Filed under: Displays, Features, Gaming

Every so often, that console-modding Benjamin Heckendorn wanders away from his lair at benheck.com to share some interesting projects with Engadget.

Recent Xbox 360 updates have allowed the system to spit out resolutions up to 1080p, and with the new HD DVD add-on drive there’s more reason than ever to use a high quality VGA signal instead of the more standard 3-cable component. However there’s a bit of a catch — VGA cables for the 360 cost about $40. According to my calculations, that’s about 2 pizzas and a case of beer less to game with. WE don’t know about you, but we find that a pretty scary proposition — yours buddies that swing over for game night probably do too.

In this How-To we’ll describe how you can turn your existing Xbox 360 video cable into a “multi-out” device capable of VGA. You don’t even need to hack inside the Xbox itself, just the cable. Total cost is around $7, including the Radio Shack project box shown above. Ready to save some cash? Let’s get in there!

The following mod allows you to use a standard Xbox 360 cable to create a special VGA cable that would normally be purchased separately. The reason we can hack the standard cable in this way is because Microsoft was kind enough to put every pin in the normal connector, even ones the cable doesn’t use. Standard plugs on other systems (notably the PS2 and Gamecube) only have the pins the plug needs.

Thank you Microsoft.

Main Tools You’ll Need:

• Small pair of tweezers (very useful).
• Metal cutting pliers, tin snips, something along those lines.
• Soldering iron. A lighter powered, 15 watt range one is best.
• Solder… WITH lead works best. We know that sounds awful but it’ll help you “convert” the lead-free solder inside the Xbox connector and make it much easier to work with.
• Multimeter, with circuit testing option. The kind where if you touch the two probes it beeps to indicate a connection.
• Hot glue. Oh yeah, that’s right! Don’t leave home without it.
• Small, thin flat-bladed screwdrivers, a larger flat-bladed screwdriver.
• X-Acto Knife
• Desoldering iron (optional, see instructions).
• Dremel (optional, see instructions).

Where is the “Parts I need” section, you ask? We’ll cover them specifically later on, depending on which type of VGA cable you’d like to build. (Breakout box, as shown, or straight VGA cable depending.)

Alright let’s get going on this sucker.

Step 1 - Take Apart Your Xbox 360 Video Cable

The Xbox 360’s video cable assembly doesn’t use screws but luckily it’s still pretty easy to take apart. Here’s how:

• Insert a small, thin screwdriver at the seam shown in the above photo.
• Press in and towards the label (also as shown) to get around the inner lip.
• Once you breach the lip you should hear a crack. You’re in!
• Make a few more breaches like this next to each other, then insert a larger screwdriver as shown below. Twist it and the casing should pop open nicely.

Next, insert the big screwdriver at the seam near the main cable, and twist the case open at this place as well. You can now pull off the bottom portion of the plastic, and then pull the guts out of the top portion. The “TV / HDTV” switch will fall out at this point, save it if you ever plan to revert the cable to its original form (which is becoming less and less likely as this progresses).

Use your small screwdriver to pry up the metal near the TV/HDTV switch, as shown below.

Now pry the metal up and right off the optical audio jack, and bend it down on the right side, as shown below. You can now pull the main piece of shielding metal up away from the rest of the jack. Snip the shielding free of the main cable using your metal cutters.

Now you should come across a piece of material that looks amazingly like electrical tape. (Don’t worry, we’re sure it’s certified next-generation electrical tape.) Remove it and the jack should now look like the below photo. On the left you can see the little circuit board containing the optical audio port and TV/HDTV switch, on the right is the connector itself with all the wires going to it.

Next we need to remove the circuit board from the metal. It is held down by 3 tabs. You can desolder the tabs with a desoldering iron, or wedge your small screwdriver under the board and pry up as you heat the tabs with the regular iron. Since everything on the Xbox 360 uses that lead-free solder, it might help to mix some fresh (ahem leaden) solder onto joints to help them melt. Once you get to the side with 2 tabs (near the TV / HDTV switch) you’ll need to snip the metal shielding free of the cables before you pry up the PCB.

• Once the circuit board has been desoldered from the tabs you can unplug the little connector on it and pull it from the main assembly.
• Finally, take your thin screwdriver and stick it between the black plastic and the thin top shielding as shown below. (Sorry the photo’s a bit blurry, bigfoot musta been nearby.) Pry the metal up a little and you’ll be able to pull the black plug out from the shielding. Be sure to save this piece of shielding for later.

The plug pieces should now look like the following.

Finally, cut the end portion off the metal shielding and lay down some electric tape inside it as shown below:

Step 2 - Make the wiring connections

Before we start making the wiring connections you’ll need to carefully remove the glue stuff covering the pins, as shown below. Use your tweezers and be sure not to pull the blank pins up with the gunk. If they do bend up, simply push them back down. The glue is pretty easy to remove.

With the glue removed you can remove all the wires from the plug. Simply heat up the solder on each wire until it easily pulls free.

At this time you should put a small bit of fresh, new solder on each of the pins. This will make attaching new wires much easier.

Shown below is the end view of the now wireless plug and a drawing of which pins we’ll be using for this VGA mod. Keep in mind this pinout refers to the WIRE end of the plug, looking at it from behind as it would go into the console. The numbering might look a bit weird but it refers to how the connections are labeled on the 360’s motherboard.

Note how every pin is either long or short, and almost every other pin goes to ground (GND)

Before we go any further, here’s the wire-end view pinout of a VGA port. Pins that we don’t need for this project are simply called N/C (no connection). Most VGA-type ports also have the pin numbers etched into the plastic for your added reference.

