Jaryd Giesen's Giant Game Boy Color Turns RetroPie Into a Fully-Functional Oversized Wearable
from hackster.io
Maker Jaryd Giesen has built a RetroPie emulator like no other: It's wearable, turning him into a walking talking playable Game Boy Color.
"[This was] built as a last-minute costume in a weekend," Giesen writes of the project, in which a Raspberry Pi, display, and controls are packed into a wearable costume styled after Nintendo's Game Boy Color handheld."Got 6 hours of playtime off it on 1 charge with reaalllllly stingy power saving, [it weighs] about 13kg [around 29lbs], very uncomfortable and bruised shoulders, 6/10 probs would make a little more comfy."
Inside the costume is a cheap 24" monitor capable of running from a 12V supply, a 12Ah 12V battery pack, a Raspberry Pi Model B+ with a 5V battery pack, and a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller acting as a human interface device and turning the buttons into keyboard inputs.
The costume itself is made from cardboard — and "a lot of hot glue and tape holding it together," Giesen notes — with tie-down straps to hold the weight and make it wearable.
For anyone looking to repeat the build, though, Geisen sounds a note of warning: "It was just a 12v monitor with a non-inbuilt power supply, [I] cut the DC side of the cable, spliced it to a plug for the 12v battery and that's about it," he explains.
"It is a bit sketch though, I have killed a monitor with this before because it didn't like when the voltage dropped below 11V, do at own risk..."
More details are available in the project's Reddit thread.
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