The trick with the applicator thing for the acrylic cement is to have it about half full, hold it upright and squeeze the air out and flip it over, then the vacuum keeps the stuff in and you can very precisely control how much you want to squeeze out
Donno why ppl would dislike this much of information packed videos..i am a hobbyist and know how much efforts one could need to put to get something right when things go sideways.maybe ppl who don't understand but still watches this kinda video would dislike.
I like this idea. Could also just cut out part of the back-having the entire back be metal could be a bit overkill for the Zero 2 W. It can only soak up a few watts maximum.
@@JeffGeerling True, anyways I'd love to see you do this and if you are up for it mention I gave the idea. I have LOTS of ideas but no time to do all of them.
You would have less control over the amount of solder once things get hot, and I don’t recommend hot air for this as it would heat larger areas, encouraging the solder to spread and bridge connections. You can use stripped wire to help fill the hole if you have a problematic pad.
Honestly, I probably would have put little solder "balls" on the pads individually before putting the pi on it. They'd help fill the gaps in the back, and would wick through the holes providing visual confirmation that the solder did indeed flow and connect. In theory this would work, however in practice, I don't know.
I'd probably go with snipped off legs from resistors. You can drop them in the holes and the solder will flow down without excessive heat, flipover to complete.
I tried this cupholder thing with an esp32. Most unreliable way to solder imo. I've done a some smd stuff, like mcu soldering and medium package size stuff. Barely any issues with those. Cupholder did me in
Loved it! As an electronics guy, I specially enjoyed the parts about SMD soldering, acrylic cement and other mechanical features in this board that can be useful for me.
What a fun build! I've built a few mechanical keyboards and doing surface mount parts is always a bit of a pain. I found that if you just get some solder on one of the mounts, hold the part with some tweezers, and solder one side, it makes it easier to solder the other side.
This was inspiring. You showed the whole process, the good and the bad, and still persevered to the final result. Thank you for being so thorough. God bless you.
Thanks for the prograde cardreader recommendation in an earlier video i commented on, its so fast and not flakey, makes importing photos much more enjoyable. Also the magnet base is nice :)
So I ended up making a similar project with a Pi 3A+ instead (as Pi Zero is impossible to find nowadays) , and it actually ended up costing me around 50$ total. I did not have a 3d printer, so I ended up using a 2$ pencil box as the case, and all the buttons were mounted manually and connected to a Pi pico, which was in turn connected to the Pi 3a's USB Port. It ended up working pretty great (though not so great look wise). Also I can use the Pi 3's headphone jack without external dac, and having access to power & hdmi ports means I can dock the device with my TV. I actually am frequently carrying it to my college to play games during free time. This Gameboy Null project gave me the inspiration to attempt to try doing it, and I'm grateful for it.
Hey Jeff. I don't have much to say. Love how the content on your channel is more "affordable" for us regular people with regular incomes that have children and all of that life. In fact, I just wish you'd have more time to make more content :)
I can see so many older projects people have made with the Zero, get a big upgrade with the zero 2. Keeping the same physical profile on the board was a smart Idea.
By coincidence, I just stumbled upon this one video of yours while searching for something else, and I came across this part: "I'm actually amazed how good the sound was on early Genesis and Super Nintendo games. I've only ever heard them on the tiny speaker in our family's cheap 13" TV." - As a kid, I always plugged my headphones directly into the Genesis... :)
i'll pass on this one, but if they release one, that like you said: is a bit thicker so you don't have to solder the pi in, and also has room for a joystick (Which I imagine with what's currently out there might also require more thickness) then I'm in.
Pretty sweet, at this point there are sub $50 handhelds that will play up to ps1 though so if you aren't getting enjoyment from the build, it's probably not worth it. 2 years ago (when this video was made) things were likely different.
first off this is awsome. but for 150 its like you said more about the journey and fun you have in assembly. if you really wanna use one i would advice 150 bucks retroid pocket 3+ and as best in category i would say ayn odin from 200$ pro a lil more but the base model has no problem emulating ps2 and gamecube
I think I get to have my first smart moment. In circumstances where parts are tricky to hold / solder, don't use tape like you have here, use bostik blutack. easy to place, easy to remove, when its below 35c its fairly rigid. awesome work none the less Jeff.
I have the Raspiboy which is larger (it's like 4 years old at this point), but it doesn't require any soldering at all. The main interface board has spring-loaded pins that connect to the test pads on the back of the zero. It also exposes usb so you can use external controllers.
