Nintendo DS IPS/AMOLED Screen Mod

[MikeyLORR]

Hello, I've wanted to start a project and develop an IPS/AMOLED (or just brighter and more visible in general) screen for the original Nintendo DS that improves the screen brightness and clarity, much like the existing IPS screen mod for the GBA SP. I tried to see if I could use the same or similar screen as the GBA SP mod and use that on a DS, since they have similar sizes, but they seem incompatible given the schematics I've looked at (different number of pins on the ribbon cables). I will likely need to develop my own screen, which I would love to try, but it will likely take a lot of research. While I recently received my bachelor's degree in computer engineering, I have not took on a project like this and feel pretty clueless on how to go about this. I wanted to ask for any help here, whether that be resources, sites, documents, or personal help. If anyone is able to contribute, please let me know. I already have some schematics of the Nintendo DS and GBA SP, as well as some hardware programming documents. I really hope to make this project come alive soon, any and all help is appreciated!

After writing this post, I've noticed an existing thread which discusses adaptor cables to connect a DS Lite Screen to a GBA. If I can figure out a way to use the same concept on the original DS, I may have just what I'm trying to accomplish. If anyone is more knowledgeable on these adaptors, any information is very appreciated.

(I just made this account for this post, so I am unable to post links, but I will attempt to share those later. A link to the previous thread I mentioned, as well as the GBA schematics and GBA and DS hardware programming.))

 

[master801]

Most of the IPS screen replacements made for the GBA and even the Sega Game Gear requires the use of an FPGA or CPLD to translate the pixel data.

It's not a simple "adapter".

Unless you're familiar with low level electronics and how to program an FPGA or CPLD, this is a not an easy task.

 

[MikeyLORR]

Most of the IPS screen replacements made for the GBA and even the Sega Game Gear requires the use of an FPGA or CPLD to translate the pixel data.

It's not a simple "adapter".

Unless you're familiar with low level electronics and how to program an FPGA or CPLD, this is a not an easy task.

I have some experience with FPGA programming, I think it's definitely worth trying.

 

[IC_]

Regarding the difficulty of working directly with the DS screen signals and requiring FPGAs / advanced circuitry to convert to a different standard, one could theoretically use existing DS Capture Boards (which are pretty compact and simple to install, especially the older versions), and then get the video signals in a straightforward way from the USB connection of the DS capture module to then connect to the modern IPS/AMOLED displays of your choice, probably with a suitable microcontroller inbetween that will communicate with the capture board over USB and then communicate with the displays using their protocol, which would probably be easier to work with than the protocol of the original DS screens, or at least fully and openly documented with libraries already available for microcontrollers. However, there's also the question whether any common microcontroller that's not absurdly powerful and expensive would be able to handle two video feeds at 60 frames per second, even at the relatively low screen resolution of the DS.

This of course would be an extremely stupid solution for a product to be manufactured in any quantities, and it would probably also be a bit hard to fit all of this inside the normal DS shell. There could also be problems with latency and video quality which could completely disqualify this solution for some people. But it might just be the solution for a one-person project for someone who'd really like to have a single IPS/AMOLED DS unit, and is fairly knowledgeable in electronics and programming, but not knowledgeable enough for advanced FPGA programming/design, advanced circuit design, and assembling PCBs with tiny tolerances of SMD components.

I unfortunately don't think the DS Capture Boards have their source code (FPGA design) available, but if they did, or if there's a similar open project, then adapting the "DS Screen -> USB" converter to a "DS Screen -> modern display protocol of choice" converter could be a good project to get into more advanced FPGA programming, and would obviously be a lot simpler than starting from scratch.

