09-16-2017, 06:02 AM
Okay. I'll try to address the questions and any other issues. I appreciate all that, because we're working to make this a great experience for everyone. It's not always easy for us to tell what a first-time builder might have issues with (now since we've done it so many times ourselves).
First, some answers can be found in the videos we (and other people) have posted. Yeah, I know you don't want to watch several hour-long videos to answer your questions, but you can skip around to try to find how we (and other guys) have dealt with these things.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...R3lxbe71sf
I will post my text, and then I will see if there's anything I can post photos of to make things more clear (for here and the build document).
General reactions to the impressions (for you and anyone else reading):
Some people like the X-Acto method, and other people like the Dremel. In retrospect, I guess that the build documentation that's available is likely skewed toward X-Acto, because that's what I'm comfortable with. When I build one up, I do almost everything with the X-Acto and a wire cutters. In some cases, I snip the plastic down and then clean it up with the hobby knife blade. This guy had a real nice/clean build, and he used the Dremel most of the time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F_rVmJi...sf&index=3).
For several reasons, the X/Y buttons are tricky, but the biggest thing is that they're right on the front face of the console. People will be much pickier about the look of these cuts than any others in the build. I've seen/tried several techniques. One good recommendation is to drill them just large enough that the button shafts fit through. Then, do the rest very slowly (maybe even by hand with a knife) a tiny bit at a time until the caps fit just how you want.
Yes, for anyone that hasn't used the LCD ribbon cable like this before (and even for people that have), the ribbon must be seated properly with the shoulders locked in place. It's good to boot the machine up with both HDMI and the LCD connected (before putting everything in the shell). The screen should go white when you press the ON button. Hold the ON button until the green light comes on. The HDMI will come on first and then the LCD should become a clone of the HDMI after a few seconds. If that doesn't happen, the LCD is likely not seated properly. We check both the PCB and the LCD before we ship them, so it is most a problem with this ribbon/connector if you don't see video on the LCD (if there is video on the HDMI). If there's no LCD output, it also could be that you used a different SD card image (like one directly from RetroPie).
Responses to questions
1) Don't worry about the hot glue. I think the next production run should have a different sort of epoxy there. At any rate, it's a bit of an afterthought anyway. The reason it's there at all is only to prevent the wire from bending where it hits the PCB. If the speaker swings back and forth a bunch of times (like when you're building the unit), the wire can break. We saw that happen on a few early builds, so we did 2 things. We added more solder, and we added the hot glue. That just keeps the wires from flopping right there. If you lost the hot glue, it's probably fine, especially once the whole thing is built. They won't be flopping around after that, anyway.
2) In fact, I think those wires are cut short compared to how they came from the factory. We already asked them to make them shorter.
You shouldn't need to cut any plastic for the routing of the speaker wire. What I usually do is to put the speaker in place and let the extra wire wrap around the "back" side of the PCB when the front side of the shell is attached. Then, when you put the back side of the shell on, you only need to make sure the wire is clear of any of the white circle areas on the PCB. That's where the shell ends up touching the PCB.
3) We have thought about putting this connector elsewhere, but there are several restrictions stopping us from doing that. The main reason, however, is that leaving this "length" of LCD ribbon cable allows the builder to place the LCD down and then still have plenty of room to get in there and adjust anything before securing the PCB to the shell.
4) The way the LCD is built, it has 3 (if I recall correctly) LEDs built in for the lighting. These are just wired (through a resistor) to the power to give them a constant brightness. There aren't any extra GPIO on the Pi Zero, so we can't connect them up to allow the software to control them. We have considered this for the Freeplay CM3, but (in fact) it isn't something we've added there either. As far as I know there is no way to change the contrast of that screen. I haven't heard anyone else have brightness issues, but it is something we should monitor in case it is a common issue. As far as battery life goes, it would be possible for us to change out some resistors on the board to decrease the brightness, but our estimates are that it would maybe only give 20min or so more play time (from 2000mAh of battery).
5) The "error" you saw was likely the messages from when it resizes the partition on initial bootup. What happens is that the SD card image is made to work with any SD card (that's big enough of course), but if you just take a 4GB SD image and apply it to a 16GB card (as an example) it will leave 12GB of space unusable. We use a tool that shrinks the image to the smallest size and then sets the image to automatically resize (to use the full SD card) on first boot. The drawback is that the first boot looks/acts a bit funky compared to subsequent boots. We used to use the overscan settings to control the display size, but we've recently changed to a different technique that happens during screen writing. It should be more efficient, but there is a small drawback in that it has to be specific sizes (maybe in 16pixel increments IIRC). The problem with the overscan approach is that it also affects the HDMI, so you would never get full-screen even when playing on your TV/monitor. Also, on top of this, if you look at the LCD itself, there's an area that appears to be part of the screen, but it's not actually. The way that the LCD sits in the GBA-style shell, that area would be the right side of the screen.
6) We use superglue to attach the caps. You probably could use Sugru or whatever. They just need to not fall off, because there's not really any force on them once installed. However, you made me realize that I need to get this info into the build doc!
