Savel brain dump in English!

I found the information about optical mouse hacking on the Internet (http://spritesmods.com/?art=mouseeye). I had been looking for such mouse for a long time. The first which I found, had defective optical chip. But the second was more succsessful. 

You need to find an optical mouse of the older model, where the optical chip has 8 legs. A mouse of the new model has only one chip, where all interfaces (USB or PS/2) have already been integrated into the same chip.

The program was not written by me. However everything is quite clear. All data – change of coordinates and even the view under the mouse pad are read out through 2 wires. Here is an image got “through mouse eyes”:

Here is a scanner mode:

A connection scheme is very simple – the mouse is powered from 5V. Connect SDIO pin and LED’s anode (+) to the 12th leg of printer port, LED’s katode (-) – to the 5th leg and SCK – to the 9th leg. You need to check if mica and LED (mouse elements) are connected. Then disconnect SCK and SDIO pins coming into mouse controller. The collocation of optical chip (ADNS-2610, A1610 or like) is  following: 1 and 2 – mica, 3-SDIO, 1-SCK, 5-LED controll, 6-GND, 7-Vcc(+5V), 8-RefA (here a small capacitor is connected).

The software is the same as in original post.  As my LPT1 port has burned out, I added  additional I/o addresses of PCI board.

You can download source code and compiled MS Visual Basic program. There is one dll file (inpout32.dll) which you should copy to windows/system32 folder.

Pelės-skanerio softas (binaries + source code).

I have torn a board with Altera Cyclone chip from a defective plasma television. That’s EP1C3T100C8  chip: one hundred legs, but only 65,2910 logic elements, 59904 bits of memory and one PLL are intended for users. While my board production technology is not perfect and I still not have concept of the final product, I use a universal factory mounted adapter. I mounted the power, program and  configuration board to the adapter. I used simple wires for connection of both boards. As there was the single layer board, Kynar wares were necessary.

 The right side:

I shaded unusable legs and their numbers with black colour, as they distracted my attention. The inside marks do not disturb, but I think I’ll shade them too.

Here is the worse side (made by ironing technology, thus the quality is not enough):

Here are mounted: two stabilizers VccIO-3.3V, VccINT-1.5V, several capacitors, oscillator 25 MHz, connected to 10th leg of the cyclone, several pull-up and pull-down resistors. A configuration chip is also soldered. I haven’t tested it yet, as my ByteBlaster, connected to printer port, is not able to reconfigure the chip. There is a way to force the cyclone to rewrite this chip itself, but I have not “grown up” to that yet. Two plugs also are here: one for JTAG and the other for EPCS1 reconfiguration. 

Here are  juodai-baltas ploštės šablonas ir Eagle schema bei PCB. They differ from the bord in a photo as photo version has many mistakes. Theoretically, I corrected mistakes in the archive but probably made the new ones.

You can also find FPGA/CPLD chips in the oldest models of routers and servers, DSL modems, telecommunications equipment, “more exotic” PCI boards, i.e. in more expensive equipment of less circulation. Good hunting!

I bought a new toy – GPS receiver (WBT300). It’s very simple  with USB and Bluetooth ports. I do not need it at all, but it’s very curious to play.

Some Chinese software is provided with this device. It shows already decoded information.  I checked, that coordinates remain quite stable. However, sometimes it’s seems to the device, that it goes somewhere at 0.16km/h speed. 

I was disappointed in height showing results. The height of my room varies from 60 till 170 m above sea level. I thought, that my house is stably fastened to the ground.