Links:
DS Capture: https://3dscapture.com/ds/
DS Capture Board photos and install guide: https://3dscapture.com/ds/install/index.html
Old capture board version - photos and install guide: https://web.archive.org/web/20190719223936/http://www.3dscapture.com/ds/install/index.html

 

[MikeyLORR]

Regarding the difficulty of working directly with the DS screen signals and requiring FPGAs / advanced circuitry to convert to a different standard, one could theoretically use existing DS Capture Boards (which are pretty compact and simple to install, especially the older versions), and then get the video signals in a straightforward way from the USB connection of the DS capture module to then connect to the modern IPS/AMOLED displays of your choice, probably with a suitable microcontroller inbetween that will communicate with the capture board over USB and then communicate with the displays using their protocol, which would probably be easier to work with than the protocol of the original DS screens, or at least fully and openly documented with libraries already available for microcontrollers. However, there's also the question whether any common microcontroller that's not absurdly powerful and expensive would be able to handle two video feeds at 60 frames per second, even at the relatively low screen resolution of the DS.

This of course would be an extremely stupid solution for a product to be manufactured in any quantities, and it would probably also be a bit hard to fit all of this inside the normal DS shell. There could also be problems with latency and video quality which could completely disqualify this solution for some people. But it might just be the solution for a one-person project for someone who'd really like to have a single IPS/AMOLED DS unit, and is fairly knowledgeable in electronics and programming, but not knowledgeable enough for advanced FPGA programming/design, advanced circuit design, and assembling PCBs with tiny tolerances of SMD components.

I unfortunately don't think the DS Capture Boards have their source code (FPGA design) available, but if they did, or if there's a similar open project, then adapting the "DS Screen -> USB" converter to a "DS Screen -> modern display protocol of choice" converter could be a good project to get into more advanced FPGA programming, and would obviously be a lot simpler than starting from scratch.

I do have a DS capture card already (the older version with USB micro), although this setup seems way too elaborate for what I'm trying to do. I can still look into using the capture card as a converter of sorts, and potentially have this transferred elsewhere. But I would still like to focus on having an actual screen replacement, even if it involves starting from scratch and learning a lot of concepts that I'm not as familiar with. Do you know of any similar projects I could follow to get an idea of the procedure? I will continue to do my own research as well.

 

[IC_]

I do have a DS capture card already (the older version with USB micro), although this setup seems way too elaborate for what I'm trying to do. I can still look into using the capture card as a converter of sorts, and potentially have this transferred elsewhere. But I would still like to focus on having an actual screen replacement, even if it involves starting from scratch and learning a lot of concepts that I'm not as familiar with. Do you know of any similar projects I could follow to get an idea of the procedure? I will continue to do my own research as well.

I don't really know of any other projects that could help you with this goal. The only other thing that comes to my mind is the DS lite having a hidden hardware composite video output, but the quality of that would be abysmal. It would be very helpful if you had the source files for the FPGA design of the capture board, but I don't know if Loopy would be willing to give it to you even if you wanted to pay for it. You can look for other research documents on the DS video interface. You might also have to do some reverse-engineering of your own. You'll almost definitely need a real oscilloscope, a really cheap or DIY one with low sampling frequencies would not work.

For now, you could look for good new IPS/OLED display models that are in active supply from the manufacturers, that have a simple and/or well-documented video interface, and would be suitable in dimensions and screen resolution. Then you could learn how to connect and drive such displays with a suitable microcontroller such as a Teensy (models from the Arduino, Espressif or RaspberryPi brands would probably not be suitable), or even already learn how to program an FPGA to drive such a display. This will be the simpler step since you'll be working with well-documented parts and interfaces.

Once you reach that stage, it would be fairly straightforward to connect your microcontroller or FPGA that's driving the new displays to the USB data bus with the video stream of the DS capture board. Having this working would definitely give you a lot of initial satisfaction, but then you could continue trying to make a true video signal converter (DS -> modern display) with the progress you've already made.

 

[PoroCYon]

DS capture cards' hardware/FPGAs are kind of Old and obsolete, so making new stuff with it is hard, because finding these chips is difficult, getting the toolchains for them to work is difficult, and so on. You'd probably be better off making a new design with a more modern FPGA or microcontroller to then drive the IPS/AMOLED with. In my post in this other thread I've listed a few candidate chips that could be suitable, but the constraints are a bit different here (more pins needed to drive the IPS/AMOLED, and no USB, of course). So an iCE40HX or MachXO or an STM32F7/H7(??) could work.