Welcome to DIY handhelds & portables
Building your own handheld is one of the most satisfying projects there is. This board is for homemade consoles and portables: Raspberry Pi Zero and Compute Module handhelds, Game Boy-style builds, ESP32 and RP2040 gaming gadgets, portabilised home consoles, custom PCBs in printed shells, and kits you have assembled and modded.
What belongs here
• Build logs and finished handhelds
• Planning: choosing a board, screen, buttons, audio and battery
• Shell design, button feel and ergonomics
• Software: emulation front ends, firmware for your own hardware, input and display drivers
• Portabilising, where an original console's board is trimmed down to fit a portable shell
What goes elsewhere
• Laptop-style portable computers: Cyberdecks
• Designing the circuit board: Electronics & PCB design
• Printing shells: 3D printing
• Microcontroller coding questions: ESP32 & microcontrollers
• Pi setup questions: Raspberry Pi & SBCs
• Other one-off gadgets: Custom tech & builds
Showing your build
1. Photos of it finished and with the shell open
2. A parts list: board, display, controls, audio, battery and charging
3. Wiring diagrams or schematics
4. Software used and how you configured it
5. Battery life and how it charges
6. Credit for the PCBs, shells and guides you built on
Respect design licences. Share only files you have the right to share and never reupload paid or non-commercial designs.
Batteries and safety are part of the rules
• Use lithium cells with protection circuits and a proper charge controller. A bare cell wired straight to a board is how fires start.
• Never puncture, crush or bend a cell, and do not force one into a shell that is too small. Retire any swollen cell.
• Charge on a non-flammable surface, and do not leave a new build charging unattended.
• Insulate everything and add a fuse or short-circuit protection.
• Use eye protection and ventilation when soldering, and wash your hands after handling leaded solder.
• Mind 3.3 V logic and keep a common ground across your boards.
Board rules
• No ROMs, BIOS files, links to them or preloaded SD cards, and nothing piracy-friendly. Play games you own.
• No selling builds or kits and no paid services.
• No malware.
House rules apply: be kind, English only (other languages are translated automatically), no spam, no keyboard mashing and no self-promotion spam. Use Report if something needs a moderator. This thread is locked, so start a thread for your build.
Dexter
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