I had to do math tests for a kid of a friend of the family. It's been 10 years since I've been out of college so it's been a while for me. I pulled out one of my old calculators, which felt surprisingly familiar, but the results had me wishing for more. What if instead of handheld game consoles we made the ultimate graphing calculator kit? How about a square screen?
Seeing that THPS footage was what I wanted from this video. I've got a Retroflag GPi case and can't wait to stuff a Zero2W into it. The crashes during GT2 are likely an emulator bug, it's rock solid on a regular Pi 3 and 4.
Yeah the weird thing is I tried four times before working on recording the script. Then when I went back to record the video clip of it crashing... it worked every time! No clue why.
This is really cool. One of the projects that got me interested in electronics was making a portable SNES using Ben Heck's book. This was in the mid 2000's, before there were many handheld devices that could emulate the SNES well.
Great work Jeff! Really like the acrylic and it’s nice to use readily available parts during the chip shortages. Something that has severely held back my console :(
I'd be paranoid about those solder joints breaking. If the board had thru holes where the pi goes, short piece of copper thru both would do it. Like the idea of a portable console like that, as long as it can be used for something useful instead of gaming
Gaming is a useful for entertainment. But I get what you mean. I also really want a small portable computer. The main issue is going to be interfacing with it.
@@QuippersUnited how about this design but with functional analog joysticks, l1/r1 anf l2/r2 buttons so you can run steamlink and play any game in your library ?
You can avoid the "cup hole" soldering by removing the plastic thing (I think because I have not built this but anyhow the plastic is removable. Once soldered trim the excess.
Maybe you could solder pogo pins into the pi GPIO vias and have the pi contact the PCB with compression. That way you could easily replace the Pi if needed. Some pogo pin configurations should seat into the vias and ultimately add almost no thickness (less than a 1mm) when compressed. Downside is tolerance for the case will need to be much tighter. Really boils down to whether you want easier assembly and or easier swappable components.
I am really looking forward to your cutiepi review! I would prefer a more conventional tablet with kickstand instead of the handle, but it is easily the most compelling pi tablet I have seen so far. I hope it is good!
I still have a fully transparent original Xbox Controller and it was always amazing to look at. Choosing the clear version is definitely the right choice and I would go for it too if I would buy this product
Great video! I feel like you went into the rabbit hole so we don't have to. I suspect your handheld game system is something you could take pride in given all of that work and frustration.
It’s a lot of fun messing around with the Pi like this. But if you’re serious about gaming on the go, you’d have a better experience getting an RG300 from Aliexpress and updating to the latest RetroFW. It will play everything your device will, but with an almost instant boot and safe instant off. Not to mention 4-6 hours of play time and a gorgeous IPS panel. All for ~$50.
Quite an impressive journey if you're into such projects, and a nice "documentary" Jeff ! I stuck my Zero2 inside the GPi case... wish i had a spare cartridge to improve cooling and OC it, might look into it later. For the time being i decided to build a FPGA handheld; you have a valid point about acrylic cases here, which i didn't think of, so maybe i will leave out 3d printing 🤔
Just subscribed, love the content. After a realisation a few weeks ago I just had to finally say it - the US pronunciation of "soldering" reminds me of the ancient cities of Soldom and Golmorrah.
@@YakobtoshiNakamoto I was talking strictly about aesthetics. Just the way it looks with those 2 flat transparent panels, some parts being visible through it it’s just… I’m a sucker for cyberdecks as well, it’s that kind of thing. I got the miyoo mini recently btw, it’s awesome.
PRO PLASTIC WORK TIP: when applying thin acrylic glue from an aplicator bottle, squeeze some of the air out of the bottle and loosten your grip slightly before you tilt it to use a slight vacuum to keep it from dribbling as you apply it.
Dear Jeff, what power soldering iron do you use? I bought one of those 60-100 Watt soldering iron kits and it's really helped me. Just wondering if a powerful iron would help you when doing the narrow point soldering? I bought the KSGER t12 after seeing lots of TH-cam reviews. Digital temperature control, high power, so it keeps the tip at that temperature for quick soldering. Less risk of burning. I'm only a beginner though. Your review was excellent. Detailed yet pacey, covered everything, step by step video clips, edited together so well. I've never seen one of your videos before but my gosh I'm impressed. I'm going to look at what other ones you've made after I write this comment. Have a great day.
for under 49usd you can get a PSP used in good condition which does all the old consoles and PS without problems. There are also linux distros build for PSP, cheaper alternative. And you don't need to build everything from scratch, buy the first model and you also have IR options.
back when i got my gpi case, the zero w was always out of stock so i got desperate and desolder one of my zero wh, it was hell on earth looking at this gave me ptsd all over again
Just a heads up, soldering a lot of this would be easier if you had high-quality solder! Personally I have Kester solder and swear by it, it makes SMD soldering easy and repeatable. Make sure to get rosin core, 63-37 leaded solder and you'll be set.