Download a large PDF version of these pinouts, suitable for framing.

Since we’re going to start re-attaching the wires to the connector, you should now decide what sort of VGA cable you’d like to build…

• Breakout box type adapter. As shown at the beginning of this article. Requires buying a few parts (the aforementioned seven bucks worth) but is more useful in the long run.
• Single cable coming off the Xbox. For this you can use an old VGA cable. Slice off the computer end of the plug so you can connect the wires directly to the Xbox 360 video connector. You’ll also need some left and right audio cables, plus a yellow cable if you’d still like the option of using composite video.

Figure out which is best for you (I recommend the breakout box ’cause it’s cooler, but that’s just me) and use the directions below:

Method 1: Soldering wires to the connector port for a straight VGA cable (sort of like the one that costs $40 at Best Buy)

Parts you’ll need:

• 2 position selector switch (if you want the cable to switch modes). You can use the Radio Shack Catalog #275-409, or just desolder the switch from inside the Xbox component cable.
• Left and right RCA phono plug audio cables, such as those from a stereo system. You’ll need these since the VGA plug doesn’t carry audio. If you plan to just use the optical audio, we’ll describe how to wire it in the breakout box section.
• Yellow composite (crap) video RCA phono plug cable. You’ll only need this if you want the cable to switch modes. A great source for both this and the audio cables are old PS1, N64 or GameCube cables.

What to do:

1. Cut off the computer end of the VGA cable if you haven’t already. Strip the main coating off to reveal the wires inside. The main connections you’ll need are red, green, blue, horizontal sync and vertical sync. They may or may not be color coded. H and V sync may be a shade of white. Put a little solder on each wire to keep the strands together. This will also help when attaching it to the Xbox connector.
2. Using the multimeter, test which wires in the cable go to the correct pins on the end of the VGA cable and connect them to the Xbox connector accordingly. (Use the above VGA pinout for reference.) Please note, they’ll be several wires inside the VGA cable that you won’t need to connect to the Xbox, such as the data lines used for monitor ID detection. (Labeled N/C in the pinout drawing.)
3. All the shielding around the wires you find inside the cable is ground. Also note that a lot of the pins on the VGA connector are ground.
4. Solder the wires from the VGA cable to the Xbox 360 connector using the pinouts provided to match up the signals. You can connect all the VGA ground shielding to a single ground spot on the Xbox connector to make it easier on yourself.
5. Strip the ends of the audio cables to reveal the inner wires and copper shielding. Attach the inner wires to the left and right audio spots on the Xbox connector (pins 16 and 15) and the outer shielding to any ground.
6. If you’re attaching a composite video option, strip and attach the composite (yellow) video cable in the same way to pin 7 of the Xbox connector.
7. The selector switch (either the Radio Shack model or the one from the connector itself) has 3 leads on it. Connect the center lead to ground and the side leads to pins 20 and 24 on the Xbox connector. The switch can now “ground out” one of those two connections to set the video mode. Pulling pin 20 to ground sets the Xbox to VGA mode, putting 24 to ground sets it to composite.
8. If you don’t want the cable to select a video mode and just be VGA, connect pin 20 to any ground. This can be done by simply blobbing solder from it to pin 18 or 22 (they’re both ground)
9. Note: You HAVE to select a mode regardless, if you don’t the Xbox won’t boot and you’ll get 4 red lights as a “Video Cable Missing” warning. (Strange that 3 lights is worse than 4, but whatever.)

You can now insert the black plastic Xbox connector back into the metal shielding we removed earlier and plug everything in to see if it works. (See “Setting the Xbox to VGA”, below.) If you have a problem, check out the Troubleshooting section at the end of the article.

Method 2: Making a VGA/Composite Breakbox Box

Parts you’ll need:

• Breakout Box. I used Radio Shack Catalog # 270-1802 cause it was the smallest and cheapest.
• D-sub 15 female connector (VGA port). Radio Shack Catalog #: 276-1502, Digi-Key: T815FE-ND Mouser: 523-G17S1510110EU If you have an old PC video card you can desolder one off that if you wish. But a new one is pretty cheap and easy to use.
• 2 position selector switch, if you want the box to switch modes. You can use the Radio Shack Catalog #275-409 or just desolder the switch from inside the Xbox component cable.
• 3 RCA phono jacks, for the audio and composite video. This is the type found on the back of DVD players. Radio Shack Catalog #274-346, Digi-Key: CP-1413-ND (red) CP-1414-ND (white) CP-1415-ND (yellow) Mouser: 161-4319-E. As with the VGA port you may have some old electronics you can pull these off.
• Shielded wires from inside the Xbox video cable.
• Some standard thin wire. Old floppy/IDE drive cable works great and is, best of all, free. Free is great — it saves you money for things that aren’t. Like beef jerky.
• Standoff screws from a PC. These are the type with a “screw within a screw” that are often used under the motherboard.
• Some drill bits. Sizes of 1/8th, 3/8th, and 1/4th-inch will be helpful.

Supplier websites:

www.radioshack.com
www.mouser.com
www.digikey.com

Start by slicing open your Xbox video cable. Remove the main metal shielding to find the individual shielded wires inside:

The shielded wires from the Xbox 360 cable, or as I call them “Buck Rogers Spaghetti.”

These will work great for the inside wiring of the breakout box. Cut each wire to about 6-inches long for now, we can trim them shorter later as needed. You’ll need 8 of them.

Start by sliding off some of the shielding and stripping the end of the inner wire. Dab a bit of solder onto it to lock all the strands together - this is called “tinning” and will make soldering it to the connector much easier. You can also put a little solder at the end of the shielding to keep it from fraying apart.

