• First tests + creating a plan

    Menkveld • 03/03/2024 at 17:32 • 0 comments

    It's been a while.

    I'll cut right to the chase by announcing that I'll be trimming the wii. Opposed to what I said in my previous post.
    The 2 main factors for this decision have been size and power. By trimming the board we can get rid of some of the LDO's the wii uses and replace them with switching regulators. Whilst also creating more room to work and place parts.
    The Wii itself needs 3.3v, 1V and 1.15V (and 5V for USB). All between 1-2 amps. I'll come back to this later!

    The display

    I've received the display driver (which supposedly uses the RTD2556 chip, but the labeling is lasered off) and got it to work with my display. Unfortunately it wouldn't take the YbPbR through the VGA port. I quickly stopped experimenting with this as I came to realize that it is better to use all HDMI. HDMI already includes audio (so I don't have to route that separately), meaning it's plug and play to use the onboard audio amp too. Another advantage of this is that I already wanted to have an HDMI out regardless. So now I can do the conversion from Wii -> HDMI once and then split the HDMI. One goes to the display driver and one to the external output. Simplifying the entire video part too.

    One obstacle though, is that the display driver uses a flat ribbon cable which I can't route through the hinge. Meaning that you'd see a fragile ribbon cable from the bottom shell to the display. For this I've re-used the original display's cable and remapped that to a 30 pin FPC breakout board using the datasheet (don't mind the ugly hotglue as its there to keep the cable firm). So I can nicely route the display cable through the hinge and place the driver board somewhere inside.



    The daughterboard

    The laptop itself came with a daughterboard. Conveniently housing the power switch, display hall sensor and an sd card slot + USB.
    All things that are especially useful here. The SD slot and USB port can be rewired into the original Wii. In case I need to use bootmii the SD slot is ready. The USB slot can be used to house games on one of those mini usb sticks. This way I can easily add or remove games from the USB. The hall sensor is a simple 3.3V sensor that outputs HIGH when the display is open and LOW when it's closed (magnet nearby). Later I'll explain the usage for this and the power button.


    The Keyboard
    The keyboard of the laptop would ideally be used to control the brightness and volume of the system.
    This keyboard itself has 26 pins, of which 18 columns and 8 rows. For this the best solution would be to use the classic 74HC595 shift registers to extend the output.

    The sensorbar
    The sensorbar of the wii is made of some 940nm infrared leds spaced out from each other according to my google skills. My current plan was to get some ledstrip and swap out the leds for similarly packaged 940nm IR smd leds. This could then be hidden in the top or bottom side of the bezel depending on what works best.
    However, I'm adding an external HDMI port so that you can easily use the system on a larger screen elsewhere. This wouldn't be convenient with the built-in sensor bar. Therefore I had the idea to somewhere add the original sensor bar's port so that you can plug in the original sensor bar. Making it more convenient to play elsewhere without having to find the perfect spot of laptop to get the wiimotes to work.

  • First thoughts

    Menkveld • 12/30/2023 at 22:05 • 0 comments

    First things first.

    I’ve started this project as I recently came across an old unused laptop (acer n15w4). This sparked an old idea I had; building a portable wii in the shell of a laptop.

    This log will describe some background information as well as the current ideas for this project.


    Therefore I started searching for a wii. As I was pretty sure I was going to ditch the dvd drive as well as modding it with homebrew I wanted to have a boot2 compatible wii. Not too uncommon to find. I ended up being given a semi-functional disassembled wii for free by an awesome dude. Unfortunately the display output was quite bad. One of the 220uF caps near the output were bad, this temporarily makes the wii output usable. I’ve ordered new ones. For the time being, this will have to do. Meanwhile I also desoldered all chunky ports on the top of the wii.


    The display

    The display in my screen is an LP156WHB-tpa1.

    This is a 1366x768 display driven by a 1-lane eDP signal. Then it was time for searching through AliExpress to find a board that will be able to drive this. It became a board with the Realtek RTD2556 chip. Which I outputs an eDP signal and i think it should be able to take YbPbR as input through the VGA port. Which will give better video quality than using the CVBS of the wii. Another advantage that this board offers is that it has built in output for speakers. However, it outputs to a 30p ribbon cable (which is nice and flat). I can’t route that through the hinge of the display. Therefore my idea was to repurpose the current display cable and to remap that with a ribbon breakout board, we’ll see how that goes. One other requirement I set; i want an hdmi out on this thing. So if I go somewhere, i can connect it to a larger screen. I hope that the wii can simultaneously output RGB and cvbs, using cvbs with an off the shelf av->hdmi converter and the rgb would be fed into the internal display.

    https://a.aliexpress.com/_EysdVrL

    Sensor bar

    A wii can’t work without a sensor bar. Therefore I was planning on getting 940nm (which is what the sensor bar uses iirc) infrared leds in the format of ws2812 leds. I could place those on an old ledstrip and put that in the bezel. I’d make 2 ledstrips, one for closeby usage (placing the leds closer together), and one for more distant usage (for when its connected to a display). But this will be something to worry about later.


    Cooling the wii

    I’ve ordered a small heatsink meant for hdd’s. This is only 4 mm high. I would then drill holes in it appropriately and mount it with those springy plastic screws or some bolts for the time being. I would possibly add a small laptop fan to blow some air through it.


    Fitting the wii
    The wii itself is quite large, but so is the laptop, having the wii in there still leaves quite some room.  Plus there is quite some space lost near the battery, lots of plastics that can go. I need to keep bluetooth for the controllers. I could trim it, but currently don’t see much benefits in doing so for the time being. Perhaps my views will change in the future if its becoming too size-constrained or I’d like bigger batteries. The laptop also has a daughter board, one containing the power button, a usb port, hall sensor and an sd card slot. All potential useful things. I’m keeping that there. I’ll wire up one usb port to the wii so I can have my games on a tiny usb. Which will be easily accessible to add/remove games from. As for the display controller board, ill need to do some fitting to see how and what. 



    Future plans

    I would also like to repurpose the 3s 42wh battery thats currently in there. I might add another cell, depending on how much room i’ve got left. This battery would need to be charged and discharged. I want this to be done over usb c pd, no proprietary charge brick or whatever. Another thing is; charging and using it simultaneously. A rough guess of the lcd + wii’s power draw will be 30w. So ill want to atleast be able to supply that. Fortunately both the wii and display controller...

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