Love what you've done here. I found a much cheaper way with my Odroid go advance kit. Runs upto ps1 perfect and coat me only £40 plus the SD card. Batocera or emuelec both great options on it.
Paper boy was a game that I really enjoyed as a kid. When I'd lose at a level and have to do it again, after a while I would just throw the paper into their windows from frustration. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first video came I ever played ever. Zone 2 Chemical Plant has probably the best audio of a 16 bit era game and I think still stands up today. I still listen to a lot of the music from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. Everything from Powerman 5000, to Millencolin becoming a sneaky favorite of mine after buying their albums.
Was all excited there for a moment -- mistook the speakers for analogue sticks. My dream pocket device is a Pi Zero 2 with AAAAALLLLL the buttons so I can use it to play MAME ROMs on the train then use it for serious work as well. All the cheap Far Eastern handhelds can do the games, but without wifi, I can't use it as a local wifi hotspot and webserver for interactive classroom activities.
Not many of these builds have the analog sticks, not sure why. Probably has to do with Zero not being quite powerful enough for some of the games that really require them. But that's changing!
@@JeffGeerling Console-centric thinking, isn't it? Quite a few 80s arcade machines had analogue controls -- particularly driving games. Then of course there's native games to think about, even if there isn't all that many of them. TH-cam and convenience probably has a part to play in this -- showing how it runs games on a particular console gives a readily-understood benchmark on power, whereas saying how well it runs certain MAME ROMs doesn't really give much generalisable information. So they build to what gets seen.
No analog sticks because this was designed for the original Pi Zero, which couldn’t play much at all that needed them. Nothing to do with TH-cam, I made something I wanted to use and was lucky that others want to make and use one too.
Very interesting little build, I'm personally working on building a PiGRRL Zero Advance around my own Zero 2, I'm really hoping I can leverage the touch screen to squeeze some Nintendo DS emulation out of it. The Pi Zero 2 and Compute Module 4 are both fantastic leaps forward in making portable RasPi devices practical, I just really hope they can step up production because thanks to the chip shortage they're clearly struggling to keep up with current demand.
1:07 a jailbroken iphone does exactly that (ssh access, full internal storage access, root account, installation of debian based packages via open and close source 3rd party repos, full gui customization, ,etc)
If you go into ui settings you can probably change the ui color to black backround and white letters. Should make it even a little bit easier to see. Altho its theme dependant in es. And i recommend batocera since that is the best one imo Edit: forgot to mention batocera im pretty sure also supports small screens. Atleast on my 3.5 inch display i saw everything and could read everything quite well
If you solder on pin headers, you can pull off the plastic, leaving just metal pins. You can even adjust, first, how much pin sticks out, or trim the excess.
Can't wait until we're using Wine version 21387847 on the Blueberry Pi built on RISC-V and we're able to play Crysis 3 at 60 FPS on a pocket sized computer
@@ThylineTheGay Emulating would most definitely be needed lmao. Games are always built to the particular standards of time-specific hardware and software. Modern hardware and software (E.g. Windows 10 or Linux+Proton) can barely run Windows XP-era games without a lot of issues.
Couldnt you just push the pins in the pinheader through so they stick out on only one side and then solder it with the plastic spacer on top and cut it of afterwards?
This one shows red while charging, and blue when charged - but I would also like a percentage, and ability to read voltage / show percentage in the UI itself (I know RetroPie has been working on a system tray of sorts, too).
You should look up the Zega Mame Gear. It's a similar drop in modders board that you can add a PI4, Pi3 or PiZero1/2 boards to, but you them mount them into a Game Gear shell.
I really want to learn how to do this, but I feel like this might be a lot for me to handle (I’ve never soldered) do you recommend a project similar to this that might be a bit easier for a beginner?
Looks a great device but the supply is ridiculous compared to demand. I just received a notification email that these were back in stock 17:15... I saw the email and immediately logged in to see 6 in stock, added to cart and selected delivery postcode and the site says "Out of stock removed from cart" 17:18.
How does this compare against the Odroid Go super kit, would be nice to get a comparisson of performance, build quality etc. Obviously no soldering required with the Odroid, so that would be a simpler build.