Solder a shielded wire to each of the following pins on the Xbox connector, or a regular thin wire as noted. Attaching them in the order specified works best, or reverse if you’re left handed.

Top of connector:

1. Red (pin 3)
2. Composite video (pin 7)
3. Horizontal Sync (pin 11)
4. Right audio (pin 15) — shielding not essential
5. Optical audio data (pin 25) — use a regular thin wire for this.
6. Optical audio ground (pin 27) — regular wire
7. Optical audio +5v (pin 29) — regular wire

Bottom of connector:

1. Green (pin 4)
2. Blue (pin
3. Vertical sync (pin 12)
4. Left audio (pin 16) — shielding not essential
5. Set VGA (pin 20) — regular wire
6. Set Composite (pin 24) — regular wire

When everything is wired the connector should look as shown below:

Now you can slide the black Xbox connector inside the metal shielding. Be sure there’s a layer of electric tape inside in case any connections hit the metal shell.

Step 3 - Install ports in your Breakout Box

With the wires soldered to the connector we can get the breakout box itself ready.

• Set the connector against the lid of the box and trace the outline of it with your knife. About 1/4 of the way from the side is best, as shown below.
• Cut out the hole using either a Dremel or by making several deep cuts with an X-Acto knife and then “popping” the shape out by pressing on it with a screwdriver.

The lid of the project box with the trapezoid connector hole.

• Stick the connector through the hole and see how it fits. Adjust the hole as needed. Test this rig by plugging into the Xbox 360 and adjusting the tilt of the lid to the curve of the Xbox, as shown.
• Once it fits fully into the Xbox 360, put some hot glue (yes!) on the inside of the lid to temporarily secure the connector in place. (Don’t worry about the hot glue, your 360 is fully accustomed to heat.) Once it’s cool and secure, remove the whole shebang from the XBox.

• On the bottom of the main portion of the box carve and cut a hole for the VGA port. Once the hole’s big enough stick in the port and drill 1/8th” holes in the plastic to match its mounts. Then you can screw in some standard PC motherboard-style screws to hold down the VGA port, just like on a computer. For added security screw on somes nuts on the inside (or just dump in a bunch of hot glue if there’s no room for that).
• Drill (3) 3/8th-inch holes for the audio and video RCA ports. Space them evenly.
• Be sure to keep these ports on the side of the box away from the Xbox 360 connector. That way you know they’ll be enough room inside.

• Desolder the optical audio port from the small circuit board from the connector. It may help to “freshen up” the solder first before you try to remove it.
• Make a square hole for the port on the opposite side of the box from the VGA port. This can be done by drilling a 1/4th-inch hole and then carving corners from it.
• Insert the optical port as shown below. The pinouts of the 3 center pins are also provided for when you attach it to the main connector. The two side tabs of the optical port don’t need to be connected.
• Secure the optical port using… get this… hot glue! Hey, it works.

The business end of the optical audio port. We actually think it’s called a TOSlink but optical audio port sounds more… um, universal. TOSlink sounds like some dude from Lord of the Rings.

• Drill a hole between the optical port and the audio ports that will fit the shaft of the selector switch. A 3/8th-inch hole will work for the Radio Shack switches mentioned above, or a slightly smaller one if you’re using the switch from inside the connector itself.
• Install the switch using yet more hot glue. Of course be careful not to cover the 3 pins of the switch. Even though it’ll be near the Xbox connector this switch isn’t big enough to cause a space problem.

The inside of the breakout box should now look like this, give or take 5 pounds of hot glue. As you can see I’ve wired the grounds of all the ports together.

We can now wire the Xbox connector to the various ports on the breakout box using the pinout charts located several stories above. Some notes:

• Place the pieces of the box together as shown and begin by wiring up the optical port. Cut the wires as short as you can so it’s easy to stuff everything in the box.
• Connect ground to the center pin of the three pin selector switch, pin 20 of the Xbox connector to one side, and then pin 24 to the other. This allows the switch to select between VGA and composite modes.

• Connect audio (pins 15 and 16) and composite video (pin 7) to the middle pins of the RCA ports next. The outer rings of the RCA ports should all connect to ground.
• After wiring the RCA ports cover the connections with electric tape. This keeps them from shorting out on all the shielding around the main VGA wires.

• Speaking of that, connect the 5 VGA wires next. Red, green, blue, H-Sync and V-Sync. Check the above VGA port pinout for reference.
• You can now close up the box. Smush the halves together, arranging the wires as you go to make sure everything will fit.
• Screw the case shut — you’re done!

Step 4 - Setting the XBox to VGA

• Ok, plug in the breakout box, or cable, or whatever you ended up making, to your monitor / VGA-enabled TV and Xbox.
• Make sure the selector switch is to “VGA” (pin 20 grounded)
• Switch all your stuff on. You should see the Xbox boot up (it might take a hair longer than usual). If not, skip ahead to Troubleshooting.
• Once you’re in, go to Dashboard, then goto the System blade and hit “Console Settings”, and “Display”
• You can now select a resolution and aspect ratio to fit your screen. The 360 works best with widescreen displays although you can still make it work with square monitors as well. Strangely enough it’ll letterbox the game whilst the dashboard and message panels will take up the whole screen. Weird, huh?
• Boot up Gears of War or some other awesome looking game and drool 50% more than usual.

Just think — now you might be able to read the text in Dead Rising.

Addendum - Troubleshooting

Oh noes! You followed all the instructions but something isn’t quite right - is it any of the following by chance?

