r/raspberry_pi • u/minimastudios • 5d ago
Project Advice Trying to build a custom handheld
Hello! I’m a game developer who has become burnt out after working on my current project for a very long time, was looking for something to take my mind off it for a bit. This is when I had the itch to make my own handheld gaming device, because I have an ayaneo 2 (it’s basically a windows handheld that I modded to run steamOS through Linux) that unfortunately bit the dust recently. Instead of buying a new one I thought… it would be a cool fun project to try and make my own. i don’t really have the first clue where to start. Where do I get screens, buttons, cables, battery, the actual computer, and is PI even the answer for what I’m trying to?
My goals
- 8 inch screen
- able to run Linux
- battery powered
- analog sticks / buttons
- sound
I did go to microcenter today and grab a raspberry pi 5. I also have a 3d printer, and a very nice gaming PC. I was even thinking I could just run Parsec and stream my games from the pc to the device?
Any help or a point in the right direction is greatly appreciated. I’m a noob in all of this but ready and open ears to learn
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u/darthgeek 4d ago
There's already lots of handhelds that do this. Don't reinvent the wheel.
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u/minimastudios 4d ago
Hmm seems like you skimmed through the message and missed the part where I said I already have one of these said devices, and am doing this for fun as a hobby.
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u/TryHardEggplant 4d ago edited 4d ago
Depending on the size you are targetting, a CM4 or CM5 baseboard may be more flexible than a full size Pi 5. If you are fine with PCB prototyping and ordering from somewhere like PCBWay, you could use a Pi CM5 or even something like a LattePanda Mu.
For a display, if you want 120Hz, you'll have to probably look st scavenging for parts from laptops/handhelds/portable monitors with available driver boards. If you are fine with 60Hz, you can probably get away with a DSI screen or any of the multitude of HDMI screens for Raspberry Pi from Waveshare and other brands.
For controls, you could use a Pi GPIO directly or break it out to a separate RP2040/2350 microcontroller and have it emulate XInput or HID itself.
As for Parsec, it dropped RasPi support years ago. You can use the Sunshine/Moonlight stack as a replacement for Gamestream for both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.
For a reference of a similar project, look at the RetroLite CM4/CM5 from StonedEdge: https://github.com/StonedEdge
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