Man I want this. On the list now. Remember the clear laptop from Hackers???? Why don't we have those today? I love the metal look, but I agree. Clear is awesome.
7:40 "I gave up trying to compile RetroPie on the raspberry pi" ohhhh I've been there. Surprised that the battery life is kinda 'meh'. Kinda goes to show how dedicated and customized these handheld consoles are over the basic "arm and linux" setup. Got to be a wa to shut off wifi bluetooth, limit CPU usage to one or two cores instead of having the kernel use all four, use an embedded linux that doesn't have as much of a footprint, or loads the OS + programs into a ram disk and turns off the micro SD. I'm spitballing here, because I don't do OS development, but it's a cool project.
I had fun building it. I don't really think you'd see this, But I also had an issue where it was just sitting on a white screen. It ended up being raspberry pi imager was doing something, so I had to use win32 disk imager, and add my Wi-Fi credentials with a Bluetooth keyboard
Very useful video. I just ordered my Null 2 kit. Missed the bit about the battery and acrylic. Made it very expensive overall. Seeing the trouble you’ve had, I’m not sure I’m looking forward to building it. One thing: is it ‘solder’ or ‘sodder’ 🤪😂
The trick with the applicator thing for the acrylic cement is to have it about half full, hold it upright and squeeze the air out and flip it over, then the vacuum keeps the stuff in and you can very precisely control how much you want to squeeze out
Oooh... well that would actually make sense!
🗿
That's what I had to do for a store brand eardrops for drying out the ear. Otherwise too many drops came out instantly
Donno why ppl would dislike this much of information packed videos..i am a hobbyist and know how much efforts one could need to put to get something right when things go sideways.maybe ppl who don't understand but still watches this kinda video would dislike.
How about having a custom copper backplate made for a heatsink and see how much more performance you could get out of it?
I like this idea. Could also just cut out part of the back-having the entire back be metal could be a bit overkill for the Zero 2 W. It can only soak up a few watts maximum.
@@JeffGeerling True, anyways I'd love to see you do this and if you are up for it mention I gave the idea. I have LOTS of ideas but no time to do all of them.
@@JeffGeerling grab an old laptop and steal the heatpipe from it and spread the load over the rear. thermal epoxy is your friend.
This sounds like a RSJ adventure….
@@JeffGeerling try connecting a rtx 3090 to get better emulation performance
For the cup hole soldering, would it help to snip a tiny length of solder into each hole first, then melt it in situ? - maybe with a hot air gun?
You would have less control over the amount of solder once things get hot, and I don’t recommend hot air for this as it would heat larger areas, encouraging the solder to spread and bridge connections. You can use stripped wire to help fill the hole if you have a problematic pad.
Honestly, I probably would have put little solder "balls" on the pads individually before putting the pi on it. They'd help fill the gaps in the back, and would wick through the holes providing visual confirmation that the solder did indeed flow and connect.
In theory this would work, however in practice, I don't know.
I'd probably go with snipped off legs from resistors. You can drop them in the holes and the solder will flow down without excessive heat, flipover to complete.
@@ChrisP978 this. Definitely. 👍🏻
I tried this cupholder thing with an esp32. Most unreliable way to solder imo. I've done a some smd stuff, like mcu soldering and medium package size stuff. Barely any issues with those. Cupholder did me in
Loved it! As an electronics guy, I specially enjoyed the parts about SMD soldering, acrylic cement and other mechanical features in this board that can be useful for me.
What a fun build! I've built a few mechanical keyboards and doing surface mount parts is always a bit of a pain. I found that if you just get some solder on one of the mounts, hold the part with some tweezers, and solder one side, it makes it easier to solder the other side.
Actually Jeff my hacked switch runs ubuntu so I can ssh into it 😂
Well, 'out of the box' 😜
@@JeffGeerling Fair enough😁
Nintendo Wants to Know Your Location
@@ilfirinms " -FBI- NoA open up!!"
😂
4:53 That's why you aim the board at other people when you snip off pins.
Hmm 🤔
Don't give ideas to Red Shirt Jeff 😂😂
@@asciilal lmao.
This was inspiring. You showed the whole process, the good and the bad, and still persevered to the final result. Thank you for being so thorough. God bless you.
This review and step by step guide are detailed and fun. He goes through everything without taking an age.
