End of Summer Break Massive Update

So it's that time of year again where I have to put most of my projects on hold until I come back home for a break. It's a bittersweet time but I wanted to give a quick update on my current projects that I've made headway on but unfortunately will not get to complete for awhile. I can't be bothered to do individual posts because I'm busy packing but here is everything I have been working on this summer in a huge picture and video filled montage.

First up is my portable SNES project (it will end up barely being larger than a game cart). This starts with a short story so here it is. I found a "broken" retro duo at a used game store for $4 so I couldn't say no (I even made a short video on it up on my youtube account - sjm4306). I took it home and immediately tested it to find that the SNES side was still fully operational but the NES side was kaput. Ok this worked for me because I ordered a free sample of a small enclosure from OKW awhile ago that is almost the exact size of a SNES cart so I've been wanting to make a tiny portable SNES. So I set out to trim the retro duo SNES board to fit in said enclosure. Here are some progress videos.

Progress Video #1

 

Progress Video #2

 Progress Video #3

Progress Video #4

And that is where I left off. I need to find a cheap 3.5" composite lcd off of ebay which will work. The majority that I bought in the past seem to have rolling video issues with the video output of clone systems. So I will try and see if I can find one that works while I am at college. I plan on finishing this guy up over winter break after I come home.

And now for something a little different. The second project I've been working on is a 3V DC to 200V AC inverter so I can drive an electroluminescent (EL) panel to backlight an old gameboy pocket I have laying around.

Did I ever mention I love clear or translucent electronic devices ... anyway back to the update. I carefully removed only the back reflective layer on the lcd so I could backlight it. For the electronics I used a pic16f886 (I will end up porting the code to a smaller pic later after I get everything working) to drive an inductor based inverter. This generates around 200V DC which I then chop up to simulate AC with another output from my mcu. I will make a simple schematic and place it below when I get the time but for now here are some pics of it driving various EL panels I pulled from old electronics.

For fun I wired a voltage doubler to boost the output to 400V AC. It all works off of a 3.7V lithium ion battery and only draws about 25mA.

And that is where I left off. I still need to move on past the prototyping stage. I'll finish it later.

Next up I finally got major work done on my desktop speakers and class D amplifier. I pulled the speakers from a system someone threw out and the wood came from an old speaker cabinet with a dead subwoofer. I cut everything with a hacksaw and finished it with sanding blocks and my dremel.

I can be very methodical and organized when I try. Warning crap loads of pictures below.

And here is the TI TPA3122D2 stereo 10W class D amplifier to drive the show. I did a short test video.

I bought some sealant and spray paint for the enclosures which I still need to finish. I just need to mount the amp (I'm tempted to go with a digital volume and control system with a rotary knob and lcd screen) and then I will be done this entire project.

Finally my last project was to build a clock. But it won't be just any clock. I bought a bag of 200 water clear blue leds off ebay that I've been itching to use. 

So why not make a huge led matrix and make a clock that can also scroll text from a computer. The only problem is how to diffuse 200 leds by sanding each and every one.

Before

After

My solution:

1000 grit sandpaper and an electric drill.

Unfortunately I only got around to sanding half of the leds before I got sick of it so this project is on hold. I even got as far as trying out wood for the front panel.

But I opted for just mounting the leds on perfboard for ease of assembly.

I still have to finish sanding the rest and solder (oh what fun) all the leads to the board. Oh well I'll leave all that till I have enough motivation to finish this.

Finally (the truth this time) I would like to end off with a perler bead creation I made. I found some old beads my sister and I played with when we were kids so I found it fitting to make some video game sprite art to hang on my wall. Say hello to Samus from the original Metroid.

But it all ended quickly as I only had enough for one sprite. Oh well, maybe I'll pick up some more beads later so I can make an entire montage to tape to my wall.

And that is about everything I have done this summer (aside from work and taking graduate record exams). Phew that was exhausting. Before I finish I also want to let you guys know that I wont be making posts for TeardownTube episodes on my blog so if you want to see new episodes then subscribe to my Youtube channl sjm4306. With that out of the way I hope you enjoyed my adventures. Although summer is drawing to a close I have much planned for both my blog and Youtube so stay connected.

