Augmented Reality Project Utilizes The Nintendo DSi

January 25, 2026 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

[Bhaskar Das] has been tinkering with one of Nintendo’s more obscure handhelds, the DSi. The old-school console has been given a new job as part of an augmented reality app called AetherShell.

The concept is straightforward enough. The Nintendo DSi runs a small homebrew app which lets you use the stylus to make simple line drawings on the lower touchscreen. These drawings are then trucked out wirelessly as raw touch data via UDP packets, and fed into a ~~Gemini tool~~ geometric reconstruction script written in Python which transforms them into animation frames. A Gemini tool is used to classify what the drawings are in order for a future sound effects upgrade, too. These are then sent to an iPhone app, which uses ARKit APIs and the phone’s camera to display the animations embedded into the surrounding environment via augmented reality.

One might question the utility of this project, given that the iPhone itself has a touch screen you can draw on, too. It’s a fair question, and one without a real answer, beyond the fact that sometimes it’s really fun to play with an old console and do weird things with it. Plus, there just isn’t enough DSi homebrew out in the world. We love to see more.

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One Lucky 3DS Gets A Switch-Style Dock

December 8, 2025 by Arya Voronova 4 Comments

The Nintendo Switch dock set a new bar for handheld docking user experience – just plug your console in to charge it, output image to your monitor, and keep it working with any USB peripherals of your choice. What if a 3DS is more your jam? [KOUZEX] shows off a Switch-style dock design for his gorgeous yellow 3DS, with Switch Pro controller support, and this dock wasn’t just a 3D printing job – there’s a fair bit of electronics to show, too.

While the 3DS looks stock at a glance, it has already been upgraded internally – there’s a USB-C capture card built in, half-ticking the “monitor output” requirement, and a Raspberry Pi board turns that output into HDMI. Building a charging dock is also pretty simple, with just two contacts on the side that desire 5V. Now, the pro controller support was a fair bit harder – requiring an internal modchip for emulating buttons, and trying out receiver boards for the Switch controller until a well-functioning one was found.

The build video is quite satisfying to watch, from assembling some QFNs onto tiny OSHPark boards using a hotplate and soldering them into the 3DS, to planning out, building, and dremeling some prints to create a true slide-console-into-dock experience, same way the Switch pulled it off. It even has the same USB-C and HDMI arrangement as the Switch dock, too! Want a simpler dock for your 3DS? Don’t forget that you can build a charger dock for yours with just a 3D print and a few wires.

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Running An Entire PS1 Emulator In A DS Cartridge

July 4, 2025 by Ian Bos 8 Comments

Gaming on a Nintendo DS can bring back great memories of long car trips from the past. But looking back, we remember wishing to play more than the DS could ever hope to handle. [fami] looks into the SuperCard DSTWO in her recent video, a solution to our past sorrows.

Able to play anything from the very games designed for the DS to emulated PS1 games, the DSTWO is more than capable of surpassing the abilities of the DS itself. More impressively, all games are run directly from the cartridge itself rather than on the DS’s hardware. While this emulated console within a handheld is impressive, it is far from simple to get running.

The DSTWO runs with an Ingenic JZ4732 as the CPU, completely different from any native architecture of the DS. Pair this with the unhelpful SDK made for the cartridge, and the aging hardware is held together by the community development behind any improvements. This is aided by the CPU similarities of another widely modded game console, the Dingoo A320.

When not having a fit, and after going through hours of troubleshooting, you might find the DSTWO running a game of SimCity 2000 or even Spyro the Dragon inside a DS. Even with the difficulties of use, the fact that these games run at all is impressive. If you want to try the DSTWO emulation yourself, check out the forums.

This is far from the only example of extreme care going into emulation. Here at Hackaday, we have covered similarly impressive projects such as this completely DIY handheld made for any retro game emulation you throw at it.

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The GBA Console You Never Knew You Wanted

June 13, 2025 by Tyler August 9 Comments

Do you like Nintendo games? How about handhelds? Do you prefer the now-venerable Game Boy Advance (GBA) to more modern platforms, but wish your aging eyes could enjoy its content on a large CRT instead of a dinky LCD? If you answered yes to all those questions, you are exactly the type of person [GouldFish on Games] made this custom console for, and you should probably be friends.

The external appearance of this hack is slick: a 3D printed console with the contours of the GBA in that iconic purple, but with a cartridge bay door like an NES and a SNES controller port. It’s the GBA console Nintendo never made, sitting next to a period-appropriate CRT. Playing GBA game on a CRT with an SNES controller is already hacky; what makes it really hacky is the guts are yet another Nintendo system — the DS Lite.