Wow! This is amazing :) . Hope I can build my own console like that. Well, I am always amazed every time I watch your video :)
Thanks for the prograde cardreader recommendation in an earlier video i commented on, its so fast and not flakey, makes importing photos much more enjoyable. Also the magnet base is nice :)
Surface mount (SMD) soldering is so much easier using solder paste, applied to every pad, before mounting the component and heating the pads.
Have you heard of a stencil. Speeds up the solder paste distribution process.
Acrylic cement ingredients includes piant/nail polish remover 100% to 90% pure and sometimes has a little bit of Acrylic mixed in
So I ended up making a similar project with a Pi 3A+ instead (as Pi Zero is impossible to find nowadays) , and it actually ended up costing me around 50$ total. I did not have a 3d printer, so I ended up using a 2$ pencil box as the case, and all the buttons were mounted manually and connected to a Pi pico, which was in turn connected to the Pi 3a's USB Port. It ended up working pretty great (though not so great look wise). Also I can use the Pi 3's headphone jack without external dac, and having access to power & hdmi ports means I can dock the device with my TV. I actually am frequently carrying it to my college to play games during free time. This Gameboy Null project gave me the inspiration to attempt to try doing it, and I'm grateful for it.
Hey Jeff. I don't have much to say. Love how the content on your channel is more "affordable" for us regular people with regular incomes that have children and all of that life. In fact, I just wish you'd have more time to make more content :)
Good job on that console! Specially with soldering, I fear soldering SMDs.
Quite a complex project but it looks awesome
I can see so many older projects people have made with the Zero, get a big upgrade with the zero 2. Keeping the same physical profile on the board was a smart Idea.
Man tech has come so far imagine 90's kid watching this device playing all his game
I found this video helpful because it covers many practical soldering problems I frequently encounter
By coincidence, I just stumbled upon this one video of yours while searching for something else, and I came across this part: "I'm actually amazed how good the sound was on early Genesis and Super Nintendo games. I've only ever heard them on the tiny speaker in our family's cheap 13" TV." - As a kid, I always plugged my headphones directly into the Genesis... :)
A scary, nerve-wracking, but worthy Christmas gift! Merry Christmas brother!
i'll pass on this one, but if they release one, that like you said: is a bit thicker so you don't have to solder the pi in, and also has room for a joystick (Which I imagine with what's currently out there might also require more thickness) then I'm in.
Pretty sweet, at this point there are sub $50 handhelds that will play up to ps1 though so if you aren't getting enjoyment from the build, it's probably not worth it. 2 years ago (when this video was made) things were likely different.
first off this is awsome. but for 150 its like you said more about the journey and fun you have in assembly. if you really wanna use one i would advice 150 bucks retroid pocket 3+ and as best in category i would say ayn odin from 200$ pro a lil more but the base model has no problem emulating ps2 and gamecube
I think I get to have my first smart moment. In circumstances where parts are tricky to hold / solder, don't use tape like you have here, use bostik blutack. easy to place, easy to remove, when its below 35c its fairly rigid. awesome work none the less Jeff.
Getting a wermy vibe great video! 👍
Those bad cuts in the end are so funny. And it shows how time-consuming it is to make a video. Keep up the good work Jeff!
I love to see your childhood memories come back 👾
AvE’s ears perked up with the squint reference.
Skookum!
It's super skookum and really chooches, not to mention it's the cockford ollie lol
Keep your stick on the ice lol
I have the Raspiboy which is larger (it's like 4 years old at this point), but it doesn't require any soldering at all. The main interface board has spring-loaded pins that connect to the test pads on the back of the zero. It also exposes usb so you can use external controllers.
I had to do math tests for a kid of a friend of the family. It's been 10 years since I've been out of college so it's been a while for me. I pulled out one of my old calculators, which felt surprisingly familiar, but the results had me wishing for more. What if instead of handheld game consoles we made the ultimate graphing calculator kit? How about a square screen?
Have you seen a modern graphing calculator? They are quite impressive.
I LOVE that retro multi-meter!!! 😊
Seeing that THPS footage was what I wanted from this video. I've got a Retroflag GPi case and can't wait to stuff a Zero2W into it. The crashes during GT2 are likely an emulator bug, it's rock solid on a regular Pi 3 and 4.
Yeah the weird thing is I tried four times before working on recording the script. Then when I went back to record the video clip of it crashing... it worked every time! No clue why.
I have the same tester, mine its broken, also have a really nice and nostalgic feeling about that buzzer sound, that tester was from my father so
It looks like there is a clear path from the HDMI port to the outside of the shell. It's likely you could use a ribbon cable or extension PCB.
