I thought I should probably make my first post introducing myself and also include a recent project I have been working on. My name is Liam and I am a technical consultant for a major web hosting company, I get to play with servers all day and support enterprise clients.
I've joined Steemit to share my day to day, projects I'm working on and technical guides that I write up for documentation at work that may be useful to the Steemit community.
I will add more about myself down the line but let's look at the Retro Pi NES cartridge I've been working on.
Above is the completed cartridge, I created the label myself using a template from Google. It was pretty easy to find as a lot of people seem to remake game labels/restore old NES labels.
Here are the internals, this photo was taken before the label was added. I have a used a Raspberry Pi Zero W which includes onboard wireless which is great for SSH access to make changes to the Retro Pi configuration without having to take the cart apart.
The Raspberry Pi is running Retro Pi (https://retropie.org.uk/) which is an awesome retro gaming machine emulator built on Raspbian. The mircoSD card includes Retro Pi and a selection of ROMs for Nintendo Gameboy, NES, SNES. There are a lot more consoles/games I can add but I stuck with Nintendo for testing.
To connect the controls, power and HDMI required some off the shelf parts. Firstly I bought a Micro Usb HUB Adaptor from Amazon for around £6, there are plenty listed on Amazon and eBay. I then needed a Mini HDMI Male to HDMI Female Converter which again I just grabbed off Amazon.
The hardest part to source/create was the 3D printed case holder which I found files for at Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2251839) and used the 3D printer we conveniently have at work. I will be posting more about the 3D prints that we run at work most days.
Finally the NES cartridge itself was purchased from Amazon.
I almost forgot to mention the controllers, the PI wouldn't be much use without them! I purchased these from eBay, I opted for SNES controllers as they have enough buttons to support most retro consoles.
Anyway I wanted to keep this short and sweet to see what you guys think! If anyone is interested in me creating a step by step build guide then let me know in the comments and I will get on it.
- Liam AKA Gadgie