This time it’s a super simple board because the GBA SP includes a li-ion battery and all necessary electronic components for charging, of course! However, the connector for charging is a proprietary connector… I think someone who has installed in his/her GBC and GBP video game consoles a USB I think they will also want the GBA SP with this modern connector!

If you don’t know. The GBA SP lost the 3.5mm jack connector. I think only this video game console from Nintendo doesn’t have this connector. The alternative for extracting out the sound was using the same connector used for charging.

• When you connect the original charger, you can charge the GBA SP
• When you connect a Nintendo audio adapter, you can user earphone or external speakers.

This new board I made support both functionalities:

• If you use a USB cable connected to your computer, power bank or charger, your GBA SP will charge as normally.
• However, if you use an anagogic USB-C to audio adapter, you will be able to hear your games as well!
  I tried these 3 USB-C audio adapters and they work perfect: (First and second are good quality)
  • One+ adapter
  • Huawei adapter
  • Generic adapter
    
  • USB-C Splitter (Audio and charging at the same time)

This second point is important because I have seen 2 or maybe 3 models of this kind of board which only supports to charge it, but not the audio feature.

For sure, something bad has to have my board. Because it is super small, and it requires to solder all pins (6+2) that means it will be a bit hard to solder for beginners at soldering.

Anyway, it’s time to see it!

How you can see on the pictures, the board is really tiny. The board only includes a USB-C because it’s a simple adapter, no electronic else is required.

To be honest, in the first two version I made, I tried to solder the two resistors that the USB-C requires for charging, however, when I put them, the internal speaker didn’t work. After doing many tests I reached the conclusion I can’t solder the resistors because they interfere to the audio cable select pin from the GBA SP. Both resistors are necessary to support all kind of USB charges. I have tried many kinds (computer, laptop, power bank, normal charger, fast charger):

Power banks:

Mobile chargers:

Laptop chargers (Levono charger doesn’t work, but it has problems whit more things like my Xiaomi bluetooth speaker):

I have also done a test with the Huawei charger and the USB-C tester I have. The GBA SP battery was almost empty and I think it charge at the same speed as the original charger but I’m not sure because I needed to use many adapters for this test, maybe the adapters decreased the quality and the speed.

On this another video you can see a better audio test than the video on the top of the article:

Nintendo USB-C Charging Kit

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Both boards, GBP and GBC mainboard, are too different. That means I have needed to make a new board and match it to the GBP mainboard.

Kit boards

The Game Boy Pocket has the original jack power connector on the top of the board, the rest of the electronic components are on the opposite side. So, it has required to make this kit with 3 different boards.

USB-C board

The first board include the USB-C connect with 6 pins (only power) and two resistors. This board has to be soldered on the top side of the GBP mainboard, under the select bottom. There is a few space for this board. It’s connected with the main board using the original pads of the GBP board, that is not an inconvenient because after removing some unnecessary components some track will not have any signal and they will be free for our own use.

Main board

Last board and the most important includes the electronic components for charging the battery and control the over-discharge of it. It has to be solders on the bottom side. Same as the GBC board, this board includes the TP4056 for charging and DW01A for controlling the over-discharger.

Light board

This board include 3 LEDs/lights: white when the GBP is turn on, red when the battery is charging and green when it is full. However if we are playing at the same time that the GBP is connected by USB-C the light colors change: pink (white+red) if you are playing while the GBP is charging, or light green if you are playing while the battery is full.

This board is optional and has to be connected by some cables. There are two possible installations:

If your GBP has the red light, you have to connect the light board to the main board using 3 cables.

Otherwise, you have to solder 2 cables more (GND and VCC). Of course if your GBP doesn’t have light the case don’t have the light hole either, so you will need to replace de case, or minimum the screen glass and make a hole in the original case.

How to install this kit

Clean the Game Boy Pocket mainboard (optional)

Since I only had my own GBP, I have needed to buy another one for testing the board. (I don’t want to modify my own Nintendo collection, not for now).

After looking for the cheapest one I was able to find one for 27€. It was dirty of dust, sand and grease. It also has the screen broken, but I don’t care it because I just interesting in the mainboard and this works well after cleaning everything, including the power switch.

It looked like this before cleaning:

And this after cleaning:

Remove unnecessary electronic components

Because the Game Boy Pocket USB-C Charging Kit will replace the jack and AAA battery, we can remove some electronic components for making space on the board. These components are:

The first version of Game Boy Pocket don’t have red light. However, if you want to add this functionality, the light board include 2 extra pads to connect to some place.

Solder the USB-C board

The USB-C board must be the first one to be installed because the pads are under the board.

1. 1. After you have removed the GBP jack connector, you have had to clean the holes because you don’t want them full of tin.
   2. You can preesolder the light board 5V pad, only one!
   3. Center the USB board in the correct place, be sure you can see the pads of the USB board through the GBP holes.
   4. Put your solder iron in the VCC hole and the tin will melt.
   5. Check the board still centred and then.
   6. Solder all pads.
   7. Remove the excess of tin because the main board have to be soldered here too.

Solder the main board

The main board has 3 points where it has to be soldered to the GBP board. The first point on the top takes the 5V from the USB-C. The second point in the middle, provides the energy from the battery to the GBP. And the last one is the ground/GND.

Solder the light board (optional)

The light board can be a bit hard to solder because it’s so tiny. You can do these steps for soldering it easy.

1. 1. Pre solder both button pads
   2. Put the board on its place.
   3. Put flux in the opposite side of the LED
   4. Hot both pads and you will see how the pre soldered pads melt.

Make the case hole for the USB-C board

You will need to make the jack hole a bit bigger because the USB-C requites that.

