Gamepad PiZero - Joy Bonnet

Create a portable retro-gaming setup with the Pi Zero & this GamePad extension

Pocket-sized fun is the name of this game, with the Joy Bonnet of Adafruit Industries – the most fun Bonnet ever (no we didn't even think that was possible, either!). This Bonnet fits perfectly on top of your Raspberry Pi Zero (any kind) and gives you adorable hand-held arcade controls. Once you install the Adafruit's script onto your Pi, the controls will act like a keyboard, for easy use with any emulator or media player.

This Bonnet to work best with RetroPie/EmulationStation. On a PiZero you can emulate NES and MAME game (our favorites!) but other emulators that don't require more than 1GHz speeds will work OK too. By example, the N64 emulator won't work because it needs quite more power!

Best of all, this board is fully assembled - no soldering at all is required. You may need to solder headers onto your Pi Zero (or use press-fit headers) but once that's done you're ready to rock.

Accordingly to Adafruit Industries, you could also use this with a Pi A+ or B+/2/3 (in theory) but it wouldn't be very hand-held.

Since you'll likely grip the Pi during play, we strongly recommend a comfortable enclosure to go along with it! The Adafruit Pi Zero case works well and is nice and rounded for easy holding. A Mini HDMI cable will also make it easy to plug-and-play into your HDMI screen.

Raspberry Pi, HDMI cables, SD card, enclosure, and display not included. But we do stock all those things in the shop.

Technical details

• Product Dimensions: 65.0mm x 30.6mm x 18.0mm
• Product Weight: 10.8g
• Setup instructions, Source code, schematic, and EagleCAD PCB files are available in the product tutorial!