A Modular Game Boy Synthesizer

November 27, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

Euro

Synth heads and electronic music aficionados the world over love a good rackmount synth. These days, though, synthesis tends more toward small, digital, and ‘retro’ rather than the monstrous hulking behemoths of the 60s and 70s. [gieskes] might be ahead of the curve, here, as he’s built a Game Boy module for his eurorack synthesizer.

The software running on [gieskes]’s Game Boy is the venerable Little Sound DJ (LSDJ), the last word in creating chiptunes on everyone’s favorite 8-bit handheld. As with any proper Game Boy used in chiptunes, there are a few modifications to the 1980s era hardware. [gieskes] tapped into the cartridge connector with a ‘repeat’ signal that provides slowed down, noisy signals for LSDJ. There’s also pitch control via CV, and the audio output is brought up to 10Vpp

In the video below, you can see [gieskes]’ euroboy in action with a few Doepfer synth modules. There’s also a very cool pulse generator made from an old hard drive in there, so it’s certainly worth the watch.

Continue reading “A Modular Game Boy Synthesizer” →

Finding Shiny Pokemon Automatically

November 5, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

In case you’re not up to speed with the world of Pokemon, nearly every species of this game’s titular creatures have a ‘shiny’ variety – a differently colored sprite for each pokemon. As far as gameplay goes, they’re exactly the same as their non-shiny brethren, but the shiny varieties are so impossibly rare not many players have seen them. [dekuNukem] over on Youtube has come up with a great way to find these shiny Pokemon automatically with the Hackaday reader’s favorite tools – an Arduino and a few parts from Sparkfun.

The build hinges on the fact that all shiny pokemon have a short animation whenever the player encounters them in the wild. This setup uses a fishing rod, so an Arduino Micro first presses the Y button to cast the rod, while the ‘duinos ADC listens to the audio signal until a bite is indicated.

A light sensor taped to the bottom screen of the 3DS then measures the amount of time the screen is blacked out. The extra animation for every shiny pokemon means this blackout period is about half a second longer. If the Arduino doesn’t see a shiny, it ‘runs away’, but if a shiny is detected a buzzer sounds to tell the extremely lazy pokemon trainer they have a shiny on their line.

From the video, it took about 36 minutes to find a single shiny pokemon, and about 8 shinies in the three hours of testing this rig has under its belt.

Continue reading “Finding Shiny Pokemon Automatically” →

Reading Game Boy Carts With I2C

May 17, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

rasgame

After seeing a Game Boy emulator for the first time, [Thijs] was amazed. A small box with just a handful of electronics that turns a Game Boy cartridge into a file able to be run on an emulator is simply magical. [Thijs] has learned a lot about GB and GBC cartridges in the mean time, but still thinks the only way to really learn something is to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Thus was born [Thijs]’ Game Boy cartridge dumper, powered by a pair of I2C port expanders and a Raspberry Pi.

Inspired by a build to dump ROMs off Super Nintendo games with the help of a Raspberry Pi, [Thijs] grabbed all the hardware necessary to create his own GB cart dumper. A DS Lite cartridge adapter provided the physical connection and a pair of MCP23017 I/O expanders – one soldered to a Slice of PI/O board – provided the electrical connections.

In the end, [Thijs] managed to dump the ROMs off the Japanese editions of Pokemon Yellow and Gold in about 13 minutes. This is a much slower transfer rate of 26 minutes per SNES cart in the post that gave [Thijs] the inspiration for this build. Still, [Thijs] will probably be the first to say he’s learned a lot from this build, especially after some problems with dumping the right banks from the cartridge.

Extreme Game Boy Hack Plays Titles From A Wide Range Of Systems

March 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

gameboy-ds-in-original-gb-case

[Akira] can play any Game Boy, GBC, GBA, NES, SNES, or SMS game while on the go thanks to all the work he put into this portable gaming hack. The outside seems familiar; it’s an original Game Boy case. But you should immediately notice that it has a few extra buttons. That’s the first clue that what’s inside isn’t stock… which is a huge understatement.

The idea for the project started off rather simple, but quickly got out of hand (check out the build log for full details on that). He thought it would be nice to have a backlight for the original screen. After mixed results he scrapped the original mainboard and started anew with some Nintendo DS Lite hardware. It had a broken LCD connector so he tried a couple of different fixes to get it working again. After some success he started adding more equipment, like the extra pair of buttons, a better speaker on the battery door, and the microSD add-on you can see above.

You can catch a demo of the finished goods after the jump.

Continue reading “Extreme Game Boy Hack Plays Titles From A Wide Range Of Systems” →

A Brick-sized Game Boy Advance SP

February 20, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

gameboy

For a few years now, [Michael] has wanted to put the guts of a Game Boy Advance – the small clamshell version with a backlit LCD – into the classic and comfortable DMG-01 ‘brick’ Game Boy. He’s finally finished with his project, and we’ve got to say it’s looking pretty good.

The build began by excising the backlit LCD from an old clamshell Game Boy Advance and hot gluing it to the screen bezel of an old DMG-01. The cartridge slot from the original ‘brick’ Game Boy remained, but this design decision did require a fair bit of soldering and a length of ribbon cable.

Since [Michael] is using the original cartridge slot found in the original Game Boy, he can’t play any games in the smaller Game Boy Advance cartridge format. Still, it should be possible to build an adapter to fit those smaller cartridges inside the larger Game Boy, and he can always play Tetris and Little Sound DJ, so nothing of value is lost.

Raspberry Pi Is Right At Home Inside Of A Game Boy

February 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

IMG_20130201_163325

[Matt] still has his original Game Boy from when he was a kid. He wanted to pull it out and play some of the classics but alas, the screen was broken and he couldn’t find a source for a drop-in replacement. In the end he ordered a used unit and pulled the screen from that one. This left him with a pile of leftover Game Boy parts which turned into a Raspberry Pi case project.

Since the RPi doesn’t have a power switch he thought it would be pretty neat to incorporate the Game Boy power switch. He was able to cut out one section of the original PCB that included the switch and one mounting hole. This kept the switch aligned with the case and gave him some pads to solder the incoming USB cable and the jumper wires to the RPi board. In the image above the power LED is on. He mentions that there was an issue with that circuit; the voltage drop across the LED was messing up the feed to the Pi so it’s disabled for now.

We’ve embedded a couple of images of everything inside the case after the break. If you’re a fan of this hack you should also take a look at the Game Boy hard drive enclosure which uses the same pixel art printed on paper effect for the screen window.

Continue reading “Raspberry Pi Is Right At Home Inside Of A Game Boy” →

There’s Something Strange About This Game Boy

January 15, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

emu

What looks to be a stock brick Game Boy with two additional buttons is actually one of the coolest portable mods we’ve ever seen.

Instead of the classic 1989 hardware, the interior of this Game Boy is stuffed with a Dingoo A330 portable emulation machine capable of playing Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and other 8 and 16-bit console classics.

After a great deal of modification to the original Game Boy enclosure, [Alex] cut down two Game Boy PCBs to wire the D pad, A, B, select and start buttons to the Dingoo. An extra pair of buttons were added and the shoulder buttons present on the Dingoo were emulated with rocker switches placed where the original volume and contrast controls were.

All this and a new color LCD (and screen bezel) means this Game Boy looks nearly stock, save for the addition of an extra pair of buttons. It’s a fabulous piece of work, and we’re exceedingly jealous for [Alex]’s friend receiving this for his birthday.

You can check out this build in action after the break.

Continue reading “There’s Something Strange About This Game Boy” →