Raspberry Pi 4 Game Console

prusaprinters

<p>The box is designed to house a Raspberry Pi 4, one “sleep” button, and 9 console buttons to provide basic console functions (e.g. menu navigation). There's also a clip in the top to hold an optional Raspberry Pi case fan.</p><p>The sleep button is a 16mm momentary pushbutton. For example: <a href="https://www.adafruit.com/product/1479">https://www.adafruit.com/product/1479</a></p><p>The remaining buttons are bulk 7mm pushbuttons: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KX24WWS">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KX24WWS</a></p><p><strong>NOTE</strong>: While it's <i>technically </i>possible to play a game using these buttons, I wouldn't recommend it. They're intended primarily for menu navigation. You're much better off attaching a USB game pad or similar controller.</p><p>Some things you're going to need to get this thing going:</p><p>4 screws (3mm / #4 by 15mm / 5/8") similar to these: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GDXW0A6">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GDXW0A6</a></p><p>RetroPie: <a href="https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/">https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/</a></p><p>GPIOnext: <a href="https://github.com/mholgatem/GPIOnext">https://github.com/mholgatem/GPIOnext</a> (for mapping the console buttons)</p><p>A power button script: <a href="https://github.com/Howchoo/pi-power-button">https://github.com/Howchoo/pi-power-button</a></p><p>A Raspberry Pi case fan and heatsink: <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-case-fan/">https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-case-fan/</a></p><p>You're also going to need to do a lot of wiring to connect the buttons to the GPIO pins. And there'll be a lot of messing around with RetroArch settings to get everything mapped just right (I'm still trying to get it set up the way I like).</p><p>For my setup, I've mapped the exit button (upper left) to both “close content" <i>and</i> “enable hotkeys” so that just pushing the button exits the game, rather than some key combo.</p><p>One caveat: The case fan control uses a GPOI pin, and can interfere with GPIOnext. To avoid this, use the "gpionext set pins" command to list the pins you're using for console buttons, and <i><strong>only </strong></i>those pins.</p><p>I'm currently using this with a Logitech gamepad and a trackball I put together (<a href="https://www.printables.com/model/247472-trackball-controller">https://www.printables.com/model/247472-trackball-controller</a>).</p><p>I've included a couple keycaps for the 7mm buttons. These are totally optional if you'd prefer to label the case instead.</p>