Worklog The Avarice

[monkeywood]

-An overview-
I've taken inspiration from multiple users, a lot of them have shown just how small/thin handhelds can get. After flipping back in forth about what I wanted I've decided to be greedy (hence the name) and combine multiple consoles in one handheld. A raspberry pi cm4 will take care of file management and emulation of multiple consoles. A custom trimmed wii (a lmao trimmed to 75mm x 75mm).
finally, a n64 incorporated into the custom main PCB. Possibly a ps2 as well if there is enough room in the case.
-The physical handheld-
The handheld will be vertical in the style of a gameboy, the dimensions will be 130mm wide x 200mm tall x 32 thick.
It will be powered by 6 3400Mah 18650 batteries.
it will have two screens the main screen will be 5" that switches between the three consoles, while the secondary will be a 2" touch screen to display various stats and to be used will emulating ds/3ds games.
it will have a 65 button keyboard with custom resin buttons.
The shell will be made of copper and resin, the front and back plates will be made of copper the back plate will act similarly to a large heatsink and the sides will be resin.
-The custom PCB-
The PCB will incorporate GMAN's wii rvl pms and his u-amp.
an M.2 ssd connect to the CM4 to act as the main storage, the CM4 will be able to take control of the wii's storage as well as the n64's storage to upload games and such.
In addition to the N64 the board will have a picocart64 added.
it will have a built in display controller to save space. multiple display switches, two vga switches and two hdmi switches.
the face buttons will be film tact switches.

 

[Stitches]

This is going to be quite an endeavour

 

[Y2K]

Yeaaaaaah idk about this one chief. It'd definitely work for a rpi handheld but I expect you'll find out quite quickly that you're not going to have enough room to fit everything else in. It's not entirely an issue of physical dimensions, but also quite literally every other design aspect, especially thermals.

 

[monkeywood]

It was originally just going to be an Rpi handheld but I noticed I had roughly an extra 15mm so I figured I could fit a Wii in there as well. Thermals will be an issue I thinking of 4 15x15mm fans mounted vertically pulling air from the holes near the triggers and pushing it of the top. This blowing it over the Wii heatsink and the Rpi heatsink as well

 

[Y2K]

It was originally just going to be an Rpi handheld but I noticed I had roughly an extra 15mm so I figured I could fit a Wii in there as well. Thermals will be an issue I thinking of 4 15x15mm fans mounted vertically pulling air from the holes near the triggers and pushing it of the top. This blowing it over the Wii heatsink and the Rpi heatsink as well

You're also forgetting that the N64 will require a heatsink as well as a PS2 if you wanted to throw that in. 15mm will not provide you the space and the cooling capacity needed to adequately cool down the chips on those parts.

My suggestion would be to remove the extra dead space from your design entirely and make it a pretty useful looking rpi handheld. You could probably even keep the secondary display and display the box art of the game you're currently playing. I believe StonedEdge is doing something similar with his Retro Lite CM4 handheld and it's dock. Would be a pretty neat idea!

 

[monkeywood]

Yea that would be smart, this is more of a shoot for the stars type deal, I've been thinking the same thing, so every thing will be modular the Wii will be on its own , as well as the N64 which I'll try my hand at a 3x3 design if it fails it won't effect the whole thing, the PS2 is just too big to be practical and the Rpi will be on its own carrier board. And while the width and height needs to be their size to fit the screen and controls the sides can be different sizes so if it doesn't work I can swap the 18650 for a flat pack and have a thin Rpi only portable.

 

[monkeywood]

Thinking over what Y2K said, and reviewing what I actually need from the raspberry pi. I'll switch from a cm4 to a zero W and mount it on its edge length wise. I'll will have to make the handheld slightly thicker to around 34mm but this will give me 28mm below the screen which looking at other Wii handheld this should be more than enough for the Wii itself.