The raspberry pi zero is a pretty small device and amazingly capable for emulating gaming systems. I wanted to try and build a small but playable game handheld.
This is running the wonderful RetroPie system https://retropie.org.uk/
Here I took a 1.44in 128x128 screen. Wired that to the pi zero over spi.
The controls are wried in over gpio, using small tact switches.
I threw on a 1200mah battery. This should give it a pretty nice battery life.
Wedged between the pi zero and the screen is a pam8610 audio amplifier. Wired down using a simple audio filter circuit. Based on the circuit from adafruit https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-basic-audio-ouput-to-raspberry-pi-zero/overview
This would get me some basic audio support. Also added a headphone jack in there too so I can plug in headphones vs using the little speaker I soldered on.
The screen is pretty small but it is playable. Gameboy games look the best as they are resized only some.
I have designed a case for this but haven't printed it yet. I'll post an update when this project is totally finished.
Im not sure I would play on this for any given extended time. But for a tiny system that allows for some fun gaming especially gameboy games this would be pretty fun.
