What if you could take your beloved Donkey Kong Bongos and play them anywhere? That’s the question I had, and the problem I wanted to solve. I documented the process in making them in the YouTube video below.
They are a lot of fun to play, and people enjoy playing them too. They are also “v1.0”, and I may come back to the project one day. I realised after making them, watching Time Rift Arcade, that there exists better SD card modules with seemingly snappier mp3 decoding, which would mean I wouldn’t be limited to 32khz wav files. The “dfplayer” that wasn’t a dfplayer but advertised as one, was just too slow to process the audio. Also, the speakers would do well with a ground loop isolator, and the design could be refined a bit more too. Reducing the cable lengths would be nice.
If it helps you in making your own, the code is available via Github here.
If you intend on using a “home made” battery pack, instead of possibly a store bought version that is USB and can be used direct into the Arduino’s USB port, I had to put VIN between the SD card and Arduino, just to add. If the battery goes to VIN on the Arduino, it ends up providing too little power to the other components.
This would have not been possible if it were not for the following people. I would like to thank NicoHood for their Nintendo library, and TMRh20 for their TMRpcm library. And, even though I ended up not using it, I would like to thank SukkoPera for their N64PadForArduino library.
This story was featured on Hackaday! Check out the article: https://hackaday.com/2024/06/10/donkey-kong-bongos-ditch-the-gamecube-go-mobile/
It was also featured on hackster.io:
https://www.hackster.io/news/hozkinz-takes-the-nintendo-dk-bongo-controller-for-a-walk-turning-it-into-a-portable-drum-machine-d4c7c67aaac7
AND it was shared by the official Arduino X/Twitter account!
https://x.com/arduino/status/1800520984136737030
It’s nice to have made something that people want to see, and maybe make themselves :).
If you’d like to support my endeavours, support is welcomed via Ko-fi @ https://ko-fi.com/hozkinz