In this episode I take a look at an old Palm computer I found at a local thrift store for a few dollars. Have I finally met my match: a device which I cannot dissect? Watch to find out.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
TeardownTube episode 4 - Palm Tungsten T2
Here's the fourth episode of TeardownTube. Subscribe, comment, and like if you want to see a different device
dismantled every week. The videos are not detailed instructions for
repair but rather just for entertainment. Enjoy.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
TeardownTube episode 3 - PSone
Here's the third episode of TeardownTube. Subscribe, comment, and like if you want to see a different device
dismantled every week. The videos are not detailed instructions for
repair but rather just for entertainment. Enjoy.
Link: TeardownTube - episode 3 - PSone
In this episode I crack open an old playstation one I scored at a thrift store a few years back. Its modchipped and awesome when paired with the 4" screen attachment.
Monday, July 23, 2012
TeardownTube episode 2 - Gamecube
Here's the second episode of TeardownTube. Subscribe, comment, and like if you want to see a different device
dismantled every week. The videos are not detailed instructions for
repair but rather just for entertainment. Enjoy.
In this episode I take a look inside an old Gamecube that was collecting dust in my closet. And then I put it all back together.
Friday, July 13, 2012
TeardownTube episode 1 - Floppy Drive
I've started a new show on Youtube called TeardownTube and just posted the first episode. Join me as I tear apart and comment on various devices for your entertainment. Subscribe, comment, and like if you want to see a different device dismantled every week. The videos are not detailed instructions for repair but rather just for entertainment. Enjoy.
In this episode I dismantle an old 3.5" floppy drive I pulled from an old tower PC. Ahh ... the smell of vintage computer hardware.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Fixing a PS3 Controller that Wont Charge
Recently I found a cheap used PS3 at a local Game and Trade that was closing its doors. It's the older "fat" 80GB model. Everything was in pretty good condition except for the controller. It was obviously the store demo controller and thus was unbelievably disgusting. I had to handle it with gloves on. I entirely disassembled it and disinfected every part of it. There were a few things wrong with it:
1) I never eat or drink while playing for good reason (there was dried soda and chip fragments inside) along with mass amounts of gunk amassed from every hand that touched it.
2) There was a screw missing and the bottom tab snapped off so it was obviously opened before.
3) The analog nubs were missing their rubber tops.
4) I didn't realize it until the controller had low battery, but it refuses to charge.
I easily remedied the first two with a thorough cleaning and a screw from my screw collection. The third will be repaired with some help from my friend EBAY. Finally the last one was a little tricky. I think the charging issue might be due to some liquid damage. I measure the voltage when plugged into a USB adapter and noticed that instead of a nice 5V, I was getting a unstable 2V. This explains why the PS3 complains about too much current being drawn when the controller is plugged in. I figured I had nothing to lose so I went about trying to fix this problem.
Ultimately I figured that it would be far easier and cheaper to add in my own charging circuitry than track down the short circuit culprit and replace parts I likely did not have on hand. I started with a chip I am very familiar with and had in my parts box, the max1555. This tiny five pin smt chip handles safely charging the lithium ion battery and even has an open collector output that is on when charging and off when done. It accepts USB 5V or DC up to 7V or so. I etched my own board and decided to make things difficult for my self by making it tiny (it ended up being not much larger than the sot23 package).
I simply opted for a quick and dirty approach by covering a single sided copper clad pcb with permanent marker and scrapped the areas I wanted etched with a scalpel.
1) I never eat or drink while playing for good reason (there was dried soda and chip fragments inside) along with mass amounts of gunk amassed from every hand that touched it.
2) There was a screw missing and the bottom tab snapped off so it was obviously opened before.
3) The analog nubs were missing their rubber tops.
4) I didn't realize it until the controller had low battery, but it refuses to charge.
I easily remedied the first two with a thorough cleaning and a screw from my screw collection. The third will be repaired with some help from my friend EBAY. Finally the last one was a little tricky. I think the charging issue might be due to some liquid damage. I measure the voltage when plugged into a USB adapter and noticed that instead of a nice 5V, I was getting a unstable 2V. This explains why the PS3 complains about too much current being drawn when the controller is plugged in. I figured I had nothing to lose so I went about trying to fix this problem.
