soulgun16
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Hello, I am currently making a project where I am using an arduino as a midi device and am going to wire in a gameboy with it enclosed in the device and use CC commands to control everything.  I was looking into some powering options and trying to decide how to go about power distribution, I know the DMG technically uses 6v but it sounds like it can run off of 5v, and the GBP seems to use 3v and most people I have been reading about are fine with 3.7v powering.  I figured I would jump over to the community as I know there are many people here with a lot of specific information on this.  Essentially the arduino nano I am using appears to run at 5v, I was hoping to use a 3.7v lipo  to power everything but after finding out the arduino needs 5v I was wondering what suggestions people may have for a singular power option.  I have a spare DMG and GBP that both have broken screens I can use so really whatever battery/gameboy combo works best I am okay with.

Ultimately I wanted to confirm some of these values I was reading and see what people suggest, thank you in advance!

Duck
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London, UK

you can get 5v from the link port (it's sometimes tricky to get a link cable connected to it properly, but you can always mod one...)

I have an arduinoboy that is powered this way, so you could use this to power the nano.
I think you can just use a step up converter to get from the lipo to 5v (but maybe do some googling as to one that is suitable to use with the lipo?).

Duck
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London, UK

also, I'm reasonably sure (hopefully someone can confirm for 100%) the 6v from the psu/batteries is regulated down to 5v anyway?

This is probably useful - and says the Pocket steps up the 3v from the batteries to 5v internally which I think probably suggests the gameboy architecture is based on 5v too...

https://handheldlegend.com/blogs/news/v … s-a-primer

Last edited by Duck (Jul 30, 2020 10:33 am)

soulgun16
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Duck wrote:

you can get 5v from the link port (it's sometimes tricky to get a link cable connected to it properly, but you can always mod one...)

I have an arduinoboy that is powered this way, so you could use this to power the nano.
I think you can just use a step up converter to get from the lipo to 5v (but maybe do some googling as to one that is suitable to use with the lipo?).


Even though I knew most of what was in that article it was a good read, thanks for the input!  I realized now that I forgot I am using 2 arduinos since one is my arduinoboy and the other is my own for the midi (I'm not proficient enough in programming  enough to combine the two lol).  That being said, I looked into some options and one easy method that may work for me is I found a powered USB hub I could plug into a batter or power bank and distribute power to each with a simple usb.  Figured i would share to see if anyone had thoughts on that method, also is it more efficient to downvolt or up? Because I could get a 9v and downvolt  it.  Logic feels like lowering the energy would be easier than boosting.