This is really cool. One of the projects that got me interested in electronics was making a portable SNES using Ben Heck's book. This was in the mid 2000's, before there were many handheld devices that could emulate the SNES well.
This build is great
Great work Jeff! Really like the acrylic and it’s nice to use readily available parts during the chip shortages. Something that has severely held back my console :(
Kickstarter for your CM4 build soon?
I have loved what progress you've made so far!
@@fibreglassmonkey When CM4 availability improves next year, we will release a kit version. That’s the goal we’re working towards.
I'd be paranoid about those solder joints breaking. If the board had thru holes where the pi goes, short piece of copper thru both would do it. Like the idea of a portable console like that, as long as it can be used for something useful instead of gaming
Gaming is a useful for entertainment.
But I get what you mean. I also really want a small portable computer. The main issue is going to be interfacing with it.
The circuit board isn't useful unless you can jump on top of it afterwards. This design needs more box joinery.
cmon. there is only 3 things that push technology forward: war, porn and gaming
@@khhnator As soon as we can combine all three humanity will reach the dawn of a new age...
@@QuippersUnited how about this design but with functional analog joysticks, l1/r1 anf l2/r2 buttons so you can run steamlink and play any game in your library ?
You can avoid the "cup hole" soldering by removing the plastic thing (I think because I have not built this but anyhow the plastic is removable. Once soldered trim the excess.
Maybe you could solder pogo pins into the pi GPIO vias and have the pi contact the PCB with compression. That way you could easily replace the Pi if needed. Some pogo pin configurations should seat into the vias and ultimately add almost no thickness (less than a 1mm) when compressed. Downside is tolerance for the case will need to be much tighter. Really boils down to whether you want easier assembly and or easier swappable components.
Love the Buzzer Sound. Like the Stall Sound in a C172 ;-)
I'd like the L and R tab buttons if I made one. Those were nice for 3D games for things like autolocking and switching between targets.
I am really looking forward to your cutiepi review! I would prefer a more conventional tablet with kickstand instead of the handle, but it is easily the most compelling pi tablet I have seen so far. I hope it is good!
Tremendous work! So impressive that makes me want to reproduce it! 👍 Thanks!
I still have a fully transparent original Xbox Controller and it was always amazing to look at. Choosing the clear version is definitely the right choice and I would go for it too if I would buy this product
I love how this guy gets so lucky and manages to get everything working after he breaks it 😂
I bought a custom Super Famicom style Gameboy Advance shell and built a Pi Zero 2 based emulation machine into the shell :)
Great video! I feel like you went into the rabbit hole so we don't have to. I suspect your handheld game system is something you could take pride in given all of that work and frustration.
I absolutely love the build but I think it might be out of my soldering skill level. Well done !
I would love to start building these as a hobby.
where do u learn to do this. is this xomputer engineering?
That's a cute tiny handheld! Nice to see some of the building process!
It’s a lot of fun messing around with the Pi like this. But if you’re serious about gaming on the go, you’d have a better experience getting an RG300 from Aliexpress and updating to the latest RetroFW. It will play everything your device will, but with an almost instant boot and safe instant off. Not to mention 4-6 hours of play time and a gorgeous IPS panel. All for ~$50.
That is a beautiful build I love it !
You could also presolder the gpio and then just reheat and add extra solder when adding it to the mainboard
Quite an impressive journey if you're into such projects, and a nice "documentary" Jeff !
I stuck my Zero2 inside the GPi case... wish i had a spare cartridge to improve cooling and OC it, might look into it later.
For the time being i decided to build a FPGA handheld; you have a valid point about acrylic cases here, which i didn't think of, so maybe i will leave out 3d printing 🤔
Just subscribed, love the content. After a realisation a few weeks ago I just had to finally say it - the US pronunciation of "soldering" reminds me of the ancient cities of Soldom and Golmorrah.
It looks leagues better than any retro handheld currently on the market. I’d totally buy this thing.
You are joking? The Miyoo mini plus is half the price, comes prebuilt and looks/performs better.
yeah.... no
@@YakobtoshiNakamoto I was talking strictly about aesthetics. Just the way it looks with those 2 flat transparent panels, some parts being visible through it it’s just… I’m a sucker for cyberdecks as well, it’s that kind of thing. I got the miyoo mini recently btw, it’s awesome.
PRO PLASTIC WORK TIP:
when applying thin acrylic glue from an aplicator bottle, squeeze some of the air out of the bottle and loosten your grip slightly before you tilt it to use a slight vacuum to keep it from dribbling as you apply it.
