Super Gp2x Mod Project Underway

[bacteria]

Join us next week when the heroic McGyver and his new partner Bacteria rescue a cruise ship full of innocent tourists from certain death, while simultaneously building a GP2X D-Pad from tin foil, cutlery and a dead raccoon.

... maybe not the view you were looking for?

Very funny. I laughed out loud at this! :lol: Perhaps if the cruise ship had made a compass out of an old magnetised needle, cork and bucket of water they might not have steered off course into the rocks in the first place (I made them a Guide about this before, perhaps they thought it was "ugly" so didn't made it

)! :lol: Never mind, the heroic McGyver and I can make a life-raft out of old beer barrels, cabin doors, rope and a sail cloth. Hurrah, all will be saved!!

 

[bacteria]

Thought I would share a snippit with you guys:

One thing interesting I realised yesterday, the N64 joypad has a very good motherboard - better than the GameCube in some respect, in regards to modding. It is 2mm diameter wider, and sure the D-pad on the N64 is bigger (you could use the D-pad from a GameCube or similar quite easily though); but what is nice about the N64 one is that there is no need to remove some of the plastic covering on the circuit board to get to the contacts - they are exposed (see pic below) and therefore easier to get to.

(red arrows point to the connections for the up/down/left/right; blue arrow points to the communial connection (the orange/red wire in my earlier Guide document).

Another nice thing about the N64 joypad motherboard is that it has 3 independent buttons, with their own rubber contacts, which are connected to 2 wires each - in other words, a complete single button unit! If you had 2 N64 joypads to take apart you could make your own D-pad with 4 of these individual contacts quite happily, and use a 5th one for the centre push. I would suggest this would be easier, and require less skill, to mount a D-pad in the GP2x for those people who want to do so; especially as the difficult part is keeping the rubber contact pads in place normally. I thought this tip might be of use to someone, so was worth posting.

 

[dennis20014]

Sweet project you got going there, best of luck to you!

 

[bacteria]

Sweet project you got going there, best of luck to you!

Thanks mate!


Project update:

Tried making the contacts for the GameCube joystick - too fiddly and not reliable enough. Got to work therefore on the N64 joystick...

Smoothed the surface down - trimmed it with a Dremmel sidecutter, and a craft knife. (Just bought some Dremmel bits, didn't need a Dremmel - a battery powered powerdrill is fine):

Used the top of a cotton bud (ear buff), covered the end with aluminium foil and sealed a red wire in there.

On the underside of the joystick, used aluminium foil covered mounting board, wire sealed by sticky foam pads (tried and tested method now). Put some mounting board between each contact to act as a spacer.

To maintain strength, and stop the pads moving, put a piece of mounting board on top, and stapled it down.

Then, time to test it. Red/orange wire is universal contact for each of the 4 directions, other wires do the other 4 directions. I decided to keep it 4 ordials (8 way) after all, keeps build easier - same result anyway (youget diagonals with this method anyway).

Joystick is complete now.

 

[nik166]

barbarian!!!


the concept is not bad, the problem is that it still has the same "amplitude defect" as the gp2x


i'm still very curious to see if you manage to get a useable finished thing

 

[bacteria]

the concept is not bad, the problem is that it still has the same "amplitude defect" as the gp2x

Please explain, I don't understand what you mean?

i'm still very curious to see if you manage to get a useable finished thing

That makes two of us! Theory is sound, but I have many hurdles to overcome yet...

 

[ryosaeba]

Maybe he is referring to the huge dead zone that the joystick seems to have from looking at the pics...

 

[bacteria]

Maybe he is referring to the huge dead zone that the joystick seems to have from looking at the pics...

Ah, ok. No deadzones. I figured I didn't want to move the stick a tiny amount for the contact, as when you use a joystick you tend to move it one side to the other, so consequently I made the joystick only make contact when the joystick is against all the sides.

There is a little give in the material as using sideways movement instead of downward pressure, so the top piece (stapled down for easy re-modding later if needed) is stapled down to stop this movement. The 4 bits on the diagonal are to stop two of the contacts touching each other by mistake, through use. The stick, you notice, is quite large in comparison, so when the stick is moved in a diagonal, it has enough contact area to cover two pads = diagonals. No dead zones - contact is made at all places, so no deadzones.