• 4 red lights (but not of death). Since we’ve all heard of the dreaded “3 lights of death” a whopping FOUR lights could cause instant heart failure. But don’t worry, it’s actually just a “Video Cable Missing” warning. Check that the Pin 20 and 24 connections are correct. If neither of them are switched to ground the Xbox doesn’t know what video mode to use and assumes there’s no cable at all.

• Inversed, Andy Warhol-esque colors. Suddendly the Dead or Alive girls all have blue skin… Anime? A strange STD? Nope, you just got your some of your RGB wires mixed up. Now we bet you’re glad you didn’t slather all the connections in hot glue yet - right?

• Ghosting. If you see some ghosting of images on the screen you probably have insufficient shielding. Make sure all the shielding is connected to a ground someplace. If you use a decent VGA cable this really shouldn’t be a problem, unless you live in the Bermuda Triangle or something.

• Optical audio problems. Be sure you have the ground, +5v and data pins wired to the connector correctly. Is the Xbox set to output this type of signal?

Alright well sorry if this how-to seemed a bit long, we just wanted to make sure you knew exactly what to do. Enjoy your sparkling new, crisp, hi-def, life-like (insert your own superlative here) video!

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment

Besides bricking some Xbox 360 consoles, the recent Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update did provide a few positive benefits too. One bonus came in the form of enabling gamers to stream WMV files via Windows Media Connect from an XP PC to their Xbox 360. Previously only Windows Media Center could stream to the 360, but if you had a DivX or XviD file you wanted to play, you had the option of using Transcode 360 to convert non-WMV files on-the-fly. However, until someone updates Transcode 360 so that it will run over Windows Media Connect, you’ll have to transcode your DivX or XviD files manually. It’s a pain in the neck, but it’ll do the job. But, thanks to our buddies at Joystiq, we’ve got a series of step-by-step instructions on how to transcode your DivX or XviD videos and watch them easily on your Xbox 360. We won’t go over every single point, but basically, it involves using the free and open-source program VLC followed by the helping hand of a batch script. The script turns your video files into WMV that’ll play nice with your Xbox 360, allowing you to enjoy your vids (in the example, a recent episode of “Lost”) in full, converted HD. But as you probably already know, if you’re starting out with a not great DivX file, you’re going to end up with an even worse WMV file that won’t look too hot, 1080p or not. So if you want to try it out, follow the read link for all of the step-by-step instructions.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Charlie would be better off trying to kick that football than tracking down this jack-o-lantern. The guys at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories put their l33t stenciling, carving and LED wiring skills into this Cylon Centurion née pumpkin, and naturally posted all the info necessary to create your own. This stacks up pretty well against the pumpkin PC and even the Engadget pumpkin. But for truly evil and mad status, we’d prefer a fruit-based rendering of Number Six, destined to be destroyed October 31st by Starbuck Power Mac – only to download, re-emerge next Halloween and continue its plan of human genocide through sweet, pie-based deliciousness. Frak.

[Via Make]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Displays, Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Been eyeballing those sweet new high definition projectors? So have we. We’re not going to feel guilty for it either, we know what we like. But if your wallet is a little light from your last Engadget inspired shopping session you might dig our how-to latest project. In Today’s how-to, we’ll start taking a look at building your own HD projector… from an LCD Monitor. This isn’t one to be missed.

Building your own projector isn’t a new idea. Disassemble a desktop LCD display, put a really, really bright light behind it and add some optics and voila! you’ve got a projector. The real question: is it worth it? Since you might be a little leery of dropping several hundred dollars on parts and gutting a nice display because people you don’t know on an online forum said so, we’re going to do it for you.

If you’re hell-bent on doing all the research yourself, there are couple of places to check out. Lumenlab recently made access to their forums free. Alternatively, The DIYaudio forum users have some interesting ideas.

Lumenlab has put together a nice document describing the details. We’ll give you our short version here. The design is really quite simple. The light source is reflected towards the LCD. A Fresnel lens behind the LCD straightens the light so the maximum amount will pass through the polarized LCD. Another Fresnel focuses the light towards the projection lens.

The LCD is key to the project. The latest crop of LCDs is cheaper and better than ever. Notably, the contrast ratio has been increasing. It’s important to choose a display that can be disassembled easily and won’t have any inconvenient electronics in the way. Size does matter. LCD size will affect the lenses required and obviously the size of the completed enclosure. For our build, we chose the Samsung 940MW-SV Silver 19-inch 8ms Wide-screen LCD Monitor with built in TV Tuner. This beauty has a contrast ratio of 700:1 and a .294mm pixel pitch. The 16:10 screen has a 1440×900 native resolution, so it will display 720p natively. The built in scaler supports 1080 input as well.

We have to give props to the guys that are using the WXGA screen that’s usually only found in laptops to achieve native 1080 resolution. There was enough interest for these that they actually had a custom controller built to support it.

More importantly, our LCD accepts almost any input. It sports DVI (With HDCP support), VGA, Component, S-Video input and even coax for the built-in TV tuner. We should be able to hook up just about any HD gear we want to this display. We run standard definition video through our video scaler, but there’s just not a good way to push a HD signal into the PC from an external tuner like our HD Tivo.

To maximize the light aimed at the screen, we’ll add a reflector just behind the bulb. Some use Ikea napkin holders, but we opted for this reflector from Lumenlab. It’s coated with a dichroic material that reflects visible light, but allows infrared heat to pass through.

The light source is a 400 Watt Metal Halide bulb. You can score these at the hardware store, but for the best color we want one that puts out light that’s a similar to daylight as possible. That means a bulb with a color temperature of 6500 Kelvin (and hopefully an even spectral output).

The Mogul base of our MH bulb is quite a bit bigger than the average light bulb.

