Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Project PiGear v1.0: Portable PI / handheld retro arcade system



After winning a few bids on a handful of busted Gamegears on ebay, I ended up restoring 2 of them (by recapping and swapping out some components). This is the result of the others.

This will serve as a prototype and reference for future projects, which will incorporate a custom designed 3D printed case, that will house the same hardware.

Description:

A portable, robust, handheld, raspberry pi based retro arcade system that also doubles as a media player.

Main Components:
 - Raspberry Pi 3
 - Highly modified SEGA Gamegear case
 - Waveshare 5 inch HDMI LCD screen
 - Adafruit Powerboost 1000C
 - Adafruit 3.7W Class D Stereo Amplifier
 - 8 OHM 1W stereo speakers x2
 - Teensy 2.0 USB development board

Batteries:
 - Revtronic 2600mAh Li-On battery x2



Storage:
 - Kingston 64 GB USB Drive
 - Samsung Extreme 64 GB MicroSD

Misc/Other:
 - 3.5mm Audio jack
 - Female USB socket x2
 - LED red
 - Adafruit Breadboard-friendly SPDT slide switch
 - 300 OHM resistor x2
 - .100" spacing 2 pin header strip x4
 - .100" spacing proto-board
 - Tactile switches x4
 - Superglue (plastic surgery)
 - JB Weld (Epoxy)
 - 4-40 screws
 - 4-40 standoffs (nylon)
 - Copper wire (both stranded and solid Gage 25-30)
 - Shrink wraps
 - hot glue

Tools used:
 - Dremel
 - Power drill
 - Screwdriver
 - Exacto knife
 - Wire strippers
 - Tweezers
 - Needle nose pliers
 - Magnifying glass (helping hands)
 - METCAL soldering station
 - Kester .015" Rosin core solder