The trick with the applicator thing for the acrylic cement is to have it about half full, hold it upright and squeeze the air out and flip it over, then the vacuum keeps the stuff in and you can very precisely control how much you want to squeeze out

Donno why ppl would dislike this much of information packed videos..i am a hobbyist and know how much efforts one could need to put to get something right when things go sideways.maybe ppl who don't understand but still watches this kinda video would dislike.

How about having a custom copper backplate made for a heatsink and see how much more performance you could get out of it?

4:53 That's why you aim the board at other people when you snip off pins.

Actually Jeff my hacked switch runs ubuntu so I can ssh into it 😂

What a fun build! I've built a few mechanical keyboards and doing surface mount parts is always a bit of a pain. I found that if you just get some solder on one of the mounts, hold the part with some tweezers, and solder one side, it makes it easier to solder the other side.

Loved it! As an electronics guy, I specially enjoyed the parts about SMD soldering, acrylic cement and other mechanical features in this board that can be useful for me.

By coincidence, I just stumbled upon this one video of yours while searching for something else, and I came across this part: "I'm actually amazed how good the sound was on early Genesis and Super Nintendo games. I've only ever heard them on the tiny speaker in our family's cheap 13" TV." - As a kid, I always plugged my headphones directly into the Genesis... :)

Surface mount (SMD) soldering is so much easier using solder paste, applied to every pad, before mounting the component and heating the pads.

So I ended up making a similar project with a Pi 3A+ instead (as Pi Zero is impossible to find nowadays) , and it actually ended up costing me around 50$ total. I did not have a 3d printer, so I ended up using a 2$ pencil box as the case, and all the buttons were mounted manually and connected to a Pi pico, which was in turn connected to the Pi 3a's USB Port. It ended up working pretty great (though not so great look wise). Also I can use the Pi 3's headphone jack without external dac, and having access to power & hdmi ports means I can dock the device with my TV. I actually am frequently carrying it to my college to play games during free time. This Gameboy Null project gave me the inspiration to attempt to try doing it, and I'm grateful for it.

For the cup hole soldering, would it help to snip a tiny length of solder into each hole first, then melt it in situ? - maybe with a hot air gun?

This was inspiring. You showed the whole process, the good and the bad, and still persevered to the final result. Thank you for being so thorough. God bless you.

AvE’s ears perked up with the squint reference.

I can see so many older projects people have made with the Zero, get a big upgrade with the zero 2. Keeping the same physical profile on the board was a smart Idea.

I had to do math tests for a kid of a friend of the family. It's been 10 years since I've been out of college so it's been a while for me. I pulled out one of my old calculators, which felt surprisingly familiar, but the results had me wishing for more. What if instead of handheld game consoles we made the ultimate graphing calculator kit? How about a square screen?

Thanks for the prograde cardreader recommendation in an earlier video i commented on, its so fast and not flakey, makes importing photos much more enjoyable. Also the magnet base is nice :)

Hey Jeff. I don't have much to say. Love how the content on your channel is more "affordable" for us regular people with regular incomes that have children and all of that life. In fact, I just wish you'd have more time to make more content :)

Wow! This is amazing :) . Hope I can build my own console like that. Well, I am always amazed every time I watch your video :)

Great work Jeff! Really like the acrylic and it’s nice to use readily available parts during the chip shortages. Something that has severely held back my console :(

clear plastic ftw. If its an option, I ALWAYS buy it like that.

I think I get to have my first smart moment. In circumstances where parts are tricky to hold / solder, don't use tape like you have here, use bostik blutack. easy to place, easy to remove, when its below 35c its fairly rigid. awesome work none the less Jeff.

I still have a fully transparent original Xbox Controller and it was always amazing to look at. Choosing the clear version is definitely the right choice and I would go for it too if I would buy this product

Good job on that console! Specially with soldering, I fear soldering SMDs. Quite a complex project but it looks awesome

If you solder on pin headers, you can pull off the plastic, leaving just metal pins. You can even adjust, first, how much pin sticks out, or trim the excess.