To ignite a Metal Halide bulb, some interesting voltages are needed. To produce them we’ll need a ballast. These things come in a few flavors. The coil type are cheap, but produce a humming noise that might interfere with your viewing pleasure. Electronic ballasts are preferred because they’ll protect the bulb better and don’t produce annoying noise. Our 400 Watt MH electronic ballast cost $100+shipping from HID hut. (They shipped it five minutes after we ordered!) We didn’t expect it, but our ballast came with a ceramic Mogul base.

Back to our diagram we see that the LCD is sandwiched between a pair of Fresnel lenses. The lenses need to be at least the size of the LCD, if not bigger. The only source we could find with big enough Fresnel lenses is Lumenlab. The Projection lens needs to be matched to the Fresnel lens on the same side of the LCD.

Since we required their large lenses anyway, we ordered a set of matched Pro lenses. The ‘Pro’ lens kit includes both Fresnel lenses and the projection lens.

Now that you’ve got the general idea of what we’re doing, it’s a good time to start crunching numbers to get a rough idea of what we’re looking at. Lumenlab has a couple of calculators built just for figuring things out. Focalcalc runs under windows. Remember that if you’re entering the width of the LCD diagonally, then the screen width is a diagonal as well. If you prefer other OSs, there’s a php version that runs under most web browsers.

Lumenlab took about a week to ship out their backorder, once they did, our stuff got here in record time. The star of the order was this ‘pro’ lens. It costs about four times as much as its little brother, but it’s the way to go if you’re using a large LCD like we are.

We compared the picture quality from the HDMI and component outputs from our HR10-250. There was simply no question that the digital signal produced a much cleaner picture. Unsurprisingly, 720p output from the TiVo produced the most pleasing results.

We picked up a pair of new cables to get our video signals to the new photon gun. A 25 foot HDMI to DVI-D cable for our TiVo and a new 25 foot SVGA cable for the HTPC. No, the HDMI-DVI cable wasn’t that expensive.

Before we add up all our parts, keep in mind that this is an Engadget build. There are plenty of ways to save money on this project, but we’re feeling sassy. (And we’re hoping to build something worthy of replacing a venerable Sony VPH-1272Q CRT projector.)

Let’s recap all the parts we bought so far:

• Samsung 940MW-SV $330 from NewEgg (We spotted them at Sam’s Club too)
• Pro Lens Kit (2x Fresnels and projection lens) $199 from Lumenlab
• Pro Reflector $15 from Lumenlab
• Ceramic Mogul Base $10 from Lumenlab (We scored an extra with our ballast)
• 400Watt 6500K Metal Halide bulb - $50 from Lumenlab
• 400Watt MH Electronic Ballast $99 from HID Hut
• 25 foot HDMI to DVI cable $37 from Monoprice [For our HR10-250 HD Tivo]
• 25 foot VGA cable $8 from Monoprice [For our HTPC]

Total parts cost far: $748 (This thing better work…)
Left to buy: Enclosure, cooling fan and a few finishing touches.

Given the cost, why build your own? Replacement lamps for commercial projectors cost around $300 each and only last a few thousand hours at most. The lamp in our projector should last about 10,000 hours and costs $50 to replace. You can build your own projector for far less than we’re spending. LCDs with bad backlights are cheap, and the lenses needed for the smaller LCDs are only $60 for a matched set. You can scrounge them up from surplus shops, but you’ll spend some time hunting them down and getting things right.

We’ve geeked out, ordered a load of parts and scared our editors with the hardware tab. Next time we’ll gut our sweet new LCD and give you all the details on doing it yourself. Then we’ll move on to designing, testing and building our enclosure. When it’s all done, we’ll give it a thorough review.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets

Back in Part 1, we introduced the basics and started building the electronics. In Part 2, we finished up the controller and started building our machine. Today we complete our unholy marriage of cutting boards and dot matrix printers in Part 3 of How-To: Build your own CNC machine. Good luck.

Last time we showed you the completed base, with the first axis. The screw drive turns easily and there’s very little play in the motion of the table.

The design of the upper axis is simple, but is the most difficult to execute. Originally we hoped to use a pair of the small sliders, but binding was an issue so we redesigned it to use a large printer slider at the base. Ultimately, the binding was caused by the nut and threaded rod we were using. Swapping them out solved our problems.

A simple tower constructed of three pieces forms the basis for the rest of the machine. The tower will be mounted to the outer edges of the base. This allows greater side to side movement to maximize the usable area on the table.The center piece of from the same cut as the bottom of the base. To drill the two sides evenly, we screwed them together and drill the mounting holes with the drill press. One the first screw was in, we drilled the rest one at a time.

The center slider is the most complex to build. Each piece is visible here. We used our usual trick of screwing the opposite pieces together in order to align the holes for the slide and the threaded rod. The brass slider and long hex nut were pressed into the plastic with our bench vise. This technique seems to work well, but alignment is critical!

To effectively deal with the minimum space, we had to get tricky. There just isn’t enough room in the carrier to mount bearings for the Z axis. Instead, we pressed bushings into the plastic with our vise. Then we added a washer and a lock nut to the threaded rod at the top and bottom of the carrier. Careful tweaking with a pair of wrenches made for very little play. Just how long this setup will stay tight is in question so we’ll have to keep an eye on it as we break in the machine.

This slide and carrier were salvaged from an old Okidata printer. We decided to use it to smooth out the action for the Y axis.

We whipped out the drum sander attachment on our dremel tool and contoured the plastic on the bottom so we could mount the printer slide without compromising the integrity of the cast metal.

