My latest Gadget.. An emulator for old school gaming consoles built inside of an original NES Game Cartridge, Part 2

In the first part of this blog post, I described the hardware that I used to make my own old school gaming cartridge.  Now, I am going to delve into the software aspect of it.  For the cartridge to work, you need basically 2 things.  First you need an emulator, and second you need a game ROM.  The emulator I am using for my cartridge is actually a collection of emulators that can play multiple games, depending on which ROMs are loaded on to the memory card.  The collection I am using is called RetroPie.

RetroPie splash screen

RetroPie contains emulators for over 50 gaming systems.  Here is a list from the RetroPie website that shows what emulators are included.  With the hardware that I am using, it can probably only emulate systems up to the mid 90's.  But for the Super NES, NES, and Atari games that I have loaded on it it works great.

The second thing that you will need to have to make the cartridge work are the actual games themselves.  They are referred to as ROM's.   The ROM's are not included with RetroPie as there could possibly be some copyright issues.  If you do a google search, you can find all the ROM's for the games you want to play.

ROM's are placed onto the emulator by loading them onto a flash drive, and then inserting the flash drive into the USB on the front of the cartridge.  

The only thing left to do after installing the software, and copying ROM's to the emulator is to configure the controls.   The first time a controler is inserted into the cartridge, RetroPie starts a script that allows you to configure the control pad for use with the emulators.  I hope this has been informative and helpful.  If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Thank you,

Curtis Dean(The Gadget Geek)

My latest Gadget.. An emulator for old school gaming consoles built inside of an original NES Game Cartridge, Part 1.

I was looking around the internet, and I saw a blog post about something they called a Pi Cart.  After watching their video, and reading their descriptions, I decided to make one for my 9 year old son.

Here is a picture of my completed gadget.

What I did was take a very small single board computer called a Raspberry Pi Zero, and place it into a game cartridge from an old Nintendo Entertainment System(NES).  The NES was one of Nintendo's most popular gaming systems from the late 1980's.  

A picture of the internals of the cartridge.

When I viewed the original video, the author used hot glue to hold the components of the build in place. I opted for a stronger glue, as sometimes kids can just be a little rough on the things that they use.  The USB hub and cables along the front are all secured to the case with a glue called E6000.  I opted not to secure the pi zero to the case, so that the micro sd card can be removed, or that the pi zero could be salvaged from the case should my son loose interest in the emulator.              

The connections on the cartridge.

The connections on the emulator consist of an HDMI port for viewing the emulator on your TV.  3 USB ports for attaching either a game controller, keyboard or USB drive to load games onto the emulator. And a Micro USB port that supplies power to the Raspberry Pi Zero and USB Hub. 

There are a couple accessories that are needed:

The Game Controller.

The Power Adapter.

Source list for the parts required:

I received the cartridge itself from a co-worker of mine(thank you Jose).  The game controller, power adapter, and USB hub were ordered from Amazon.com.  The HDMI and Micro USB adapter were purchased from ebay.  The Raspberry Pi Zero and Micro SD card were picked up from Micro Center in Tustin.  The total cost of the parts to make the emulator was less than $40

That just about does it for the hardware portion of the emulator cartridge.  In the next part I will get into the software aspect of what it takes to make this work.

A little history of the Gadget Geek

Hello,

My name is Curtis Dean.  I have been playing around with gadgets and electronics since I was about 13.  As I have gotten older, I have discovered that I like to tinker with electronics.  In the last 30 or so years that I have been toying with technology, I have been the go-to guy for friends and family when they have issues with their electronics.  I have often described myself as a gadget geek.  And hence the namesake of this blog.