I LOVE that retro multi-meter!!! 😊

I'd be paranoid about those solder joints breaking. If the board had thru holes where the pi goes, short piece of copper thru both would do it. Like the idea of a portable console like that, as long as it can be used for something useful instead of gaming

Quite an impressive journey if you're into such projects, and a nice "documentary" Jeff ! I stuck my Zero2 inside the GPi case... wish i had a spare cartridge to improve cooling and OC it, might look into it later. For the time being i decided to build a FPGA handheld; you have a valid point about acrylic cases here, which i didn't think of, so maybe i will leave out 3d printing 🤔

This is really cool. One of the projects that got me interested in electronics was making a portable SNES using Ben Heck's book. This was in the mid 2000's, before there were many handheld devices that could emulate the SNES well.

I bought a custom Super Famicom style Gameboy Advance shell and built a Pi Zero 2 based emulation machine into the shell :)

It looks like there is a clear path from the HDMI port to the outside of the shell. It's likely you could use a ribbon cable or extension PCB.

As somebody who has done extensive soldering, the "cuphole" technique they recommend here sounds like a massive pain and I'd find this frustrating and fiddly even with plenty of experience - good job on getting it done, but I almost fee like they're a little too proud of their own "neat" trick here without honestly weighing the benefits and downsides. I find it hard to believe they couldn't find space to make the pads in question through-hole so that you could solder bare wires through each hole instead; this would have kept the mainboard and Pi still in direct contact, and would only have left tiny bumps on either end for the wire stubs after clipping them flush. The acrylic cement stuff is neat; it's a very handy technique for producing customized enclosures, especially larger ones that are infeasible to 3D-print. You can design the layouts yourself in your preferred CAD package, then send it off to a laser cutting shop to get nice laser-cut acrylic sheets back for a pretty reasonable price even in small quantities. With some practice, the acrylic cement gluing process is fast and can produce very clean/professional results, and we've used it at work for small production runs of certain custom devices. For larger or more complex enclosures, it can help to make yourself a jig out of some mini framing squares to all you to align 90 degree joints together reliably and accurately.

That's a cute tiny handheld! Nice to see some of the building process!

I found this video helpful because it covers many practical soldering problems I frequently encounter

Maybe you could solder pogo pins into the pi GPIO vias and have the pi contact the PCB with compression. That way you could easily replace the Pi if needed. Some pogo pin configurations should seat into the vias and ultimately add almost no thickness (less than a 1mm) when compressed. Downside is tolerance for the case will need to be much tighter. Really boils down to whether you want easier assembly and or easier swappable components.

I love to see your childhood memories come back 👾

I'd like the L and R tab buttons if I made one. Those were nice for 3D games for things like autolocking and switching between targets.

I absolutely love the build but I think it might be out of my soldering skill level. Well done !

I wonder when today’s games will be emulated like this on an SBC in the future?

This build is great

I have the Raspiboy which is larger (it's like 4 years old at this point), but it doesn't require any soldering at all. The main interface board has spring-loaded pins that connect to the test pads on the back of the zero. It also exposes usb so you can use external controllers.

I am really looking forward to your cutiepi review! I would prefer a more conventional tablet with kickstand instead of the handle, but it is easily the most compelling pi tablet I have seen so far. I hope it is good!

Those bad cuts in the end are so funny. And it shows how time-consuming it is to make a video. Keep up the good work Jeff!

Seeing that THPS footage was what I wanted from this video. I've got a Retroflag GPi case and can't wait to stuff a Zero2W into it. The crashes during GT2 are likely an emulator bug, it's rock solid on a regular Pi 3 and 4.

A scary, nerve-wracking, but worthy Christmas gift! Merry Christmas brother!

PRO PLASTIC WORK TIP: when applying thin acrylic glue from an aplicator bottle, squeeze some of the air out of the bottle and loosten your grip slightly before you tilt it to use a slight vacuum to keep it from dribbling as you apply it.

Very interesting little build, I'm personally working on building a PiGRRL Zero Advance around my own Zero 2, I'm really hoping I can leverage the touch screen to squeeze some Nintendo DS emulation out of it. The Pi Zero 2 and Compute Module 4 are both fantastic leaps forward in making portable RasPi devices practical, I just really hope they can step up production because thanks to the chip shortage they're clearly struggling to keep up with current demand.

You could use resistor's snipped legs instead of solder joins.

Dude this is awesome. It looks a little to challenging for my taste. Im waiting for the minty pi lite to be available.

