Hi it's Matt.
This is the Game Boy Camera from 1998, and this is the box I’ve just made to drag it
into the 21st century by letting me share its tiny pixelated photos
onto my phone in just a matter of minutes.
[Fanfare]
Yes you heard that right, it's a Game Boy accessory, made by Nintendo,
it was my first ever digital camera, I’ve had it ever since. And I bloody love it!
It can take and store 30 wonderfully tiny greyscale photos,
but Nintendo never made a way of getting the photos off the camera,
other than printing with the Game Boy Printer, or just deleting them entirely.
That's '90s technology for you! Then again, even my camera phone in the mid-Noughties,
that was incredibly difficult to get photos off that!
It’s taken me two decades of trying, but I’ve finally made a way to take photos off
it quickly while out and about! I’ll show you how it works, how I got here,
and what’s inside this magic white box.
[music plays in background] Using it’s really straightforward.
First, plug in the Game Boy Camera. Turn it on, and wait a minute.
When it appears, connect to the Gameboy Camera WiFi network,
go to gameboy.local in your web browser, and all your photos will be visible on the
webpage and can be downloaded. And if you scroll through you can see the
photos you’ve previously downloaded too!
Here’s how I got to this point.
Around 2013, I found a really long-winded and unreliable way of getting photos off my
Game Boy Camera. It used an old third party backup cartridge,
and a USB Flash Cart which was designed for playing homebrew games on real hardware
This meant I could finally back up and transfer off the time-lapse video of a rocket launch
I filmed on it in 2001 that I really didn’t want to delete, and then start using it again
to take photos!
A few years later I started looking for what I’d consider the Holy Grail, in the Game
Boy Camera World: A way of taking photos off it while out and
about, so I’m not limited to just the 30 it can store on its own.
I'd seen a couple of portable devices, but they relied on emulating the Game Boy
Printer and and you’d have to print each photo to
transfer them one-by-one, and that would take longer than the long-winded
process I was already using.
In 2018 it got better! I found the GBxCart RW, a USB Game Boy Cartridge Reader.
Which made transferring the photos off only a two step process!
But then I had a brainwave: I could make the whole thing portable using a Raspberry Pi
Zero (tiny computer) and a portable battery bank, and then do it while I was out and about!
Game Boy Plugged into Board. Board plugged into Raspberry Pi Zero.
Battery: let’s turn it on Turn on the powerbank, which should turn on
the Raspberry Pi So that’s on.
That’s now going to take the photos off this, then turn on a wifi network
And then we go to 192-it’s got it there. Tadaa!
Here’s a photo I just took now
Which brings me to the beginning of this year 2021, when I got a 3D printer.
This meant I now had the ability to design and make a case for it, so the Raspberry Pi,
the cart reader and battery were all in one box.
Let’s have a look inside.
There’s A raspberry pi zero w Which I programmed to automatically act as
a wifi hotspot, and download photos via the Gameboy Cart Reader whenever it’s turned
on. They’re connected together using a USB micro
OTG cable, which i shortened, and shaved down the plastic round the connectors to fit in
the box. And then for power, an Adafruit Micro Lipo
Battery charger, a battery and switch.
I’m still very new to 3D design and printing, but I managed to make the case in Fusion 360.
I also saved some time in the design process by only printing small sections of the case
every time I changed it. That way I didn’t have to wait for the whole thing to print
to realise I’d done it wrong, and then design it again.
The button is a top hat shaped print that sits on top of the switch and pokes through
a hole in the case.
And finally it needed labelling, so I did it with what I had to hand:
I printed the text on an OHP transparency sheet, cut a hole for the button and superglued
it onto the case.
As you can probably tell this is a passion project, I’ve made it for me, and I don’t
intend to make them to sell.
But the details of how I made it are available!
The code and setup information for the Raspberry Pi are on GitHub which i’ve linked below,
Along with a list of the parts, where you can get them,
and the 3D files for the case, if you want to print your own.
That’s all for now, but if you make one of your own, please tag me!
I’m @MattGrayYes on all the socials, I really want to see how you get on.
Ooh it got dark while I was filming this!