Once the slide was mounted, we marked and drilled the mounting holes for each axis. Once the slides are set up, we’ll use some screws to lock them in place.

Once things start coming together, they’ll get extra frustrating as you begin aligning the slides and drive screws. I took us a while to narrow down that the source of binding was the drive screw and nut combination. We’d overlooked them initially because they worked very, very well in the other cases.

Once each axis has been constructed, we needed a carrier for the rotating tool. We picked up a flexible dremel shaft and created a simple mount for it. The flexible shaft will reduce vibration. The dremel version has the nice button for locking rotation — far less frustrating to use than the off-brand tools.

We used a couple of tricks to achieve a nice fit. The strips were cut first, then screwed together with some space to spare. Then we drilled the plastic with a starter hole and used the dremel tool to taper and round out the holes until the fit was perfect.

Motor mounts are dependent on the motors you’ve ended up with. If you’re lucky, you’ll salvage some motor mount brackets. Creative mounting can be achieved by using new or salvaged pulley systems.

Limit switches are very helpful for keeping your machine from self destructing. A switch is placed at the limit of each axis and wired in parallel. When the carrier or table contacts one, the circuit is closed and the controller signals the computer.  Lever switches like these are ideal, or you can salvage some of the exposed contact switches from printers. The main danger of either switch is fouling caused by debris from your work project. Covering the switch with a bit of latex glove or balloon can help prevent problems later on.

Now that you’ve got all the bits of information you’ll need to build your machine, lets get into some actual software to make the machine work.

KCam - Probably the easiest software to set up and configure, KCam is great for testing out your machine. It ran just fine on our Windows XP laptop. The drawback has to do with the method that Windows uses to access the parallel port. Because of this limitation, the machine won’t run as smoothly as it really can.

EMC Linux - Some dedicated individuals maintain EMC and actually produce a stripped down, brain dead install of Linux just for running EMC. It doesn’t take much of a machine to run, so it’s great for dedicating an old machine just to run your CNC machine. Add a network card and you can operate and send jobs to the machine remotely. It’s not too bad to install, but expect to spend some time figuring out the quirks.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for… the machine in action! The bit is another tungsten carbide bit from Drill Bit City. (Oh, how we love them.)

If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations are an order! Oh, and then you should already expect to spend some time troubleshooting your creation. Don’t be upset if everything doesn’t work perfectly! (Or if you end up ripping all apart and starting all over…)

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Filed under: Digital Cameras, Gaming

We're all aware that a digital camera/webcam for the Sony PSP is right around the corner, but how many of you knew that you could also snap photos with your Nintendo DS? Don't feel bad; we didn't know it was possible either until we spotted modder Kako's handiwork on YouTube -- apparently he's taken a Treva CMOS chipset, done a bit of rewiring, and written software that allows the unit to output images directly to his DS Lite. We can't vouch for the picture quality, and the frame rates are positively sluggish, but at least this mod gives Nintendo fanboys one less missing feature to defend when the PSP crowd goes into one of those regular, tiresome diatribes listing the many reasons why their product totally "pwns" the little dual screen console -- in fact, you'll probably catch a few examples of said diatribes right here in the comments section of this very post.

[Via DS Fanboy]

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Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets

Ready for some hard core gadget creation? If you thought your dremel tool was handy before, in today’s How-To we’ll start  building our own CNC machine. Aside from the geek factor, it can be handy for making things like PC boards without chemicals or maybe some little styrofoam voodoo heads of all your enemies, uh friends.

Gentlemen, start your soldering irons.

Computer controlled mills have been around for a long time. If you just want to buy oneone, Sherline makes mills that are ready to go (pictured is their CNC ready model — just add your own motors and controller). But then again, if you wanted to buy one, you probably wouldn’t be reading this, now would you? A CNC machine is a lot like a precision drill press with a table that moves in two directions — seeing a commercial unit like the one above should help you visualize the end goal. We’ll be making ours from scrounged, recycled, and adapted parts; today we’ll be going over the basic parts we’ll need to build our own.

Parts Hunting
For Part 1 of the How-To, we’ll go over all the major components of the project and get started with the controller.
The major components of the DIY CNC machine:

• Stepper motors
• drive positioning screw
• 3 Axis stepper motor controller
• Linear slides

The most important component to determine the construction of your milling machine is the motor. Motors can be purchased from surplus houses, but the cheapest place to get them is from old dot matrix printers. Apple Imagewriters are one of our favorite sources. They contain multiple stepper motors, and the primary is pretty beefy. As a bonus, just about every dot matrix printer has a hardened steel rod that can be useful for our nefarious goals.

A stepper motor is an odd beast. Most motors spin when power is applied, stepper motors contain multiple coils. If the coils are energized in the proper order, the motor will rotate a small amount (a step). We’ll take full advantage of the nature of stepper motors with this project. To simplify your life later on, you’ll want to find stepper motors with more than four wires. Four wire motors are usually Bipolar motors. They produce more torque, but end up complicating the control circuit. The preferred type of motor for the frugal hobbiest is Unipolar. These usually have five or six wires, and they’re pretty easy to work with.

Most stepper motors are labeled. The major points of interest include the voltage, resistance and the number of degrees per step.  Knowing the number of degrees per step is vital for configuring the software to properly control the machine later on. For a three axis machine, at the very least you’ll want the X and Y axis to both have identical motors. It’s not the end of the world if they don’t match, but it’s more of a pain later on.

