Repurposing previous electronics is a favourite pastime of {hardware} hackers. In spite of everything, simply because an previous system is now not helpful for its supposed goal doesn’t imply that it will not be helpful for another goal. Numerous transportable electronics from the previous 15 years or so have been changed by the smartphones that we now all carry round, so there are a whole lot of GPS models, MP3 gamers, digital cameras, and extra which can be accumulating in thrift shops and landfills all over the place.
These once-hot gadgets can now be had for pennies on the greenback (or by rifling by your spare elements drawers), so they’re a fantastic start line for passion initiatives. Russell Tabata occurred to have an previous iPod from 2004 laying round that had not seen any use for a really very long time. The shape issue of an iPod appears to be like an terrible lot like a handheld gaming system, so Tabata determined to show it right into a mash-up of basic Apple and Nintendo merchandise. The consequence — an Apple Recreation Boy.
That is truly fairly a easy factor to do. The open-source Rockbox challenge offers customized firmware for a variety of previous digital music gamers, together with many iPod fashions. And this firmware already features a Recreation Boy emulator. Flash the firmware, and the job is finished. Or no less than that’s one possibility, nevertheless it proved to be too uninteresting of an possibility for Tabata. For that cause, and since he needed to have the choice to run extra emulators as effectively, he tore the iPod aside and fully gutted it.
A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (📷: Nick Bild)
Out with the previous, and in with the brand new was the theme of this construct. The inner elements had been changed with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and a Waveshare 320 x 240 pixel LCD show wired into its GPIO pins. Don’t fear — the press wheel remained purposeful by attaching the FPC cable to a breakout board that made it straightforward to attach it to the Raspberry Pi. A 350 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery was included to energy the system, in addition to an Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 Primary for charging.
A Raspberry Pi OS Lite picture containing RetroPie was written to an SD card and inserted into the Raspberry Pi. Code from the prevailing ipodrpi challenge, which interfaces a click on wheel with a Raspberry Pi, was barely modified to extend the variety of obtainable buttons that can be utilized with the system. To complete off the construct, a customized Apple Recreation Boy startup animation was created, which each Apple and Nintendo are positive to be thrilled about.
The consequence undoubtedly appears to be like nice, and it’s a good approach to reuse an previous system — even when it’s only the case that’s being reused. It’s onerous to think about that the gameplay expertise is superb, nonetheless. Click on wheels are nice for navigating menus and controlling the playback of music, however had been not likely meant for gaming. There may be simply the only button within the center, which is in a clumsy place, and to simulate different button presses mixtures are wanted, like resting a finger on a specific section of the wheel earlier than clicking the button.
If in case you have a lifeless iPod, Tabata’s hack may very well be a good way to deliver it again to life. But when your iPod continues to be buzzing alongside superb, you could be higher off wanting into Rockbox firmware.