As far as drilling goes, here are some videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qwiKOBXaqs (used a conical dremel bit)
https://youtu.be/b7zX67WjtSg?t=23m31s (starts at ~23min in)
https://youtu.be/1F_rVmJiN8g?t=23m16s (also ~23min in, and this builder is quite meticulous)
First, some answers can be found in the videos we (and other people) have posted. Yeah, I know you don't want to watch several hour-long videos to answer your questions, but you can skip around to try to find how we (and other guys) have dealt with these things.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...R3lxbe71sf
I will post my text, and then I will see if there's anything I can post photos of to make things more clear (for here and the build document).
General reactions to the impressions (for you and anyone else reading):
Some people like the X-Acto method, and other people like the Dremel. In retrospect, I guess that the build documentation that's available is likely skewed toward X-Acto, because that's what I'm comfortable with. When I build one up, I do almost everything with the X-Acto and a wire cutters. In some cases, I snip the plastic down and then clean it up with the hobby knife blade. This guy had a real nice/clean build, and he used the Dremel most of the time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F_rVmJi...sf&index=3).
For several reasons, the X/Y buttons are tricky, but the biggest thing is that they're right on the front face of the console. People will be much pickier about the look of these cuts than any others in the build. I've seen/tried several techniques. One good recommendation is to drill them just large enough that the button shafts fit through. Then, do the rest very slowly (maybe even by hand with a knife) a tiny bit at a time until the caps fit just how you want.
Yes, for anyone that hasn't used the LCD ribbon cable like this before (and even for people that have), the ribbon must be seated properly with the shoulders locked in place. It's good to boot the machine up with both HDMI and the LCD connected (before putting everything in the shell). The screen should go white when you press the ON button. Hold the ON button until the green light comes on. The HDMI will come on first and then the LCD should become a clone of the HDMI after a few seconds. If that doesn't happen, the LCD is likely not seated properly. We check both the PCB and the LCD before we ship them, so it is most a problem with this ribbon/connector if you don't see video on the LCD (if there is video on the HDMI). If there's no LCD output, it also could be that you used a different SD card image (like one directly from RetroPie).
Responses to questions
1) Don't worry about the hot glue. I think the next production run should have a different sort of epoxy there. At any rate, it's a bit of an afterthought anyway. The reason it's there at all is only to prevent the wire from bending where it hits the PCB. If the speaker swings back and forth a bunch of times (like when you're building the unit), the wire can break. We saw that happen on a few early builds, so we did 2 things. We added more solder, and we added the hot glue. That just keeps the wires from flopping right there. If you lost the hot glue, it's probably fine, especially once the whole thing is built. They won't be flopping around after that, anyway.
2) In fact, I think those wires are cut short compared to how they came from the factory. We already asked them to make them shorter.
You shouldn't need to cut any plastic for the routing of the speaker wire. What I usually do is to put the speaker in place and let the extra wire wrap around the "back" side of the PCB when the front side of the shell is attached. Then, when you put the back side of the shell on, you only need to make sure the wire is clear of any of the white circle areas on the PCB. That's where the shell ends up touching the PCB.3) We have thought about putting this connector elsewhere, but there are several restrictions stopping us from doing that. The main reason, however, is that leaving this "length" of LCD ribbon cable allows the builder to place the LCD down and then still have plenty of room to get in there and adjust anything before securing the PCB to the shell.
4) The way the LCD is built, it has 3 (if I recall correctly) LEDs built in for the lighting. These are just wired (through a resistor) to the power to give them a constant brightness. There aren't any extra GPIO on the Pi Zero, so we can't connect them up to allow the software to control them. We have considered this for the Freeplay CM3, but (in fact) it isn't something we've added there either. As far as I know there is no way to change the contrast of that screen. I haven't heard anyone else have brightness issues, but it is something we should monitor in case it is a common issue. As far as battery life goes, it would be possible for us to change out some resistors on the board to decrease the brightness, but our estimates are that it would maybe only give 20min or so more play time (from 2000mAh of battery).
5) The "error" you saw was likely the messages from when it resizes the partition on initial bootup. What happens is that the SD card image is made to work with any SD card (that's big enough of course), but if you just take a 4GB SD image and apply it to a 16GB card (as an example) it will leave 12GB of space unusable. We use a tool that shrinks the image to the smallest size and then sets the image to automatically resize (to use the full SD card) on first boot. The drawback is that the first boot looks/acts a bit funky compared to subsequent boots. We used to use the overscan settings to control the display size, but we've recently changed to a different technique that happens during screen writing. It should be more efficient, but there is a small drawback in that it has to be specific sizes (maybe in 16pixel increments IIRC). The problem with the overscan approach is that it also affects the HDMI, so you would never get full-screen even when playing on your TV/monitor. Also, on top of this, if you look at the LCD itself, there's an area that appears to be part of the screen, but it's not actually. The way that the LCD sits in the GBA-style shell, that area would be the right side of the screen.
6) We use superglue to attach the caps. You probably could use Sugru or whatever. They just need to not fall off, because there's not really any force on them once installed. However, you made me realize that I need to get this info into the build doc!
As far as drilling goes, here are some videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qwiKOBXaqs (used a conical dremel bit)
https://youtu.be/b7zX67WjtSg?t=23m31s (starts at ~23min in)
https://youtu.be/1F_rVmJiN8g?t=23m16s (also ~23min in, and this builder is quite meticulous)
Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Translation ( http://cfc2english.blogspot.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )
Neo Geo Pocket Flash Cart and Linker Project ( http://www.flashmasta.com/ )
Avatar art thanks to Trev-Mun ( http://trevmun.deviantart.com/ )