Super Joy 3 NES on a Chip Modifications

As a preface to the ongoing project below, as usual I was wandering Ebay and I happened upon a used Super Joy 3 for $8 so I couldn't say no. It is a "Famiclone" or also known as a NOAC (Nintendo on a Chip) meaning it is a cheap Chinese reverse engineered custom ASIC of the original NES. The beautiful thing is that is has a onboard Famicom 60 pin slot to accept original games. This can be rewired to accept US NTSC 72 pin NES games. So I set about making these modifications in order to build my own tiny portable NES. The only thing that stands between me and my dream is that I lack a 72 pin NES cartridge connector and I dont want to buy one if I can help it. So how did I work around this problem? Ingenuity!

I simply took an old ATA PC motherboard and desoldered the PCI connector slots from it with the help of my handy heat gun (warning it may look like a hair dryer but it gets MUCH hotter!) as I noticed it was about the right fit for the NES cart edge connector.

One problem is that the 72 pin card is much too wide so I needed to cut and splice two sockets together. Here I marked off where to cut by opening up a NES cart for reference and used a small hacksaw.

Looked like a good fit. But the PCI slot has many more pins than necessary and the alignment was a little off so some had to be removed with pliers to insure there were no shorts.

Both sides were now finished so I set about finding the right fit and tediously testing each pin with my multimeter. Overall everything fits like a glove.

Now I needed to add some plastic spacers to connect both sides and give some mechanical rigidity

 so I added some scrap black ABS plastic cut to size with my Dremel and glued with some super glue.

Finally I soldered the 60 some pins with IDE ribbon cable and rechecked the connections with my multimeter. Notice how the center five pins which would be located at the black plastic are not connected on either side. This is because these were brought out to the bottom expansion port of the NES which was never used to I left these pins out.

This is where I left off for now. I still need to remove the Famicom cart slot from the Super Joy 3's PCB and solder in my FrankenCart Slot. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything works. If not then this was still a good exercise in modifications. I'll update this page when I make more progress.

Update and Quick Wii Mod

Its been awhile since I posted my last project but now that I'm done with classes and finals I can get back to working of some unfinished and new projects. I've got plans involving retro game systems, toasters, lasers, motors, mirrors, hard drives, lcd screens, microcontrollers, and much more. It'll be a summer of hacking and making and I will enjoy every moment of it. So I hope you will too as I strive to bring more documentation and worklog videos to my site and youtube channel.

With that out of the way I decided to start off my summer by finishing a project that I've been putting off for quite awhile. A few years ago I found a $30 Wii at a thrift store that was in perfect operational condition. I instantly purchased it and went home to see about modding it. I was fortunate that it was a launch model which meant that the drive could read recordable discs unlike the newer D4 drives which could not. So I went and bought a Wiikey Fusion for around $40 and installed it in between the original drive and the motherboard. This device would allow me not only to play my backup games, but also play games off of an additional SDHC card.

From my understanding, the device works by patching the security code into the data bus when playing a copied game, or by emulating the original disc drive when play off of the SD card. Because it is a hardware Actel FPGA implementation, Nintendo can do very little in the way of software updates to restrict its use. The installation was very simple. I had to remove the internal disc drive, place the fusion in between the Wii's mainboard and drive, and attach the SD card reader to the fusion. This took minutes and only required a tri-wing and small phillips screw driver and a small pocket knife (instruction can be found online). I then fed the SD card wiring to the outside and mounted the slot on the outside. It stayed this way for the good part of a year.

Just yesterday I wanted to play some Skyward Sword and found the externally mounted card an annoyance and hideous to be honest. So I decided to internalize it last night and did the modifications this morning. The fruits of my efforts can be seen below.

