Building My Switch from Scratch

As the reality of the ongoing pandemic settled in, I found myself in need of a new project to keep my spirits up. The Nintendo Switch has been a very hard unit to come by and I refuse to buy a scalped console, so I decided that I should try building a console of my own but one that I can use to play the games that I already own on Steam. This has been a very expensive project and it would have been cheaper to buy a switch outright but it's always more fun to build things yourself.

To start my latest side quest, I had to first find some kind of computer or board that could handle Windows 10. The reason why, is that I have already invested a large amount of money and time into my Steam account and I would rather not have to migrate to another ecosystem. My initial idea was the Raspberry Pi, but I saw that it didn't have the power that I needed.

After a while, I eventually stumbled upon a company called LattePanda. They produce a unit called the LattePanda Alpha which can support Windows 10 and some light gaming which is all I needed. They also make a 7-inch touch display that works with the LattePanda, another thing I needed. During my research on the unit, I found a YouTube channel called Project SBC. As luck would have it, they had just made a post talking about how and where to get the parts needed to make your own Windows 10 gaming device.

After I managed to save up enough money to fund the project, I set out to buy all the parts I needed. Some were easy to get my hands on since I could just buy them online on Amazon, but some were hard to find. The hardest one to find was a Molex connector for the battery pack that was discontinued, I had to visit around 4 different electronic hobby shops before I could find a store selling the connector and another that sold the pins that went in said connector. Another hard-to-acquire part was a custom case to house the whole unit. Thankfully I managed to find a company online that would print out your designs and ship them to you (although in rough shape and poor packaging).

Building this project was trickier than I thought. When the time to assemble the Molex connector came, I struggled. To make it, I had to take a very thin wire and crimp it into a very small male connector. The fact that I didn't have a crimper for something that small didn't help, but thankfully I managed. Thankfully I had the better foresight to buy extra parts as the first connector I tried making was rough, I had to throw it into the trash as it was pretty much unusable. The second one that I made was still a little mangled but thankfully usable.

Then came the next challenge, I had to learn how to solder. My father attempted to give me a crash course on it but I didn't start to pick it up until I put it into practice. Once I got the hang of it, I used my new skill to take an external USB soundcard and turn it into an internal sound card by removing the headphone jack and attaching a small speaker instead. I also managed to make a battery back by taking two LiPo batteries and soldering the cables to a PCB battery balancer board which I in turn, attached to the Molex connecter I had previously made.

Once I had all of the groundwork done, I could finally put everything together. I connected everything to the LattePanda, placed it all into the case, and booted it up I saw that the touch screen displayed a picture but didn't register touch. After opening it back up, I saw that I was unfortunately a bit too harsh during assembly. I accidentally cracked the part where the touchscreen ribbon cable plugs into, and now it won't make a proper connection. I can't afford to replace either the screen or the board so this is an accident that I'll have to live with.

With everything said and done, I was really happy with the finished product. I found some software to make the Nintendo Joy-Cons read as an Xbox controller, installed Steam, downloaded some games, and instantly had a lot of fun. Now that I have it in my hands I can see that I probably should have just bought the switch instead, but I'm still really happy that I took the time and make this awesome project. 10/10 would do it again.