Update - just tested it, by making two battery and light sets, connecting them to the joystick terminals, and moving the stick about, as you would in a game. Had to make a couple of minor adjustments to the positioning of the aluminium foil pads (two were not equidistant); happy with them now. They hit diagonals without any issues, and ordials all other times. No deadzones.

 

[ryosaeba]

Yeah, I was not referring to the possible deadzones between each direction, but to the deadzone from the center to a direction.
Since you tried it already, do you think it's the right distance, it seems there's too much space to me (ofcourse I only looked at the pics, maybe it feels just right)

 

[bacteria]

Yeah, I was not referring to the possible deadzones between each direction, but to the deadzone from the center to a direction.
Since you tried it already, do you think it's the right distance, it seems there's too much space to me (ofcourse I only looked at the pics, maybe it feels just right)

Fair question. It is a question of lever action - Archimedies, if I recall. If for example a plank of wood was on a pivot, with an equal distance between each side, then pushing down on one end would result in the other side going up by exactly the same amount. If the pivot was much closer to the side going down, then a shorter movement downwards would result in a far greater movement on the other side upwards. The nail in the base of the joystick works on this principle - it looks a fair distance, but a small movement on the joystick moves the nail a far greater distance. I did adjust the positioning of the pads a tad this morning (it is easy to do) to "tweak" it.


Anyway, tiny update:

I just got a new colour camera (off the "Marketplace" on this forum, not a bad camera, can't get great closeups with it, but it does have .avi recording, which I haven't had before) - I put together a short video clip - shows:

1) moving joystick about in all directions.
2) moving joystick in the 4 ordials.
3) moving joystick to the 4 diagonals.

Note, I only used 2 bulbs to represent the 4 directions, so one bulb does up and down, the other does left and right. This means that when a diagonal is hit, both bulbs light. Therefore, the video shows actually all 8 directions being met, via 2 bulbs (it is only testing after all!). Please bear in mind, one of my hands was holding the camera while it took the clip, and the other one was holding and moving the N64 joystick - works perfectly, just a little shaky. What the clip does show, is that it is very easy to hit all the directions accurately, and there is continual contact as the stick was being moved about (ie one/both lights on during whole sequence).

Anyway - have a look: B)


N64 joystick moving 8-way

Bought a couple of strong tupperware boxes today from Woolworths (for the case), they are slightly bigger than I wanted, but will do nicely, and a stack of buttons (Maplins). Have the bits I need for the project now. Buttons (nice, fairly large ones), on/off switch and D cell battery holder with wires cost £20, lunchboxes cost £5 (for both - will need to cut bases down on both, for top and bottom of my case assembly).

 

[bacteria]

Update:

Bought 2x 3 litre lunchboxes - very strong, some give, but this can be cured later to make it very rigid. It is only a tiny amount larger than I would have liked. Choose them as the plastic is strong, quite rigid, flat at base and close to the size I really wanted. only cost about £2.49 each from Woolworths.

Decided the best way is to link wires to all of the GP2x buttons, remove the bar on the GP2x which goes around the diameter, screw it all back together. I will have the screen showing through the lunchbox (hole cut) and the front of the GP2x can be permanently glued to the lunchbox - if I need to get to the motherboard in the future, I only need to remove the screws at the back of the GP2x in the normal way then. With the buttons removed, the GP2x case is flat, so no problems. In the middle will be the batteries, on the left side will be the joystick and D-pad and on the right side will be the buttons. Crude diagram below:

There are 2 sets of side buttons - one set is to act as left and the other as the B button - I use them in Psycho Pinball a lot (flipper keys). My project, I will have these extra keys if I want them!

Lunchbox:

Grinded down the two strips on the bottom of the box (to make it nice and flat); then cut it down (half finished complete height). When the bottom piece is cut (same size) it will give a nicely rounded and interesting shape (below is one piece, other isn't cut out and finished yet).