You may also need to remove a bit of plastic in this place because some cases can not close well (they touch the electronic of the kit)

Make the case hole for the main board and battery

I haven’t token any picture when I was making the hole, but you can see how if you cut very well the plastic, you can put a 1500mAh battery (the same as my GBC)

Documentation

Nintendo USB-C Charging Kit

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It’s a stupid example but I have needed too many hours because I have had problems to make it work at the same time, because both need the SPI protocol for working. Finally, it was as much easy as how to connect the SCK and MOSI pins at both modules.

The development board is a TTGO T8 V1.8 ESP32-WROVER-B, the screen include the GC9A01 driver.

The development board is not the most I like but it has MicroSD reader, an ESP32 WROVER, and an auto-boot feature. I want to make my own board with these specifications so this development board is perfect for trying everything before making my board.

This is the code of the video:

The original example from the library needs the JpegClass, I have needed to modify it a bit because it was made for receiving a file name, but now it is receiving a file directly:

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These videos cover some methods of replacing the AA batteries for using something to allow to charge the GBC. The most popular option is using the TP4056 chip which can charge a battery by USB. The way to implement this chip can be using a module from AliExpress or with a personalized circuit.

It’s this second option that most caught my attention, but I discarded it because it use a MiniUSB connector. Then, I decided to make my own board from scratch.

I was clear about some things from the beginning: I wanted the connector for charging was a USB-C. The PCB could be soldered over the original one to avoid to solder any cable. I also wanted the case needed to be cut the less possible. Then, I designed something like this:

The idea wasn’t bad, but everything was too cramped, and the measurements weren’t 100% correct because I couldn’t get the exactly size of the GBC circuit. I also wanted to put the status LEDs on the original red LED pads.

After arriving to Spain and being bored again, I retook the circuit design. The essence is the same but this time I could take the measurements and make my pcb fit perfect on the original pcb. I also checked all conectors (USB, battery, power pads) are in the correct place.

Thanks to the GBC data sheet, I could remove all unnecessary components on the GBC circuit as resistor, capacitors, etc. That helped me to get more free space and distribute better the components for charging the battery.

Finally, I ordered the manufacturing of the boards. I used this time the JLCPCB company because the cheap stencil service, I wanted to try it!

It was the first time I did a order to this manufacturer of PCBs, and to be honest I don’t have anything to complain. The price is so cheap, the shipping time is so fast, only two weeks! After ordening my boards they contacted me because I did something wrong, so I could fix and sent to them the fixed files.

On the following pictures you can see the PCB with solder paste that I applied with the stencil (the paste was too warm, so it was a bit liquid). With some components on the board. When I was soldering it. And finally when i was trying the board.

Before soldering the new board, I had to remove the unnecessary components, clean the excess of tin and clean the board:

That is how the new board looks like on the original board. It is solder using 6 points: 4 from the original power connector (only for holding strong the new board) and 2 more for GND and VCC. The battery connector is on the top of the board, this allows to connect and disconnect the battery without needing to open the case.

Finally a short video of how it looks like:

Nintendo USB-C Charging Kit

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I still remember doing this with the Nintendo Wii was extremely easy, there was only necessary to solder a small microcontroller with 8 legs a few cables. However, now, it has become hard in the last years.

Last month I did the installation to three Nintendo Switch, two of them in Lite version and another the normal one.

I can just say, doing the installation is hard an require a good knowledge at micro-soldering. How I wrote in the previous article about starting to learn how to solder, I can tell you it won’t be enough and you will need good tools and a microscope.

For this installation you need a solder iron with a tip of 1mm or less, good tin with flux or/and a syringe of flux. You also need a microscope to be able to see the capacitors and pads where you need to solder the board with the CPU, maybe a $10 microscope can be enough, you have to know you will need something to see because we are working with micro-soldering. On this picture you can see how small it is:

About the chip, it’s the SX Core and SX Lite (Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite, respectively). I think there is only this company available on the market. Because the alternative is to have a video game console with an old firmware with some vulnerability, however this chip can work on any model.

The kit includes the main board where is almost all electronic components, and also one or two flexible PCB you need to solder on the CPU and on the PCB (The model for Lite require 2).

The first flexible PCB you need to solder have to be over the CPU, yes! it’s crazy but this is the place where you have to solder it! There are some capacitors around the centre of the CPU, in two of them are where the flexible PCB is joining with the CPU, so you will need to solder 4 pads like that:

It looks difficult and it is, but in my opinion the difficult is the second part that includes soldering the second flexible PCB (only for the Lite model). Everything is super small and near to other things, the PCB can move super easy and if you want to use the three pads that this board includes to keep on the place, you must solder them well because on they depend you can or not solder the pads on the Nintendo PCB.

I didn’t do on my Nintendo Switch Lite, but I did on another Lite. Soldering the anchor points can help you, yes, but only if you are able to solder well, otherwise you will hate them!

After soldering everything you just need to turn on your video game console, if the led that the main board include is blinking blue and finally it stay green, you did perfect. However, if the colour stay red you did something wrong. Also, if you can see an angry MicroSD on your Nintendo Switch screen, it’s good. You just need to copy the software of the chip in your MicroSD.

You can see the first installation I did on the header of this article. The second one was on a Nintendo Switch, and the third one on another Lite:

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Some examples of this can be a Christmas tree, a clock, a robot, etc. I decided to buy a LED light spinner because I had never had one and I wanted it.

This kit include everything you need except the button batteries, so you need will need three CR1620:

I don’t know which model of microcontroller includes de kit, but it’s controlled with the switch button. When you press the switch the lights turn on and off, so I guess the chip is working with interruptions. About the light effects, these change automatically after some seconds because this kit doesn’t include any sensor to know when you are spinning the device.

The kit includes as well a link of the product where you can see on YouTube the steps to make it and some advices to solder it well.

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