Ever since I got my PS Vita it’s been difficult to lay it down. However, sometimes it’d be nice to lay it down, connect it to a dock and play on the big screen. I could buy a Playstation TV, however, those things are way too expensive nowadays. Luckily for me, there’s a somewhat simple way to make a PS Vita Dock using a Raspberry Pi which is way cheaper! Here I’ll tell you how I did this and talk about the hurdles I found along the process, and ultimately tell you if this is something worth doing or not.
First, I went on Youtube and found a very good detailed guide on how to make the dock, but, I couldn’t find one for the Raspberry Pi 4. So, I followed this video until the part before he burned the VitaDock+ image on the SD card. What you need to do first is burn a Raspbian 64x image first. Afterward, you’ll need to copy the .dat, .fat, and boot files to your PC. You can then proceed to burn the VitaDock+ image and replace the files you just copied from the Raspbian OS.
Then, you put the SD Card into your Raspberry Pi, plug in the mouse, the keyboard, the HDMI/Mini-HDMI cable, and your Vita. And, if everything went well you should now be seeing your PS Vita Screen on your Monitor! If so, the first thing you’ll notice is that the image isn’t that bad. It’s not as good as the PS TV but for the price, it’s more than enough.
And one other thing you might notice is the input lag, if there’s some I don’t even notice it. I’ve played hours of God Eater 2 docked and everything feels smooth, however, I am playing with the PS Vita as a controller. I’m not sure if using a Bluetooth controller will add any input lag or not, just beware of that.
Going into this my biggest fear was without a doubt the input lag since before trying this I used a plugin to stream my Vita Screen onto my PC without the need of a Raspberry Pi but the input lag was too much for me. It wasn’t terrible but it was enough to make everything feel a bit awkward. Make sure you try it out too if it interests you!
So, should you build a PS Vita Dock using a Raspberry Pi? I’d say yes. Despite the image quality not being the best, it’s still a nice option to have for any PS Vita owner. Also, if you didn’t own a Raspberry Pi before you come out of this winning. Using the Raspberry Pi to make a PS Vita Dock is just one of the many things you can do it. You can just swap out the SD card and install RetroPie for example, or even a hub from where you can run apps like Xbox Gaming Cloud or Steam Play. And if you’re a geek like me you can just install Raspian Lite and start learning the Linux command line.
Let me know if you managed to build your own PS Vita dock, and if you need help with anything just ask and I’ll try to help as much as I can! And if you don’t own a Vita here’s why I got mine in 2022.
Anonymous
July 4, 2023 at 7:49 am
Is your vitadock still working? I will be doing this project soon.
Anonymous
July 8, 2023 at 8:41 am
Hi! Yes it still works and last time I checked they’ve updated the code for the Raspberry Pi 4 meaning everything runs natively by just installing the dock OS