Cut out the hole (for the GP2x screen) - this is just the screen, the GP2x only has about 2cm clearance each side, which I will need to mount speakers (the two from the GP2x and two I have from old Gameboys - link two to each side, better sound quality at louder volume. (Pic below is upside down)

I need to finish this, and then re-inforce it as needed. It needs more work done to it, however in the spirit of my posting-as-I-am-going-along blog, I am showing the state of it at the moment.

The battery holder (D cell), and buttons I will use are as below (Maplin). Nice big buttons, easy to press. I am going to mount them in the right places (where they feel natural), then secure them firmly in place with pollyfiller, so all I have to do is connect the two connectors onto each button. A fair bit of work to do though yet.

 

[bacteria]

Couldn't fit the two D-cell batteries in a block as per pic, but they can go either side of the GP2x; I did a mock-up, as below (actually, everthing will fit just fine - box is the right size after all!):

Lots of work to do yet, I just thought I would try a mock-up and post the current WIP result. (I will sand down the "Addis" logo from the box soon, to make that disappear, before anyone asks!). Final result will be smooth, and spray painted.

 

[moz]

i'm looking at that with my eyebrows raised in utter disbelief, not in my wildest dreams could i ever imagine a gp2x in a lunch box.

respect.

 

[lubidog]

That.Is.Something!!!!

Wow!

 

[saboteur]

Bacteria : Isn't the whole unit going to be a bit 'thick' to be handheld or are you going for a desktop version

No offence meant.

 

[Megagun]

Is that a GP2x in your lunchbox or are you just not hungry today?

That is truly brilliant.

(although maybe a bit big 'n heavy. But who cares. GP2x in a friggin' LUNCHBOX! )

 

[bacteria]

Thanks for the comments guys, keep them coming!

Thickness of the final product will be just a bit thicker than a D-cell; 36-38mm. I might be able to reduce this to about 32-34mm (if the top of the battery sticks out a little). Weight shouldn't be an issue - buttons, D-pad, joystick and boxes hardly weigh anything, there will be no AA batteries (less weight); but will be weight of two D batteries and some polyfiller - final weight will probably be the equivalent of just over 2x D cells more than a GP2x with its AA batteries included.

 

[bacteria]

A tip many of you may find useful when doing mods on the GP2x...

One problem I knew I was going to encounter, which I wasn't looking forward to - finding a way of securing the wires to the button contacts (and D-pad contacts) on the motherboard. I didn't fancy soldering as this is risky in those circumstances, needs far greater soldering skills than I have and the wires I was using (salvaged from old wires from joysticks, etc) are not easy to work with for this as the wire is multi-wires, so not ideal. I could have got single wire cable from Maplins, but the wires concerned are inflexible by comparison. Got me thinking...

Nik166 (on his D-pad topic, so credit to him for his idea about the IDE cable - cheers!) had a good solution to this, which I decided to try - there are about 40 single wires on an IDE cable - flexible, thin, single wire - ideal! I stripped off 2 wires, and used a hot-glue gun (not used it before) to solder both wires onto an old (scrap) board I had, in place - tested it, works perfectly - no damage to the board (I even removed the glue after the experiment - no damage) and keeps contact well.

I will therefore use an old IDE cable (I have a few lying about, I have been upgrading PC's for years now) for all the button connections to the motherboard, and hot-glue.

I would suggest this as a tip to everyone/anyone who is going to do any electrical mod to their GP2x, like fitting a new D-pad, etc - saves having to have soldering skills, silver tracer pen, etc. Thinking about it, there is no need to solder the wires on a D-pad mod to the rear of the joystick connectors - use a hot-glue gun instead - far better, more accurate, reversible. The IDE wires are surprisingly good wires, and easy to use.

 

[___]

holy crap, this turn out to get interesting. It really is a super-mod. I wonder if it will turn out to your liking... nice idea to expand the room for additional controls though ;-)

 

[Jaw]

that's given me an idea!! i'm thinking of making a tabletop version with arcade controls etc.. will be a bit simpler than hacking up old n64 pads

does anyone know if the gp2x has an i/o out type thing for controls?