Choosing Display for custom Pi gaming console

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kacpergards
 
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Joined: Tue Jun 08, 2021 6:54 am

Choosing Display for custom Pi gaming console

Post by kacpergards »

Hello all,

I'm looking to make a custom Raspberry Pi (3+) gaming console as a project to put on my CV (and for fun), but I'm having difficulty finding a display that offers enough open GPIO pins so that I can add all of the buttons I want. I've decided to use PS1 and N64 controllers for inspiration (even though I'll likely mostly play GBA games), both controllers seem to require 16 pins e.g.


N64 - 16 pins
2 x shoulder
1 x trigger (Z)
4 x DPAD
4 x camera (right analog)
2 x left analog
2 x A/B
1 x start

But all of the display options appear to have about 13 available pins? I'm mostly looking at the PiTFT Plus 480x320 3.5" TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi (SKU: ADA2441)
Which appears to have only the following GPIO pins available:

27, 22, 5, 6, 13, 19, 26, 21, 20, 16, 12, 23, 18.

Is there a way to access more pins for buttons, or a way of extending the Pi GPIO capabilities whilst using the display? Are there other more suitable displays to use?

Thanks for all of your help!

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blnkjns
 
Posts: 963
Joined: Fri Oct 02, 2020 3:33 am

Re: Choosing Display for custom Pi gaming console

Post by blnkjns »

Just grab an USB encoder, much easier, especially the programmable ones. I really like Ultimarc iPac, but you can also use an Arduino Leonardo/(Pro) Micro, or any M0 board from adafruit to make your own USB encoder. What can be nice with circuitpython on the M0 is that you could have the flash drive contain a txt file with the button to keyboard mapping, and change that on the fly.

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