The drive screw is the next piece of our project. Commercial units use linear ball screws or linear gears. The commercial parts aren’t cheap, but you can get away with some 1/4-inch threaded rod from the hardware store. Instead of anti-backlash nuts, we’ll use these handy 1-inch long 1/4-inch nuts. Just about every hardware store has them, and they produce very little play. Try out the hardware at the store because defects in the nut or rod will produce drag that’s easily noticeable by spinning the nut on the rod.

To couple the rod to the motor shaft, we’ll use vinyl tubing with a pair of collars. The tubing is 1/4-inch inner diameter and prevents binding by allowing some play between the rod and the motor. You can get suitable collars from a model airplane store (The hardware store had some, but they were overpriced). Alternatively, you can make your own like we did from nylon bushings and hex screws.

Finally, we’ll need some linear slides. One easy out is to purchase a used or surplus XY table that’s built just for this purpose. Custom designs can be built using ball bearings. Above is the linear rail that ShopBot uses. They machine the edge of a piece of steel and use this cool angled roller bearing.

We built this linear slide from a 1/2-inch steel rod and multiple bearing surfaces. It works, but we don’t recommend building it if you value your sanity.

Once uou’ve bought or salvaged a set of motors, you’ll need a controller. The controller provides the interface to the computer, drives the motors and can provide some simple feedback to the computer. The stepper controller has to be powerful enough to drive the motors you’ve selected. We sifted through lots of stepper controller designs looking for one that presented the best value.

In the end we found this design for a relatively simple parallel port interface that originally appeared in a 1994 issue of Nuts and Volts. Today, the expensive UCN5804B is only available as a surplus item, but now the entire controller can be built for about $22-$30 in parts. (If you use a heavier motor like the ones from the Imagewriter, you might need to add some separate power transistors.)

The parts list at the link is a bit outdated, here’s our updated shopping list.

• 3 - UCN5804B - alltronics.com
• 12 - 1N49355 Diodes - Part 625-1N4935 from Mouser.com
• 2 - .01uF Capacitors - Part 581-SR155C103KAT from Mouser.com 
• 1 - 10uF Capacitor - Part 140-HTRL25V10-TB from Mouser.com
• 3 - 4.7k Resistor Network 652-4608X-101-4.7K from Mouser.com (Has an extra resistor, but works fine)
• 1 - D-Sub 25 pin Male - Mouser, RadioShack, etc.
• 1 - Barrel power connector - Whatever works for your power supply. (We used a spare 12V power brick)
• Stranded Cat-5 is sufficient for wiring
• Terminals and male headers are optional, see the page for the circuit.
• Heat sinks for the 5804Bs are needed. We used some aluminum channel.
• Copper clad PC board (We stock up on ebay every so often)
• Etching solution - Ferric Chloride, etc.

We made our own board using the template from the web page. We used similar techniques to the one in part 4 of our iPod Superdock How-To. We reversed the pdf image using Gimp, and printed it onto a laserprinter transparency. This method doesn’t create as nice of a trace as the paper, but it’s speedier.  Clean the board, and keep the paper backing between the plastic and the iron. Once the toner is ironed, just cool it with water and peel.

We etched the board using Ferric Chloride from RadioShack in a disposable Zip-Lock container. It needs to be warm and agitated to work well. The acid and hydrogen peroxide solution etches way faster.

We drilled the board with our drill press and tungsten carbide bits from Drill Bit City. We had to refer to the placement schematic several times to make sure we drilled everything right. Getting the pins holes aligned for the 5804s is a challenge!

If you want to do a toner transfer of the placement mask, do it before drilling the holes. Otherwise the surface is too uneven to allow a good transfer. If you screw it up like we did, you can cheat. Just print the mask onto a transparency and burn holes for the components with a soldering iron. It works surprisingly well.

Next time we’ll start building the actual machine and show you how to build some simple and effective slide systems. For now, here’s a teaser of what’s coming! Good luck!

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Filed under: Storage

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Filed under: Features, Wireless

It’ll probably work with other software packages, but may require some small modifications.
For today’s how-to you’ll need:

• IR(Infrared) LED (RS 276-142)
• IR Receiver module (RS 276-640)
• 4.7uf and 100-220uf capacitors
• 47ohm and 4.7k resistors
• Sub-D 9 pin Female Connector
• NPN Transistor (cheapies from RS are fine)
• PC Board
• Sacrificial USB Cable
• Tools, hookup wire, solder, etc.

Everything can be picked up at RadioShack or your favorite electronics supplier. We dressed ours up a bit, but you can succeed with just these parts. We hear that the RadioShack IR receiver we used has been known to produce flaky data, but ours worked fine.

The receiver portion is pretty simple. Rather than use extra parts to generate stable power from the serial port, we decided to steal 5 volts from the USB port.

The transmitter is a little bit more complicated. The resistor is 47 Ohms, and the capacitor can be 100 to 220uF. The WinLIRC project recommends using the TX pin of the serial port for better performance.

To test our our customized circuits we built it on a breadboard first. Using WinLIRC (which is getting kind of old at this point) we easily recorded commands from our remote and got around 10 feet of range with our transmitting LED. We suspect you can get even more range, but the surround receiver we tested with is a bit picky.

Breadboards just aren’t good enough for us, we had to pull out the soldering iron. Here’s our Serial connector with USB connector to supply a solid 5 volts to the transceiver. And yes, we’ll cover those exposed leads with some heat shrink tubing.

We built our remote transceiver to use a standard piece of Cat-5 so we can easily place it wherever we need it. Upstairs, the ceiling… or next to the hot tub.

Download WinLIRC and unzip the folder to wherever you want it to reside. There’s no installer, so somewhere on C: or in Program Files might be a good idea. Double click the remote + computer icon labeled winlirc.

The first thing you’ll get is an error message. Click OK to pull up the configuration window.

