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  Silent Hill

Inspiration

I saw a lot of versions of portable game consoles using a raspberry pi and wanted to create my own personalized version with a dualshock 2 controller as it is my favorite controller.

It plays games!

Raspberry Pi is great for emulating retro consoles and thus it is nice to create my own. It uses a custom GPIO input for my Dualshock 2 as well, instead of using a generic USB controller.

Why Dualshock 2, how is it different?

Dualshock 2 is a great controller! It also has revised mechanics to manually fix any stick drift which is long forgotten in modern day controllers which are either based around planned obsolescence : ( or too expensive. It is different from later revisions of PlayStation Controllers because it has a custom proprietary port instead of USB (which also fail in comparison to responsiveness and feel in comparison to this one).

How it's done

I used the retropie image for the Raspberry Pi 3 which is powered with a 20000 mAH power bank and is conected to a 5" TFT LCD Display. A dualshock 2 works as the input for the Pi using a custom kernel to map several GPIO pins to the electric signals coming from the controller. Six out of the eight signals coming from the controller are converted into input signals for any game being played on the system with a parallel shunt resistor between the power and data signal to provide stability.

Challenges Galore

This wasn't my initial plan, I actually wanted a Pi 4 to emulate PS2 games (not present in retropie) with dualshock 2 (Full circle) since it can handle better graphics. Unfortunately the hardware staff weren't able to find any of their stock from the start. The resistor needed to provide a stable signal from the controller was also something that I learnt from trial and error. I had to source a lot of my other hardware components like cables, power bricks, etc. from elsewhere because those weren't present in stock either and I wanted to spend no money making this thing. (I have only used items from the hardware team or the things that I have a daily use for like USB drives, controller, etc.) But all of this made the experience more fulfilling!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I did it and it works. The custom input registers and the games run really well with it! The thing that I am most proud of is that it works and also that having no teammates didn't stop me from persevering even though I would have appreciated collaboration but for that there is always a next time.

What's next for L.I.M.T.

Tons of stuff! I didn't cut any of the cables because I had to return them but I believe that the system can decrease in 50% by size if I solder the proper stuff. Use a composite display instead of HD because that is what retro games were designed for and look better on. Have a better power system, have a usable fan and definitely sound which is something that lacks presently because although the hardware stock consisted of Passive speakers, there were no amplifiers so the speakers just wasted space presently.

That is it, thanks for reading : ).

Built With

• python
• raspberry-pi