![]() ![]() That led to trying to swap out individual pins in the cables. Computers with DVI connections have the ability to detect when display devices are connected as well as instruct them to power on or off. We eventually surmised that the lamp and the Unifi 35 were communicating somehow through the DVI cable and the lamp wouldn’t power on unless the computer detected that it was attached. I tried simply connecting a computer to the DVI connection on the lamp, but the lamp wouldn’t power on. There is a dual-link DVI cable that attaches to the projector lamp assembly through the telescoping neck of the projector to its wall-mounted computer base, the Unifi 35. The original approach was to simply substitute my own video signal by swapping out some cables. As you may recall from my original post on this project, these projectors will not display anything other than an error screen without their accompanying interactive whiteboards connected. Posted in computers, control, electronics | 5 Comments Smartboard Projector Project Abandonedīack in August, Tom acquired several Smartboard-brand projectors and was interested in getting them to work as a normal projector would. To output other characters, simply follow the vertical and horizontal traces to the board, and solder wires to those pads instead. The photo below shows wires (whose free end is to be connected to the switch) soldered to the pads required to output a space bar character. The keyboard, popples and plastic layers can all be replaced by an external switch and wires soldered directly to the circuit board. ![]() ![]() The chip (under the black epoxy potting on the bottom of the board) detects this electrical connection, and outputs the appropriate character over the USB cable. These traces are routed to the circuit board via a row of contacts under the front edge: When a key is pressed, a protrusion on the bottom of that key’s popple pushes the two layers of plastic together at this location: connecting one of the vertical traces to one of the horizontal traces. These layers of traces are separated by a small gap. Under this layer are two sheets of thin plastic, one with conductive ink traces that are (mostly) horizontal, and one with conductive ink traces that are (mostly) vertical. These ‘popples’ are the springs under each of the keys. When the top of the keyboard is removed, a sheet of silicone ‘popples’ is revealed. Although this isn’t a solution suitable for even small scale production, it can work for a one-off prototype, like The Critic.īelow are several photos that show the process of opening the keyboard to extract and modify the circuit board. Despite the Teensy cost of $16, I saw an opportunity for cost savings by opening a standard USB keyboard and spending a few minutes to extract and reverse engineer their compact circuit board. His buttons emulate a keyboard, and contain an Arduino Teensy (only 0.7″ by 1.2″), which is a USB based AVR microcontroller. These photo booths are powered by Sparkbooth, which can automatically upload the photos to Facebook, Twitter, tumblr or other social media sites. Among other applications, these USB buttons can be used as the shutter control of Mac powered Photo booths at public events. He has freely helped tens of people create their own buttons, but is now able to fulfill requests for preassembled units. I was inspired by the open source work of Pete at RasterWeb! and his recent effort to bring “ The Button” to a wider audience of busy or non-makers. The Critic measures 3″ by 2″ by 2″ tall, and was designed to fit conveniently within arm’s reach, beside your keyboard or mouse. The Critic is an indispensable tool for use when the document you’re editing is just so full of errors that your fingers begin to ache from holding down the delete key. At that point, the safety cover can be lowered, thereby deactivating the device. When connected to a computer via the convenient USB plug, it will begin to delete text, continually deleting until all the (presumably erroneous) text preceding the curser has vanished. This is “The Critic.” It’s the USB accessory version of a red pen: Once armed by rotating the red safety cover up, the device is activated by simply flipping the toggle switch. ![]()
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