The Nintendo DSi was released in November 2008, and boasted a new feature not formerly seen on the brand’s handhelds—it had two cameras, inside and outside. It let the console take photos, a feature rather fitting given it was an era in which phone cameras had become the norm. Only, it wasn’t so good out of the box. However, [gavff] recently found an accessory from way back when that aimed to make the DSi’s camera somewhat more capable.

For some reason, the console accessories company Nyko decided that that the Nintendo DSi deserved an 8x optical zoom lens. Never mind that the console’s cameras were limited to a resolution of just 640 x 480 pixels, it was deemed important that the handheld have the ability to capture images of things that were somewhat farther away. The lens mounted to a specially-designed case that fit around the original DSi’s shell. It’s not particularly clear what the intended use case was, but if you wanted to expand the capability of your DSi camera, this was one way to do it. You could get some pretty sharp photos if you knew what you were doing, as [gavff] demonstrates in the video.

The video then takes things farther, putting an even larger, sillier telescopic camera lens on the DSi. [gavff] used it to capture a photo of the Moon, with the benefit that unlike modern smartphones, there’s no AI faking the results. The video also touches on the goofy Mad Catz flash accessory that used the DSi’s charge port.

We love seeing silly lenses on cameras that were never supposed to host them. Also, isn’t it wonderful that our ancient “Nintendo DS Hacks” category is getting some love again after all this time? We’ve actually published a bunch of DS hacks this year.

There comes a point where you have to acknowledge that your beloved console is out of date and– barring the odd homebrew title– won’t be playing new games ever again. You’d think that Nintendo’s 2008 DSi handheld would be in this category, but [gavff64] has a workaround. What if the odd homebrew title streamed games over the network?

At its core the RNDS-Stream is just decoding an MJPEG stream from a server on a Linux PC, giving you the content of an X11 or xWayland window with relatively low latency at around 15-20FPS. So while you won’t be entering any e-sports tournaments, you can enjoy more relaxed, casual games like Counterstrike. Well, at least there’s no audio streaming yet, so you won’t have to hear the other team’s trash talk. That ought to make it more relaxed.

Sound may come; the project is very much a work in progress, and also a showcase of RubyNDS, [gavff64]’s Ruby-based homebrew framework for the DSi. Why Ruby? Why the DSi? For no other reason than [gavff64] likes both of those things.You can observe it in action after 4:48 in the video embedded below– just be warned, it’s editing is tuned to a TikTok-using audience and won’t be to everyone’s taste. Don’t let videography get in the way, though, because the hack is the thing and it’s up on GitHub for all and sundry under an MIT license.

The DSi is no stranger to hackers, having gotten its first flash cart the year of its release. In spite of that, we’ve seen surprisingly little homebrew for the dual-screen device, this augmented reality app being an exception.