Pretty sweet, at this point there are sub $50 handhelds that will play up to ps1 though so if you aren't getting enjoyment from the build, it's probably not worth it. 2 years ago (when this video was made) things were likely different.

Great video! I feel like you went into the rabbit hole so we don't have to. I suspect your handheld game system is something you could take pride in given all of that work and frustration.

You can avoid the "cup hole" soldering by removing the plastic thing (I think because I have not built this but anyhow the plastic is removable. Once soldered trim the excess.

Use a small paint brush to apply the Weld-on, far more control. It works great on most 3D filaments too

It looks leagues better than any retro handheld currently on the market. I’d totally buy this thing.

It’s a lot of fun messing around with the Pi like this. But if you’re serious about gaming on the go, you’d have a better experience getting an RG300 from Aliexpress and updating to the latest RetroFW. It will play everything your device will, but with an almost instant boot and safe instant off. Not to mention 4-6 hours of play time and a gorgeous IPS panel. All for ~$50.

Tremendous work! So impressive that makes me want to reproduce it! 👍 Thanks!

pretty cool but a version for a full size pi 4 that includes everything (also a touchscreen) should be made... doesnt matter if it ends up a tad bigger... the pi 4 is much faster afterall

i'll pass on this one, but if they release one, that like you said: is a bit thicker so you don't have to solder the pi in, and also has room for a joystick (Which I imagine with what's currently out there might also require more thickness) then I'm in.

George at 1up Restorations (Long Island Retro Gaming on KZfaq) does that "Cup Hole Soldering" fairly regularly. Check out his Fix It Friday videos.

That is a beautiful build I love it !

I love how this guy gets so lucky and manages to get everything working after he breaks it 😂

Great video !!! Thumbs up for the retro multi-meter 🙂. Using solder paste and a heat gun might have made things easier for cup hole soldering ;-) .

Love the meter! I've been using the same one for years as it's never let me down. Plus I love the buzzer.

I had fun building it. I don't really think you'd see this, But I also had an issue where it was just sitting on a white screen. It ended up being raspberry pi imager was doing something, so I had to use win32 disk imager, and add my Wi-Fi credentials with a Bluetooth keyboard

This looks great, but it's definitely more about the journey than the destination. The pre-made handheld retro consoles from Anbernic and Powkiddy etc, are more powerful and provide a better experience if you just want to play the games and they're also built on open source software. Obviously you don't get the satisfaction of building your own device though! Obviously you need to add an external GPU to something like this though... 🙂

You could also presolder the gpio and then just reheat and add extra solder when adding it to the mainboard

Personally, I would've loved to have the larger PCB have new spots to resolder the HDMI and USB Micro ports or better yet extenders, along with pogo pins for the gpio.

Just subscribed, love the content. After a realisation a few weeks ago I just had to finally say it - the US pronunciation of "soldering" reminds me of the ancient cities of Soldom and Golmorrah.

Seeing THPS on a raspberry pi... Okay I'm sold!

Shortages everywhere! Make Pi Zero 2 available again!

Man I want this. On the list now. Remember the clear laptop from Hackers???? Why don't we have those today? I love the metal look, but I agree. Clear is awesome.

The quote about solder being the favorite programming language is often attributed to Sir Terry Pratchett (and he did indeed say that at a conference in 2005), but actually I believe the author of what I would consider to be an original quote is Bob Pease - a designer of some very well known ICs, such as LM331 or LM337. His version was: "My favorite programming language is solder" :)

That multimeter used for resistance @6:21 showed your age Jeff.. Don't worry, I must have one of those lying around too, so you aren't alone.

7:40 "I gave up trying to compile RetroPie on the raspberry pi" ohhhh I've been there. Surprised that the battery life is kinda 'meh'. Kinda goes to show how dedicated and customized these handheld consoles are over the basic "arm and linux" setup. Got to be a wa to shut off wifi bluetooth, limit CPU usage to one or two cores instead of having the kernel use all four, use an embedded linux that doesn't have as much of a footprint, or loads the OS + programs into a ram disk and turns off the micro SD. I'm spitballing here, because I don't do OS development, but it's a cool project.

for under 49usd you can get a PSP used in good condition which does all the old consoles and PS without problems. There are also linux distros build for PSP, cheaper alternative. And you don't need to build everything from scratch, buy the first model and you also have IR options.