Ultimately I figured that it would be far easier and cheaper to add in my own charging circuitry than track down the short circuit culprit and replace parts I likely did not have on hand. I started with a chip I am very familiar with and had in my parts box, the max1555. This tiny five pin smt chip handles safely charging the lithium ion battery and even has an open collector output that is on when charging and off when done. It accepts USB 5V or DC up to 7V or so. I etched my own board and decided to make things difficult for my self by making it tiny (it ended up being not much larger than the sot23 package).
I simply opted for a quick and dirty approach by covering a single sided copper clad pcb with permanent marker and scrapped the areas I wanted etched with a scalpel.
Size comparison to a US quarter.
Man its hard taking pictures of something so small.
All etched and ready to have marker removed with the help of some acetone.
Close ups after soldering in the components with a penny as a reference for size.
I proceeded to test the circuit by hooking her up to a lithium ion battery and measuring voltage and current. Crossed my fingers and held my breath just waiting for a small poof of failure which luckily never came.
Just shy of 4V, looks good.
Charging at around 100mA looks safe.
Finally I needed to desolder (used a hot air gun, Warning: HOT) the USB female jack from the controller board and lift the V+ power pin so it would no longer power the broken internal charge circuitry and instead hooked into my own charger. I had to be quick but gentle with the hot air so I wouldn't damage anything.
Pulled socket and used desoldering braid and some alcohol to clean up a bit.
Cleaned up the socket as well and lifted the V+ pin.
Replaced and soldered down.
Now all I needed to do was solder three wires: ground, V+ in, and battery+.
Battery+ is orange and ground is brown. I used the gnd pad conveniently silk screened for me and plugged the battery in to find the battery+ (red wire on the battery).
V+ in from USB is white and soldered to the lifted pin
Quick test to make sure everything still works. No magic smoke released here.
Taping wires so they wont interfere with the battery. I used some more tape to attach the charging board to the front under the SONY emblem.
Battery inserted.
All put back together and charging status led visible as an orange glow on the front.
Outcome: Success! Now I just need to replace the nubs and I'll have a good as new controller without having to shell out another fifty or sixty bucks. I already had all the parts so it cost nothing and only took around 2 hours in all. When not charging, the controller looks stock. I feel accomplished and saved a controller from being scrapped. Now I can get back to gaming once it charges up.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Digital Magic 8 Ball
Is this one of the coolest projects I've made on the spur of the moment?
I remember I used to have a magic 8 ball key-chain as a kid. I loved asking it the stupidest questions and seeing it magically divine the answer. Either that or it just repeatedly responded with an anti-climatic ask again later. One day the magic just dried up ... literally, the purple fluid in the cavity evaporated! Randomly remembering this device, I decided on the spur of the moment, after learning how to seed and use the rand() function in the standard c library, to make my very own digital magic 8 ball (which would be impervious to drying up, but still vulnerable to releasing its magic smoke).
I've moved on up from the pic16f84a to the 16f886. I know it is overkill for most of what I use it for, but it is great for prototyping because of the large program memory, abundance of peripherals, and gpio. Plus I love using the internal oscillator for anything that doesn't require an accurate clock.
The pic starts counting on start up until the user presses the button. This count value (which in effect is somewhat random) then seeds the pseudo random number generator. The number that it comes up with then determines which of the 20 replies the magic 8 ball will give. When the button is pressed again, the user is returned to the main screen asking for another question.
I ported the code I wrote is assembly for the 16f84a which handles spi serial communication in software (I know I could have done it in hardware, but this way was more fun). Then I needed a function to initialize and clear the ram of the oled display. In addition, I ended up having to write a function which would handle parsing strings and generate the data necessary to write them to the graphical display. I wrote most of this months ago and reused code but for a different application. I haven't really optimized anything but everything works and I am happy with it.
The only way to cheat the system is to hold the button or hit it immediately after the main screen loads, which ensures that the count value would be zero, which when seeded into rand() would produce the same value, which will always give the same reply.
I plan on using smt components, ditching the oled pcb, using a CR2032, and polling another button via interrupt so that I can put the micro to sleep and wake it for software power control. The entire device should be not much larger than the 3cm oled (aka perfect as a key-chain). I might think of using an accelerometer or tilt switch and put the oled in the window of an actual magic 8 ball. It would look really cool glowing eerily from the surrounding dark window, magically predicting the future. Might add a clock and fit the entire device to a watch strap so I can wear it around, tell time, and make life altering decisions with it. Maybe I'll add some simple games. Who knows? Either way it will be a great gift for my sister.