Why a DS Lite? Two reasons: one, it is cheaper to get a busted DS Lite than an old GBA mainboard. Two, as we covered before, the DS Lite can do composite-out with a relatively cheap add-on board. [GouldFish] really is hacking on the shoulders of giants, and they acknowledge it in the video. Aside from the composite-out board, he also makes use of community knowledge on how to make the DS Lite boot without screens or batteries.

Should you be interested in putting your own version of this console together, [GouldFish] was kind enough to share the STLs for the 3D printed enclosure, as well as the Gerber files for the custom PCB that interfaces with the SNES controller port.

We featured a CRT mod for an original Game Boy before, but this seems a lot more practical, if a lot less portable. [GouldFish] has no shortage of old titles and newer homebrew to chose from for this console, but they could always use more. We once featured a primer on how to get into the GBA homebrew scene, if you want to make a game.

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Screenshot of the YouTube channel videos list, showing a number of videos like the ones described in this article.

[DiyOtaku] Gives Old Devices A New Life

May 2, 2024 by Arya Voronova 5 Comments

Sometimes we get sent a tip that isn’t just a single article or video, but an entire blog or YouTube channel. Today’s channel, [Diy Otaku], is absolutely worth a watch if you want someone see giving a second life to legendary handheld devices, and our creator has been going at it for a while. A common theme in most of the videos so far – taking an old phone or a weathered gaming console, and improving upon them in a meaningful way, whether it’s lovingly restoring them, turning them into a gaming console for your off days, upgrading the battery, or repairing a common fault.

The hacks here are as detailed as they are respectful to the technology they work on. The recent video about putting a laptop touchpad into a game controller, for instance, has the creator caringly replace the controller’s epoxy blob heart with a Pro Micro while preserving the original board for all its graphite-covered pads. The touchpad is the same used in an earlier video to restore a GPD Micro PC with a broken touchpad, a device that you can see our hacker use in a later video running FreeCAD, helping them design a 18650 battery shell for a PSP about to receive a 6000 mAh battery upgrade.

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Breaking Into The Nintendo DSi Through The (Browser) Window

March 13, 2023 by Matthew Carlson 9 Comments

The Nintendo DSi was surpassed by newer and better handhelds many years ago, but that doesn’t stop people like [Nathan Farlow] from attempting to break into the old abandoned house through a rather unexpected place: the (browser) window.

When the Nintendo DSi was released in 2008, one of its notable features was a built-in version of the Opera 9.50 web browser. [Nathan] reasoned an exploit in this browser would be an ideal entry point, as there’s no OS or kernel to get past — once you get execution, you control the system. To put this plan into action, he put together two great ideas. First he used the WebKit layout tests to get the browser into weird edge cases, and then tracked down an Windows build of Opera 9.50 that he could run on his system under WINE. This allowed him to identify the use-after-free bugs that he was looking for.

Now that he had an address to jump to, he just had to get his code into the right spot. For this he employed what’s known as a NOP sled; basically a long list of commands that do nothing, which if jumped into, will slide into his exploit code. In modern browsers a good way to allocate a chunk of memory and fill it would be a Float32Array, but since this is a 2008 browser, a smattering of RGBA canvases will do.

The actual payload is designed to execute a boot.nds file from the SD card, such as a homebrew launcher. If you want to give it a shot on your own DSi, all you need to do is point the system’s browser to stylehax.net.

If you’re looking for a more exotic way to crack into a DSi, perhaps this EM glitching attack might tickle your fancy?

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Cramming A DS Inside A Gameboy

November 16, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 4 Comments

Many holiday recipes and console hacks share a common theme: cramming a thing inside another thing. Whether it’s turducken or a Nintendo DS inside a Gameboy, the result is always unexpected. The chassis for this mod is a humble Gameboy color with a Gameboy SP screen tackled on the top to serve as the secondary display. Unfortunately, this mod lost touch screen functionality, limiting some of the games you can play.

[TheRetroFuture] received the custom handheld from [GameboyCustom], which was somewhat damaged in shipping. The original screw mounts had to be removed and the case glued back together to fit the DS motherboard. So for [TheRetroFuture] to get inside to start troubleshooting involved a razor blade and patience. Testing various points and swapping components got [TheRetroFuture] closer to the root problems. The fix ended up being a few wires that came loose during shipping. Finally, after reseating a display connection and some careful soldering, it booted and started playing games.

Overall, it’s pretty impressive to see Mario Kart DS running on both screens on the tiny handheld. But you might be asking, why? Why shove one handheld inside another handheld? Sometimes it’s to gain new functionality like this Raspberry Pi inside a PSP body. Sometimes, it’s just because we can. Video after the break.

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