The problem is that there is very little free space in the Wii where I could mount a SD slot. I wanted to leave the front facing slot untouched so I opted to mount the second slot on the back above the two USB ports. For this I need to move the Wifi antenna down a bit and tape it to the top of the air duct plastic. Then I used a dremel's drum sander to remove the plastic mounting standoffs from just above the two gamecube memory card slots right under where the SD card is mounted. This allowed me to mount the small board flat so it would fit in the small space. I then used hot glue to hold the slot in place.

Next I used my dremel with the cutoff attachment to cut a rough SD sized slot after doing some measurements and drawing the outline on the plastic with a pencil. I then finished the cut with a pocket knife to clean up the edges. I made sure everything lined up and found that the screw post just to the right of the slot was preventing the case from closing. I took off a bit of the plastic and then everything fit like a glove.

In the end the slot is still a little rough but it can be cleaned up later. But for now I have a hard modded Wii with an internal secondary SD card slot to play backups off of. Everything looks stock with the exception of the small slit on the back. I am very happy with how this turned out and now I need to get back to playing some LoZ :-)

Epson emp-s4 Projector LED Mod

Recently during one of my Ebay window shopping sessions I came across a listing for an 'as is' Epson projector missing a lamp. It was sold as is because it would turn on and then simply flash a lamp error and since the lamp is much more expensive than the projector as a whole, the seller undoubtedly decided to sell just the projector rather than purchase a new bulb. The best part was that he was willing to part with it for $25 with free shipping. As far as I could tell nothing else was wrong with the projector so I took the plunge.

While waiting for it to ship I read up on the control systems that these projectors use in order to control the ballast and lamp assembly. It looked like nothing more complicated than tricking an input to the main board to make the projector think a real lamp was inserted while in reality I would use a high power LED but more on that later. 

A week later it arrived in a huge box and as I hurried back to my dorm room I tore it open in excitement. It has three lcds, one for red, blue, and green. These three images are added together with the help of a lens to create the final image. The next step was to remove the ballast and figure out how which two wires from its control cable sent the lamp ok indication. I noticed that the ballast (the circuit board on the bottom left in the picture below), had a digital control circuit mounted vertically with three optoisolators near the i/o cable. These chips are necessary to insure that the digital low voltage i/o dont mix with the high voltages present in the rest of the ballast or else this projector might release its magic smoke. In addition two of the optos were facing left while only one was facing right. This hinted to me that the one lone opto was the output sent to the main board pictured in the upper right below to tell it that the lamp was operating perfectly fine so that the projector would stay on instead of shutting off and giving an error like it would without a lamp inserted.

So my solution was to short out the two wires that led to this opto (found with the help of my multimeter). I also needed to tape down the lamp door safety open switch so it could operate with the cover off. Now when I shone a flashlight into the lens input on the upper left of the image above I could faintly see an image being projected from the projection lens on the bottom right. Bingo, now I was getting somewhere. Now I needed more POWER!

I had bought a 30W 2000 lumen LED and 2A ac/dc driver in anticipation of this exact purpose a while ago so I dug that out of my parts bin along with some optical lenses to focus the light. I drilled into an old pentium cpu heatsink and attached it to the LED because after a few seconds it got rather hot. The fan came with the heatsink so I just wired it up in parallel with the exhaust fan seen below to the upper right of the picture. Then I used some framing wire to attached the glass lens to the assembly. This ensures that the light is concentrated and evenly dispersed into the small window to the left.

 Next I need a way to turn on and off the led because having the light on all the time when the projector was plugged in was no fun. I could have gotten fancy and dug into the buck control circuitry of my LED driver and done it that way but I opted for a more universal approach in case I wanted to upgrade the light source in the future. I patched a ac cable into the power input of the projector's main power supply board to gain access to 120V AC. Then I used a beefy relay pulled from an old computer battery backed ups (uninterpretable power supply). This small beast could handle 5A at 125V so it should be sufficient for the task. I placed out of the way it in a crevice in the bottom left of the projector as seen in the picture below. Normally when the coil is unenergized it opens the circuit so the LED is off. When it receives the signal from one of the other optos (I carefully tested with the projector open to see which control line to the ballast changed when the projector was turned on and off) it sends current through the relay switching the AC voltage into the LED driver thus turning the LED on. This way the hacked on LED would behave exactly like the original lamp: it turns on and off with the projector with no user intervention.