Dear Jeff, what power soldering iron do you use?
I bought one of those 60-100 Watt soldering iron kits and it's really helped me. Just wondering if a powerful iron would help you when doing the narrow point soldering?
I bought the KSGER t12 after seeing lots of TH-cam reviews. Digital temperature control, high power, so it keeps the tip at that temperature for quick soldering. Less risk of burning.
I'm only a beginner though.
Your review was excellent. Detailed yet pacey, covered everything, step by step video clips, edited together so well. I've never seen one of your videos before but my gosh I'm impressed. I'm going to look at what other ones you've made after I write this comment. Have a great day.
Dude this is awesome. It looks a little to challenging for my taste. Im waiting for the minty pi lite to be available.
I love that build too! Now that I've built this, I feel compelled to build another :D
@@JeffGeerling You should . Awesome content man , keep up the good work
for under 49usd you can get a PSP used in good condition which does all the old consoles and PS without problems. There are also linux distros build for PSP, cheaper alternative.
And you don't need to build everything from scratch, buy the first model and you also have IR options.
Love the meter! I've been using the same one for years as it's never let me down. Plus I love the buzzer.
Such a cool build!
Interestingly enough, this was my first soldering project, and I succeeded 😂😂
You could use resistor's snipped legs instead of solder joins.
Use a small paint brush to apply the Weld-on, far more control. It works great on most 3D filaments too
Great video!
back when i got my gpi case, the zero w was always out of stock
so i got desperate and desolder one of my zero wh, it was hell on earth
looking at this gave me ptsd all over again
Just a heads up, soldering a lot of this would be easier if you had high-quality solder! Personally I have Kester solder and swear by it, it makes SMD soldering easy and repeatable. Make sure to get rosin core, 63-37 leaded solder and you'll be set.
Love what you've done here. I found a much cheaper way with my Odroid go advance kit. Runs upto ps1 perfect and coat me only £40 plus the SD card. Batocera or emuelec both great options on it.
Paper boy was a game that I really enjoyed as a kid. When I'd lose at a level and have to do it again, after a while I would just throw the paper into their windows from frustration.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first video came I ever played ever. Zone 2 Chemical Plant has probably the best audio of a 16 bit era game and I think still stands up today.
I still listen to a lot of the music from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. Everything from Powerman 5000, to Millencolin becoming a sneaky favorite of mine after buying their albums.
Great video !!! Thumbs up for the retro multi-meter 🙂. Using solder paste and a heat gun might have made things easier for cup hole soldering ;-) .
Really love a good practical application!
Was all excited there for a moment -- mistook the speakers for analogue sticks.
My dream pocket device is a Pi Zero 2 with AAAAALLLLL the buttons so I can use it to play MAME ROMs on the train then use it for serious work as well. All the cheap Far Eastern handhelds can do the games, but without wifi, I can't use it as a local wifi hotspot and webserver for interactive classroom activities.
Not many of these builds have the analog sticks, not sure why. Probably has to do with Zero not being quite powerful enough for some of the games that really require them. But that's changing!
@@JeffGeerling Console-centric thinking, isn't it? Quite a few 80s arcade machines had analogue controls -- particularly driving games.
Then of course there's native games to think about, even if there isn't all that many of them.
TH-cam and convenience probably has a part to play in this -- showing how it runs games on a particular console gives a readily-understood benchmark on power, whereas saying how well it runs certain MAME ROMs doesn't really give much generalisable information.
So they build to what gets seen.
No analog sticks because this was designed for the original Pi Zero, which couldn’t play much at all that needed them. Nothing to do with TH-cam, I made something I wanted to use and was lucky that others want to make and use one too.
Very interesting little build, I'm personally working on building a PiGRRL Zero Advance around my own Zero 2, I'm really hoping I can leverage the touch screen to squeeze some Nintendo DS emulation out of it. The Pi Zero 2 and Compute Module 4 are both fantastic leaps forward in making portable RasPi devices practical, I just really hope they can step up production because thanks to the chip shortage they're clearly struggling to keep up with current demand.
1:07 a jailbroken iphone does exactly that (ssh access, full internal storage access, root account, installation of debian based packages via open and close source 3rd party repos, full gui customization, ,etc)
True, but not out of the box :(
This will ve really helpfull As i want to make a handheld after i made a regular console
If you go into ui settings you can probably change the ui color to black backround and white letters. Should make it even a little bit easier to see. Altho its theme dependant in es. And i recommend batocera since that is the best one imo
Edit: forgot to mention batocera im pretty sure also supports small screens. Atleast on my 3.5 inch display i saw everything and could read everything quite well
If you solder on pin headers, you can pull off the plastic, leaving just metal pins. You can even adjust, first, how much pin sticks out, or trim the excess.