The jolt of anxiety seeing you grab the tip of that soldering iron after watching you use it lol

I love it when someone uses peach jelly as a solder flux.

Just a heads up, soldering a lot of this would be easier if you had high-quality solder! Personally I have Kester solder and swear by it, it makes SMD soldering easy and repeatable. Make sure to get rosin core, 63-37 leaded solder and you'll be set.

Paper boy was a game that I really enjoyed as a kid. When I'd lose at a level and have to do it again, after a while I would just throw the paper into their windows from frustration. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first video came I ever played ever. Zone 2 Chemical Plant has probably the best audio of a 16 bit era game and I think still stands up today. I still listen to a lot of the music from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. Everything from Powerman 5000, to Millencolin becoming a sneaky favorite of mine after buying their albums.

Was all excited there for a moment -- mistook the speakers for analogue sticks. My dream pocket device is a Pi Zero 2 with AAAAALLLLL the buttons so I can use it to play MAME ROMs on the train then use it for serious work as well. All the cheap Far Eastern handhelds can do the games, but without wifi, I can't use it as a local wifi hotspot and webserver for interactive classroom activities.

first off this is awsome. but for 150 its like you said more about the journey and fun you have in assembly. if you really wanna use one i would advice 150 bucks retroid pocket 3+ and as best in category i would say ayn odin from 200$ pro a lil more but the base model has no problem emulating ps2 and gamecube

If you go into ui settings you can probably change the ui color to black backround and white letters. Should make it even a little bit easier to see. Altho its theme dependant in es. And i recommend batocera since that is the best one imo Edit: forgot to mention batocera im pretty sure also supports small screens. Atleast on my 3.5 inch display i saw everything and could read everything quite well

You should look up the Zega Mame Gear. It's a similar drop in modders board that you can add a PI4, Pi3 or PiZero1/2 boards to, but you them mount them into a Game Gear shell.

I would love to start building these as a hobby.

acrylic cement is mainly chloroform ;) - so use in well ventilated places

back when i got my gpi case, the zero w was always out of stock so i got desperate and desolder one of my zero wh, it was hell on earth looking at this gave me ptsd all over again

Great video!

Raspberry Pis are amazing!

Love what you've done here. I found a much cheaper way with my Odroid go advance kit. Runs upto ps1 perfect and coat me only £40 plus the SD card. Batocera or emuelec both great options on it.

Really love a good practical application!

You need a good amount of flux and then it solders easier, also throwing it in the oven at 150C for a couple of hours will help get the solder between the boards.

You can get a similarly sized charging board with an indicator

I personally just use the GPi Case 2w for my Pi Zero 2w. Mostly because I haven't soldered in a long... long time...

Clear plastic electrics go back to 1985 from what I remember . Take a good look at pre recorded high bias cassette tapes .

Kapton is great until it gets old and dries out. Then it's very flammable, which is why we no longer use it on planes

I'm doing exactly this. Except a 7inch screen with a pi3b+. USB type c charger stereo speakers and 4 18650 5000Mah batteries in a 2s2p setup. Case is made by me and 3d printed.

Dear Jeff, what power soldering iron do you use? I bought one of those 60-100 Watt soldering iron kits and it's really helped me. Just wondering if a powerful iron would help you when doing the narrow point soldering? I bought the KSGER t12 after seeing lots of KZfaq reviews. Digital temperature control, high power, so it keeps the tip at that temperature for quick soldering. Less risk of burning. I'm only a beginner though. Your review was excellent. Detailed yet pacey, covered everything, step by step video clips, edited together so well. I've never seen one of your videos before but my gosh I'm impressed. I'm going to look at what other ones you've made after I write this comment. Have a great day.

Amazing work Jeff!! :D

Pi zero 2 added with pocket chip handheld design could solve as the GPIO pins are moved on the top.

This will ve really helpfull As i want to make a handheld after i made a regular console

Just use some legs or anything through the holes to make the solder flow with it. To prevent legs or anything flying when clipping, just hold your finger at the end of the leg or pins when clipping them and they will not go anywhere. I guarantee that you'll be amazed how easy this is. No need to apply any preasure. I'm kinda baffled that so few know about this.