The LED driver in the protective plastic shield on top of the main power supply can be seen above in addition to the small optoisolator and flyback diode circuit I built to handle automatic relay control to allow the projector to turn on and off the LED itself.

I pulled ground and +12V for the relay coil from these two spots on the main board.

Finally a picture of the entire device fully modded to my liking. Its a thing of beauty.

Now for a test I played some video games on it for an hour and measured the internal temperatures to make sure that it would be fine. Here is a projected screen size of about 30" in pitch black room for your enjoyment.

And what game did I test I hear you ask. Only one of my favorites of all time ;-)

These images were about 30-35" diagonal. Not too bad. They look better in person its just that I had to use my phone cameras as I forgot to bring home my nice Sony camera for spring break. I can push the image to 45-50" and still be viewable in a pitch dark room but brightness degrades quickly. I'll see if I can get my hands on a 8000 lumen 100W LED and make this almost as bright as it originally would be with the stock lamp. Here is a quick video of the internals and it operating for those who are interested.

For now I will go ahead and call this hack a success. Now let me get back to beating Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the millionth time ...

If you have any questions feel free to comment below and I will do what I can to help.

Yet Another POV Clock Project!

Yep. I'm at it again. Yet another POV display (my third iteration in fact). I'm a sucker for things that move and blink rapidly. You can see my past POV projects in the Projects tab above.

This time instead of using a rotating disc or arm like I've done in the past I've opted to use a wand that oscillates back and forth to write out the image. I got the idea after seeing a commercial clock that uses the same mechanism. But you know it's no fun buying something ........ you have to make it to fully enjoy it!

So I stated off by testing out several methods to generate the oscillations. I took apart several harddrives to harvest the armature coils and magnets only to find that they couldn't bear the load of a long wand and still oscillate quick enough and with large enough magnitude to be useful. So I dug into my junk bin to see if I could find an idea.

I found a stiff yet springy piece of metal, a 'U' shaped plastic cut from a DIP tube, some coils from the brushless spindle motor in an old VCR I took apart ages ago, and two neodymium magnets from an old name tag. These would be the main components that would make up the armature and electromagnetic assembly. The springy metal is secured to the end of the plastic tube and the magnets are fitted on either side of the tube an inch or two above the metal. It looks something like this:

The leds are soldered to a little piece of perfboard and connected down the length of the tube with magnet wire. Here is a few pics of mechanism and leds working:

Warning!!! Physics lecture incoming: so here is the general concept of how the mechanism works. The springy metal is secured to the base, and the coils are mounted on either side of the two magnets on the arm. A microcontroller with an adjustable oscillator drives a transistor which switches the coils which are wired in parallel. This kicks the magnets and the armature every once and a while inserting kinetic energy into the system (it's essentially a forcing function and a mass spring system which can be described by a simple differential equation). By tuning the rate of the driving electromagnetic pulse to the resonant frequency of the spring and mass armature you can get it to sustain a large amplitude oscillation. I knew Physics would come in handy one day!

So, now I have a reliable oscillating mechanism as seen in this video:

And I have managed to get the leds all wired and working with a simple demo going:

So all I need to do now is add a photointurrupter to sense when the arm is at the starting position so that I can sync up the display and then code software for a character set and animations as well as add a real time clock chip. Oh and finish the case and solder the circuit. Don't worry I'll keep you all updated in the next upcoming steps for this project and I'm planning on releasing all of the code and schematics just because you guys are awesome. Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment of POV Clock!

UPDATE!!! I've used the electromagnetic pulse controller's led output as a sync signal to varying degree to display the ceremonious "HELLO" message as a first text demo as seen below.

Note that I am seeing some problems with the low refresh rate manifesting itself as an annoying flickering. I'll have to think something up to fix this problem. Until then!