Introduction: Power Glove Pi

About: I'm 17 years old, and i like doing projects.

This is a Nintendo Power Glove with a Raspberry pi zero inside. I'm using the original D-pad, A, B, Start, and Select for the controls.

Things you will need for this project:

1) A Nintendo power glove.

2) Raspberry pi zero with SD card and all cables & adapters.

3) Soldering iron with solder.

4) Some kind of cutting tool, I used a Dremel.

5) Some small wire and a 330-ohm resistor.

6) Craft knife or razor blade.

7) Black electrical tape and hot glue.

8) Wire strippers/cutters and a Philips head screwdriver.

9) Tiny drill bit with drill, I used one for my Dremel.

Step 1: Taking the Power Glove Apart

1) Cut the cord coming off the back.

2) Turn it over and take the 4 Philips screws out. The front panel should come off.

3) Open the panel and cut the wire going to the sensors in the front and the wires going to the cord in the back.

4) Take 5 more Philips screws out holding the main board in place.

5) Take the board out and cut away any remaining wires, diodes, resistors, and everything else. But DO NOT get rid of the RED indicator LED on the board.

This would be a good time to clean the power glove.

Step 2: Cutting

1) Take the Dremel or a cutting tool, and cut a section of the board out where you will fit the Raspberry pi into. Focus on the top 12 buttons and use my picture as a guide. You will want to keep the D-pad, Center, A, B, Start, and Select buttons. Go around the hole with electrical tape so you won't have any shorts and make sure the Raspberry pi fits snug. Put electrical tape on the rubber pad for the 12 buttons your not using.

Step 3: Drilling and Trace Prep

1) Using a small drill bit, drill holes right next to the traces shown in the picture. NEXT to, not on.

2) Using a craft knife or razor blade, scrape the protective layer off of the trace so that it turns gold or shiny right by each hole.

3) With some solder and a soldering iron, put some solder on each trace to get ready for soldering.

Step 4: Soldering

The picture attached will show you what button it is, and where the wire needs to be connected to the trace.

For wires, there is a common ground and one each for Up, Down, Left, Right, B, A, Start, and Select -- 9 traces/wires in total.

1) Get wires about 3 in long and strip the end of them. Put them through the holes and bend the wire so that its touching the trace. Solder the wire to the trace.

Now, i would skip to step 5 (Software) to get the software to test before soldering for good.

2) Connect the Up, Down, Left, Right, B, A, Start, and Select wires to GPIO pins on the Raspberry pi. Connect the common ground to the ground pin on the pi.

If you don't know where the GPIO pins are, use the image above.

GPIO - Controls

23 - Up

27 - Down

22 - Left

17 - Right

19 - Square (B)

16 - X (A)

12 - Start

6 - Select

Pin 39 ground - Common ground

3) Connect the LED light. Go to the red LED by the D-Pad. The side with the straight edge (not the round edge) is negative and that goes to a 330-ohm resistor and then to pin 6 (Ground) on the pi. The round side will go to pin 8 (GPIO 14) on the pi.

If you have the the LED in your build, to get it to work you need to enable the GPIO serial port. You can do this in Retro pi or by editing your /boot/config.txt file and add the following line:

enable_uart=1

When your done soldering, glue the pi onto the other board.

Step 5: Software

1) Get Retro Pie "https://retropie.org.uk/download/" and unzip it.

2) Using Win32diskimager "https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/". Write Retro Pie to your SD card.

3) Put the SD card in your Raspberry pi and make sure it boots Retro pi fine. Take the SD card and put it back in you PC.

4) Installing your GPIO Controls.

-Install Notepad++ if you ever want to change the GPIO Pins from software.

-Download the modified Retrogame zip file Here and unzip it.

Once extracted, you’re going to see a file called (setupcontrols.bash) and a folder called (otherMod)

Copy both of them and paste them into the boot drive that appeared when you inserted the microSD card into your computer.

-Now, remove the micro SD and insert it into the Raspberry Pi. Boot the Pi into RetroPie and press F4 on your attached keyboard to exit into the command line.

Now the software need to be installed. To do that, you need to type one command:

sudo bash /boot/setupcontrols.bash 

Follow the prompts to install. The last step asks whether you want to reboot, hit Y and enter to make it happen.

If you want something more in depth on this step go here: "https://othermod.com/gpio-buttons/"

Step 6: Case Work

1) Take a Dremel or Craft knife (I used a Craft knife) and cut slots out for the 2 Micro usb and the one Micro HDMI.

Step 7: Your Done!!!

1) Put 2 of the 5 screws back into the mother boards and the 4 main ones back on and your done. Go play some games because your playing with Power, Nintendo Power.

Sources:

-https://othermod.com/gpio-buttons/

-https://howchoo.com/g/ytzjyzy4m2e/build-a-simple-raspberry-pi-led-power-status-indicator

-https://www.instructables.com/id/Power-Glove-20th-Anniversary-Edition/