PiBoy Advance Instructions

Are you sure you want to do this?

Preparations:
Read the Instructions!
Make sure you have all the parts (from the part list) ready.
Print the STL´s
Remove the composite and the audio port from your Pi.
Read the instructions again!
For positioning the parts check the pictures beside the
headlines!

01 Power
Open the power bank.
(just screw it open)
Inside you will find a battery which will fit perfectly and
a little circuit board with two USB ports.
(If you don’t want to use the battery from the power bank
you can use one without cables. I´ve added two adapter parts
which will secure the battery. You will have to add some
connectors)

Remove the USB A port

Solder two cables to the battery so that it will fit ( if you use the adapter parts (battery without cables) solder
your wires to the connectors). The other end to the corresponding ports of the circuit board.

Two cables VCC and GND to the ports of the USB A (the one you removed)

<-
GND goes to the main switch and from there to port 6 on your TFT´s GPIO.

VCC directly to port 2. ->

You don’t have to remove the LED...I just didn’t want anything glowing inside.
Ok, the amplifier isn’t the best...you will hear some static noise when no music is played.
This is caused by the amplifier but also from the Pi and from RetroPie. It’s a known problem but not a ´neck
breaker´...better than no sound. Maybe someone will come up with a solution?
To keep the static to a minimum use wires as short as possible!
Solder three (short) wires to the potentiometer and to the corresponding ports.

Here you see the pin layout of the amplifier:

VCC and GND go to pin 4 and 14 on the TFT GPIO ->

Audio OUT goes to the audio jack (Use the one from the
amplifier! The one from the Pi won’t fit!)
Look at the picture for the connections… no idea how
to explain this :P
If you want an easy mute option use the mini slide
switch. We are very close to the battery here so keep
everything as flat as possible!
03 Buttons
Easy until now? Yeah…we are going to change that.

Shoulder buttons:

Ok, I´m sure the STL won’t fit perfect. I developed this part while I build it. Meaning: I added and removed
material until everything fitted. I modified the STL as good as I could but you will have to put some work in it.
The button caps have to stick out as far as possible but they have to have enough space so that when you
´squeeze‘ your PiBoy they won’t fire accidently. We are talking about ½ mm precision here! ... Good luck!

The Ringcover for the shoulder buttons is for protection when you lay your
PiBoy down. On the original keyboard there are some nice ´rubber feet´.
I pulled one out and used it on my PiBoy. This is not necessary…do as you
wish.

HDMI:
Little break from the buttons… but you will also have to modify the above part for the HDMI adapter.
If you ask me this is the coolest part of this build! Plugging your PiBoy in your big screen and using a wireless
controller to play from your couch is just awesome 
Anyway… You might have noticed that I did not put a hole in the lower shell for the HDMI adapter. There are
dozens of different ones on the market! You will have to make the hole yourself to fit yours.
The part where the shoulder buttons are attached to is also used to press the HDMI adapter down. This should
be very tight or you will have problems plugging your cable in…and don’t forget the ½ mm precision
…told you this will be fun.

Buttons Pad:

This will fit much better than the original SNES PCB.
If you can’t get the 12x12x15 buttons use the adapter
for the 6x6x5 buttons. They work as good as the others.
 Position of the Keyboard circuit board behind the battery

Isn’t that the prettiest Star Wars Keyboard you have ever
seen? Right..that’s why I felt no guild killing it 
The keyboard may be ugly but the PCB will fit perfect in our
project. I´m sure there are others that fit…and you should have
no problem using a different one. You will just have to figure
out which pin goes to which key.
I will explain how to solder this one.
Remove the Led’s. They only take space and nobody will see
them anyway.
The pins on the circuit board are covered with some black…
whatever. Remove it to solder the cables on (use a knife or sand paper)

Use thin cables…not

I’m not sure but I think that I soldered the original USB cable to the other side of the keyboard circuit board.
Shorten the USB cable and solder the other side to the bottom of your Pi to the USB ports.

The top USB Port on the Pi will be unusable. Block it somehow so that you don’t accidently plug something in.
No idea what happens if you do…haven’t tried it.

Because I removed one of the columns from the original design we

If you made it this far…congratulations you are almost done!

04 Recommendations/Tips
…so you don’t make the same mistakes that I made.

Use Hot or Super glue! Not everything holds by itself. :P

TFT Display:
The GPIO plug on the TFT has some sort of spacer (?)
See that you get one with TWO or it won’t fit!
Yes, mine had three and I did go through hell desoldering it.

As there are no screws on the upper part of the PiBoy use the clip that I provided.
It will make the two parts snap together nicely. Otherwise you might have a gap there.
I simply SuperGlued them in place.

Operating System
RetroPie 2.6 works flawless!
I´ve heard from many sides that it is simply not possible to use RetroPie with this TFT
or if it should run that there will be lags that make it impossible to play on it.
Well, if there are lags, I can’t see them! They are minimal!
I did lose the touch capability…but it would have been no use anyway.
How did I do it? Honestly, I can´t tell anymore… It’s been so long since I set it up I simply forgot how I did it 
As far as I remember it was quite complicated (I´m not a Linux person) and I’m sure I would not be able to do it
again…
If you want, you can try it yourself…if not, download the .img which contains vanilla RetroPie 2.6 and the TFT
setup.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m43ie6z4m8fmg3t/RetroPie2_6_PiBoy_.rar?dl=0

ROMS
To get ROMs on the PiBoy I simply plug my network cable in and use Cyberduck on my computer…easy.
But it should be no problem upgrading it to WLAN. I´ll leave that to you ;)

Only one thing left to say: SHOW YOUR WORK ;)