WELCOME TO PAIN!!!!!

do you see that? the corpses of the ds's. 6 died in the making.

this is the worlds first water resistant ds lite.

it was waterPROOF but that was an older version that broke during final reasembly


so heres the deal.

lets say you are the owner of this fine nintendo ds lite.

that's great! it's a fine console! 

however, it is very subseptable to water.

i lost my first ds to water damage.

now it's not what you think. it's the left shoulder button. ANY water that gets into there, even a drop, kills it. the whole thing.

heres why

this is (more or less) whats going on on the circuit board of a ds lite.
as you can see, the top left has a connector on it. this goes to the screen, and connects the microphone, speakers, backlight, wifi antenna, and screen. VERY IMPORTANT.

here it is going right to the microphone speakers backlight screen and wifi antenna.

as you can see, getting water on that connecter spells doom for your ds, as the entire top screen asembly stops working.

this is bad.

but like, it's probably fine. not like they would have that crucial of a part just sticking out of the ds or something right?

sholder button and the screen connecter behind it

ah.

oops. ignore all the black goop, ill get to it later. dont worry!

but as you can see, the single most important connection is just,.. exposed.

ONE DROP of water and your ds dies.

as you might imagine this is not ideal. on the right you can see how close

the connector is to the outside world.

worse, is online people suggest using water and putting a bit of it into the

sholder button to get it unjammed.

uhoh.


so what did i do. what genious plan did i, rowan come up with to make my ds invincible* to water?

FLEX SEAL. AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!

thats right! as you can tell from the diagram, a layr of rubber will stop water from breaking the ribbon connecter.

simple huh?

dont know why no one else has tried it.

well actually they probably did but gave up on the 5th broken ds lite.

oops

so. the idea is simple. smother the thing in flex paste, effectivley sealing it from water.

the reason it took me so many try's is because stuff kept braking

the final revision has significantly less flex sealing than any other version, as i wanted to play it safe.

heres the second to last version to illustrate how the flex sealing goes!


as you can see, i coated the thing.

now something you might be wondering, is why on earth i flex sealed more than just the connecter to the second screen! that seems like it's a lot of sealing and for not much benifit,

well ill tell you. whyle the goal was originally to seal that solder button up, i soon relised i could do much more! by putting super glue onto the right side power lights, those would also become waterproof.

and what if water leaked past? why not seal the whole board!

so i did. i also sealed the touchscreen to stop water hitting the cpu and to protect the screen

you see, if water got past the screen, it would instantly kill the ds. also, the screen could be sealed better. so that if your using a cooking app and have a bit of oil on your hands the screen doesn't break and neither does the ds. as you can tell, i went a bit ham on this. i wanted every port and every entrance to the console sealed. that way if there was ever a spill, ever a time i made a mistake, i wouldn't have to suffer for it.

sealing the screen is simple actually, just put a lot of flex seal and glue into the slot, and push the screen in! here

all you do is put glue in the slot and place the screen in!

that means the screen is now waterproof!

ish

well the touchscreen part is immune to rain shorting it out

and there you have it! this now is a ds that cant break from water to the cartage slot, i sealed that too but forgot to take photos, it cant break from water to the headphone jack, the power button, the screens and either of the shoulder buttons. while actually dunking this thing...

Read more »