrible on the original Raspberry Pi. That's good to know.

 

[Noah]

Yep. Takes a little bit of playing around with, selecting different emulators for games with glitchy menus, etc. but the controller is a Sega to set up.

 

[Blargaman91]

Yep. Takes a little bit of playing around with, selecting different emulators for games with glitchy menus, etc. but the controller is a Sega to set up.

How do you set up the controller? I can access the retroarch config files but I have no idea how to set my own controls for each emulator. Mostly because I don't know what numbers correspond to what buttons on my controller.

 

[Blargaman91]

I added a mini-USB port for use of an external power source while the batteries are charging.

Micro-USB ports are supposed to have a longer life, supposedly, but they always break on me so I opted not to do that.