@8:00 I ran into this issue as well. I had to use an OLDER firmware from a RaspiOS.
Amazing work Jeff!! :D
Does carrier PCB have no holes in the RPi connector?
Why just not solder copper wire or shortened pins thru the two PCBs simultaneously?
Raspberry Pis are amazing!
do you have an experience with ODROID-GO Advance from Hardkernel or similar retro gaming devices? if so, how does the performance compare?
Odroid go advance has to be faster. It's faster than a raspberry pi 3b+ , and the zero 2 is barely faster than a 3, if overclocked.
Yeah as much as i like this diy ness of this project, i would rather just get an OGA device or one of its clones or the the odroid go super..
I love it when someone uses peach jelly as a solder flux.
Tastes good too!
I personally just use the GPi Case 2w for my Pi Zero 2w. Mostly because I haven't soldered in a long... long time...
I wonder when today’s games will be emulated like this on an SBC in the future?
Emulating wouldn’t be needed, unless you are talking about consoles
Can't wait until we're using Wine version 21387847 on the Blueberry Pi built on RISC-V and we're able to play Crysis 3 at 60 FPS on a pocket sized computer
@@ThylineTheGay Emulating would most definitely be needed lmao. Games are always built to the particular standards of time-specific hardware and software.
Modern hardware and software (E.g. Windows 10 or Linux+Proton) can barely run Windows XP-era games without a lot of issues.
I'd assume that they'll still be debating whether to turn ray-tracing on or not.
@@NoorquackerInd Might be feasible quicker than you think, as long as 5 inch 4K screens won't pop up all of a sudden.
Couldnt you just push the pins in the pinheader through so they stick out on only one side and then solder it with the plastic spacer on top and cut it of afterwards?
You can get a similarly sized charging board with an indicator
This one shows red while charging, and blue when charged - but I would also like a percentage, and ability to read voltage / show percentage in the UI itself (I know RetroPie has been working on a system tray of sorts, too).
You should look up the Zega Mame Gear. It's a similar drop in modders board that you can add a PI4, Pi3 or PiZero1/2 boards to, but you them mount them into a Game Gear shell.
I really want to learn how to do this, but I feel like this might be a lot for me to handle (I’ve never soldered) do you recommend a project similar to this that might be a bit easier for a beginner?
Looks a great device but the supply is ridiculous compared to demand. I just received a notification email that these were back in stock 17:15... I saw the email and immediately logged in to see 6 in stock, added to cart and selected delivery postcode and the site says "Out of stock removed from cart" 17:18.
Seeing THPS on a raspberry pi... Okay I'm sold!
How does this compare against the Odroid Go super kit, would be nice to get a comparisson of performance, build quality etc. Obviously no soldering required with the Odroid, so that would be a simpler build.
Man I want this. On the list now. Remember the clear laptop from Hackers???? Why don't we have those today? I love the metal look, but I agree. Clear is awesome.
7:40 "I gave up trying to compile RetroPie on the raspberry pi" ohhhh I've been there.
Surprised that the battery life is kinda 'meh'. Kinda goes to show how dedicated and customized these handheld consoles are over the basic "arm and linux" setup. Got to be a wa to shut off wifi bluetooth, limit CPU usage to one or two cores instead of having the kernel use all four, use an embedded linux that doesn't have as much of a footprint, or loads the OS + programs into a ram disk and turns off the micro SD.
I'm spitballing here, because I don't do OS development, but it's a cool project.
I had fun building it. I don't really think you'd see this, But I also had an issue where it was just sitting on a white screen. It ended up being raspberry pi imager was doing something, so I had to use win32 disk imager, and add my Wi-Fi credentials with a Bluetooth keyboard
Very useful video. I just ordered my Null 2 kit. Missed the bit about the battery and acrylic. Made it very expensive overall. Seeing the trouble you’ve had, I’m not sure I’m looking forward to building it. One thing: is it ‘solder’ or ‘sodder’ 🤪😂
14:31 There are links to videos for both the 'cup hole' soldering and using solvent in the build guide
Ah, so there is - specifically th-cam.com/video/ux9lXBexw0o/w-d-xo.html - I'm still not a big fan of that attachment method :D