An 8BitDo Switch controller adventure
Recently I wanted to play Splatoon on PC using a gyro-based game controller rather than the large and awkward Wii U gamepad. Additionally I needed a replacement for my assortment of controllers in various states of jank and wear. After asking around on Fedi, I ended up ordering an 8BitDo Ultimate 2C BT controller. This decision set me down a rabbit hole of firmware research and hardware modding.
Fixing analog audio on the $2.58 HDMI-to-VGA adapter
I recently purchased an ultra-cheap HDMI-to-VGA DAC to hook up my Nintendo Switch to my CRT monitor and external speakers. Unfortunately its audio out jack produced serious noise problems on my audio mixer, as well as my PC's mic jack. I spent several days diagnosing impedance issues, prototyping filtering for the delta-sigma audio DAC, and reworking PCB components to produce the best quality audio achievable with the hardware.
Diagnosing video signal loss on Wii and GBS-Control
Last year I bought a GBS-Control to upscale and transcode game consoles for a VGA CRT monitor, and have been using and developing for it since. A few months ago, while playing my Wii in 480p with the GBS-C in passthrough mode (zero-latency non-scaling transcoder), I started getting random black screens every few hours. While I initially suspected a simple software problem, locating the cause of this bug spiraled into a multi-month adventure involving overheating chips, transmission-line time-delay measurements, and chasing RF interference.