Select the correct COM port. Usually it’ll be either COM1 or COM2. Most of the default values are fine. The receiver should be DCD and under Transmitter, TX should be selected. Finally, click Browse next to the Config line. To get started, select sample.cf and hit OK. It won’t let you create a new blank config. If you think everything is correct, click on the Raw Codes button. If everything is correct, you’ll get a new window. Otherwise you get an error message.

Point a remote at the receiver. If you see codes, it’s working! Close the window and click on the Learn button in the main configuration window.

WinLIRC will complain some more. Click Yes.

Now we get the Learn remote window back again. This time we get prompted. Enter a name for the remote like VCR and click Enter. Next, the default error margin of 25 should be fine. Type in 25 and click Enter again. The next question lets you tune a custom gap length between signals. Leave it blank and click Enter again. Next you’ll be asked to press a button. Just follow the prompts. Don’t worry about which buttons you’re pressing. WinLIRC is just checking out the signal timing you’re sending it until it asks for the name of a button.

When asked for a name, enter something like Power and click enter. Now you’ll be asked to hold down the button. Aim the remote at your receiver and watch the signal count rise.

Finally, you get to declare if you want to keep the recording of each button. Repeat this for every button on the remote you wish to store. When you’re done, click Enter without typing anything in the box. You should get a confirmation message that the config was saved.

More WinLIRC silliness. Just click OK, then click the Analyze button back in the main config window. If you’re done, click OK in the main configuration window. Now WinLIRC will hide in the TaskBar as an icon. The icon will change colors to show status. It turns green if it gets a signal it recognizes.

Clicking on the icon will bring up a WinLIRC window. To test sending a code you’ve recorded, select the remote and the code you want, and click Send Code. You’ll need to aim the transmitter at whatever you want it to talk to.

Now that it’s working, you’ll want to make it do something besides make a green dot on your task bar. On the WinLIRC page you’ll find links to various pieces of software that supports WinLIRC. Go forth and vanquish TV signals, friend, or whatever unusual things one does with a fully customizeable homebrew IR blaster / receiver.

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Filed under: Features

Step 1: Modding the Charging Base

First open the recharging base of the wireless headphone set. Our unit had five screws underneath.

Unscrew the circuit board from the back of the unit.

Solder two wires to the circuit board where the recharging wires connect. These two wires are those which you have already soldered to the male end of your socket and plug connectors. This will serve as the power for the rechargeable batteries as we will be destroying the headphone housing to build the speakers.

File a notch in the base to accommodate the charging plug's wires with a dremel or file. Replace the circuit board and close the charging base with the screws you removed earlier.

Step 2: Choose a Speaker Set-up

Next, for the headphone to speaker mod, there are several choices.

1. You may choose to have both left and right speakers in one housing with all of the charging circuits and batteries. (This example is pictured below:)

2. Perhaps you want the speakers to be separate, but cabled between left and right. Half of the circuitry can be placed in one housing, half in the other. (In the example pictured below only one speaker of the two has been completed, the other will hold the loose driver and radio circuitry:)

3. You may want two separate left and right channels in separate housings with separate batteries and circuitry. For this example you will need two sets of headphones. You may choose to place two sets of drivers in each channel's housing. (This example not pictured because it is the same as Example 1 except there are two speakers instead of one.)

4. Maybe your Burning Man friends are putting on the pressure for multichannel audio in your mod. In this case, you can buy six sets of the Sony headphones. The Sony model of cheapest RF headphones has a selector for three different radio channels on the back of the base. In theory this means you can send three sets of stereo which equals six unique channels of wireless audio out. (See drawing below:)

Step 3: Modding the Headphones into Speakers

Take apart the headphones by unscrewing all the screws and popping open the housing. Try to keep the cables between the two sides of the headphones intact. If you need to cut the cables to remove all the circuitry, simply do so and resolder the connections later. Cut the battery housing down around the batteries with a dremel or small plastic cutting saw but keep it intact as well. Create a small plastic box from Plexiglas and first cut a hole large enough to access the batteries. First pictured below is Example 1 with both drivers in the same housing, then Example 2 with one driver in each housing:



Cut a small rectangular hole out of the housing for an on/off switch. This needed to be soldered in place of the spring-based momentary switch in the headphones we used. Our headphone model turned on when the inside band of the headphones were pulled by the shape of the wearer's head. We replaced this with a sliding switch which we then glued into the housing:


Next cut a hole in the Plexiglas box large enough for the speaker housing. Remember that the speaker should be fairly well sealed for resonance purposes. Viewed from the inside, the speaker glued on the hole looks like this, below:


Now solder the other end of the power connector (the female end that fits the connector on the wire now sticking out of the charging base) to wire. Solder the two wires of the power cable to the charging tabs that were in the headphone housing. These tabs were the ones that came in contact with the charging springs when the headphones were placed on the charging base. Two views of the power connector (ours in this case is large and white in the photos) follow showing the tabs where the wires were soldered.


Now test your speaker(s) with your system's base with audio to make sure you haven't forgotten anything. Repeat the steps above for each speaker in your system. You may want to glue down the channel selector dials on the speaker side if you decide to go the multichannel route. Also the volume dial on our sets have been glued to maximum for applications where the speakers are in a public setting. Alternately you may wish to cut rectangular holes in your speaker housing to access the volume and RF channel selection potentiometers.

Some other further development for you electrical engineering types can include creating audio outputs for better speakers and gain stages instead of speakers on the receiving end. Be creative! This How-To is by no means meant to be a finished creative entity.

Leave us feedback if you send some of these bad boys up in balloons in the high desert.

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