Ok ... there's one more question I need to ask it ... magic 8 ball ... will I ever become a famous electrical or computer engineer?
ps. A friend suggested I also make a miniature 20 questions ... hmmmm interesting ... maybe later ...
pps. Since summer is here expect many more projects :-)
ppps. I might make a digital fortune cookie with hundreds of different fortunes. Not too hard if I reuse most of my current code.
Here are the C and hex files for the project: Magic 8 Ball files.
Update: Added Schematic
If you have any questions feel free to shoot below. Enjoy
The magic 8 ball is always correct!
I remember I used to have a magic 8 ball key-chain as a kid. I loved asking it the stupidest questions and seeing it magically divine the answer. Either that or it just repeatedly responded with an anti-climatic ask again later. One day the magic just dried up ... literally, the purple fluid in the cavity evaporated! Randomly remembering this device, I decided on the spur of the moment, after learning how to seed and use the rand() function in the standard c library, to make my very own digital magic 8 ball (which would be impervious to drying up, but still vulnerable to releasing its magic smoke).
I've moved on up from the pic16f84a to the 16f886. I know it is overkill for most of what I use it for, but it is great for prototyping because of the large program memory, abundance of peripherals, and gpio. Plus I love using the internal oscillator for anything that doesn't require an accurate clock.
This is the prototyping breadboard I use for everything with the icsp header in the middle, a built in li-polymer battery on the back and integrated charge controller at the top. Ignore the 8 pin dip rtc above the pic, I might add a clock feature and make my magic 8 ball a watch.
The pic starts counting on start up until the user presses the button. This count value (which in effect is somewhat random) then seeds the pseudo random number generator. The number that it comes up with then determines which of the 20 replies the magic 8 ball will give. When the button is pressed again, the user is returned to the main screen asking for another question.
I ported the code I wrote is assembly for the 16f84a which handles spi serial communication in software (I know I could have done it in hardware, but this way was more fun). Then I needed a function to initialize and clear the ram of the oled display. In addition, I ended up having to write a function which would handle parsing strings and generate the data necessary to write them to the graphical display. I wrote most of this months ago and reused code but for a different application. I haven't really optimized anything but everything works and I am happy with it.
The only way to cheat the system is to hold the button or hit it immediately after the main screen loads, which ensures that the count value would be zero, which when seeded into rand() would produce the same value, which will always give the same reply.
I plan on using smt components, ditching the oled pcb, using a CR2032, and polling another button via interrupt so that I can put the micro to sleep and wake it for software power control. The entire device should be not much larger than the 3cm oled (aka perfect as a key-chain). I might think of using an accelerometer or tilt switch and put the oled in the window of an actual magic 8 ball. It would look really cool glowing eerily from the surrounding dark window, magically predicting the future. Might add a clock and fit the entire device to a watch strap so I can wear it around, tell time, and make life altering decisions with it. Maybe I'll add some simple games. Who knows? Either way it will be a great gift for my sister.
Ok ... there's one more question I need to ask it ... magic 8 ball ... will I ever become a famous electrical or computer engineer?
.................................................
... fine then if you don't want to answer me, who needs you anyway ...
ps. A friend suggested I also make a miniature 20 questions ... hmmmm interesting ... maybe later ...
pps. Since summer is here expect many more projects :-)
ppps. I might make a digital fortune cookie with hundreds of different fortunes. Not too hard if I reuse most of my current code.
Here are the C and hex files for the project: Magic 8 Ball files.
Update: Added Schematic
If you have any questions feel free to shoot below. Enjoy
Monday, February 20, 2012
POV display v2.0
Major Update: Its been awhile since I started this rebooted attempt at a POV display. Since then I've moved on up to the pic16f886 and etched a smd pcb for the controller. Here are some pics and a test video with some more explanations. I'm hard at work coding software for it now that the hardware is almost complete. More to come.
Home etched board. I drew the traces with a fine tipped permanent marker.
Another view.
All soldered and ready to program the firmware over the in circuit serial programming header.
Everything secured and wired up. Note the penny I am using to balance the rotor.
First test is a success!
Looks even cooler in the dark.
Update: I've finally gotten around to coding a full character set, string manipulation, and scrolling text animation. Unfortunately I'm heading back to university and wont get to touch this project until winter break. I will keep up churning out software projects though (its the only thing that keeps me sane between classes). Plus when I get settled I will start up TeardownTube episodes again. Don't worry I have a lot planned.
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