2 July 2018

3D-Printed (Baby) Drum Pedal

I really enjoy making things with my 3D printer, and normally my projects involve electronics too.
This was a bit different, but it's a good example of something you can design/print over a weekend.

My little nephew loves playing his toy drums, but the set that he used to have, was missing the bass pedal.
It wasn't worth buying a replacement since he'd outgrow this drum kit soon, instead I'd try to make him one...

8 April 2018

10 Minute Mod: GameBoy Screen Rot Fix(?)

I recently picked up a few old GameBoys for a new project, they weren't all in great shape though.
Amongst them was a pretty nice Red example, but it had some inky garbage around the edge of the display.

From what I've read, it's a well known problem with the old GameBoy systems, and appears to be irreparable :(

31 March 2018

LED Matrix Animation Frame

A few years ago I saw a really interesting project on kickstarter by Jeremy Williams called the Game Frame.

It uses a grid of RGB LEDs to display pixel art. I thought it was an awesome idea, and looked beautiful.
I couldn't afford to buy one at the time, but now it might make a nice project to put together my own version.

There were a couple of these LED frames around back then. The 'PIXEL' by Al Linke even had a kit version.
The PIXEL had 32x32 pixels vs the Game Frame's 16x16. But the Game Frame did have a nice wooden case.

From reading the docs for the PIXEL, I found out that 32x32 LED panels are widely available and cheap too.

In fact, from my initial google-ing I also discovered a nice Raspberry Pi library for driving these displays.
It was looking like building my own LED frame would be pretty straightforward...

wakawakawakawaka

28 September 2017

SNESPi - 3D Printed Raspberry Pi Mini SNES(s)

Last year I built a mini NES console using a Raspberry Pi, an NFC reader and a 3D-printed case.
An obvious follow-up project would be to make a mini SNES with the Raspberry Pi.



I probably have more childhood fondness for the Super Nintendo than I do the original NES.
Some of my best gaming memories are playing co-op Turtles in Time and Diddy's Kong Quest with my brother.

*Big Apple, 3AM*
I grew-up with the Super Famicom-style European SNES and only learned about the markedly different North American model as an adult much later...

I actually grew to quite like the hideous North American SNES after a while ;)
This fascinated me, there's such a contrast between the two styles. I wanted to make a mini version of both.