I haven’t demounted this device yet, but theoretically it should has some receiver, transmitter and RS232-USB adapter. The idee fixe appeared to bypass this USB port…

By the way, if you install virtual COM port of Windows,  the Hyper terminal program will help you to see all data “flowing” out of the device. Here is a sample:

$GPGSA,A,3,25,20,02,04,,,,,,,,,3.5,2.8,2.1*3E
$GPGSV,3,1,12,25,67,177,25,23,39,086,19,20,11,140,20,02,35,276,38*7C
$GPGSV,3,2,12,16,27,057,,29,06,344,17,27,49,200,14,13,83,064,13*75
$GPGSV,3,3,12,04,30,232,29,06,04,011,,08,19,208,,10,13,308,*75
$GPRMC,183101.000,A,5453.5577,N,02356.2293,E,0.00,214.57,120208,,,A*67
$GPGGA,183101.000,5453.5577,N,02356.2293,E,1,04,2.8,66.1,M,28.9,M,,0000*65
$GPGSA,A,3,25,20,02,04,,,,,,,,,3.5,2.8,2.1*3E
$GPGSV,3,1,12,25,67,177,25,23,39,086,19,20,11,140,19,02,35,276,38*76
$GPGSV,3,2,12,16,27,057,,29,06,344,16,27,49,200,14,13,83,064,12*75
$GPGSV,3,3,12,04,30,232,29,06,04,011,,08,19,208,,10,13,308,*75
$GPRMC,183102.000,A,5453.5577,N,02356.2293,E,0.00,214.57,120208,,,A*64
$GPGGA,183102.000,5453.5577,N,02356.2293,E,1,04

Smarter people can identify the place and time of the experiment from that rubbish. I also understood several rows. But others remain mysterious.

Here I introduce Dread to you. Her nickname is “Skurokas”. 

Click here for more details: http://www.gwaten.com/.

To light blue and white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) the voltage of 3V is required. By the way, white LED is the same as blue LED with additional luminophore inside. This luminophore is activated by blue light and lights up. Finally it lights as white.

What to do if you wish to connect a white or blue LED to a simple AA or AAA battery or even worse to the dead battery? It’s very simple. It’s enough to assemble a self generator on one transistor and the LED will light. That’s a real sample:

On the Internet this scheme is often called “Joule Thief”. Though the idea of self generation is well known and used in various strange devices.

What do you need for repeating the experiment? A simple transistor firstly. I used the transistor NPN 2N3904.  Secondly, you need 1K resistor  and  a small transformer wound on a ferrite ring. The ring can be very small, as device is not very powerful. My ring has 2 x 30 winds of thin copper wire.

Wind the transformer as follows: take 1m of  thin wire and fold it in half. So you have two wires. Wind them on the ring simultaneously. When the ring is wound, crop and tin each end of the wires. Connect the beginning of one wind to the end of the other wind and to the positive post of a battery. (Check with a tester or in any other way if the connection was made correctly. You can use coloured wires, it will be easier to recognize them).  The second wire of the transformer should be connected to the resistor, the third – to the collector. Connect Led’s anode (+) to the same collector and free end of the resistor to transistor base (to the central leg). Transistor emitter and LED’s cathode (-) should be connected to the negative post of the battery.

 Scheme is here:

Theoretical remarks (untested).

You can use PNP transistor, but it will be necessary to reverse emitter with collector, anode with cathode and to connect the power supply in opposite way. You can also use old Russian germanium transistors. Then the device will work more stable at low voltage. Such device could be powered from “primary power sources” as lemons or apples with two different wires inside…

I adapted the collimator of the higher quality. The voltage 250 mA is enough to light a match. And there is no need to hold it long.

The collimator was tore out from a copier. It’s quite good, that you can precisely focus the laser beam by turning a screw. You minimize the power and focus the laser beam till minmum. It it impossible to notice that the laser beam is minimized when everything around is light due to full power.

Video: DVD with New Collimator (Xvid, ~1Mb).

I tried to turn “a laser arrow” to the sky, but the beam gone into nonexistence. But it was perfectly visible on all the nearest objects. I tried to make some photos, but they came out so so…

After digital “processing ”:

Youtube version:

Older lazeriniai postai.

At last I finished (2008.02) my torchlight project. I was looking quite a long time for good LED driver. When I found driver chip, I’ve lost all my white LEDs. So I used white LEDs from bad USB web cameras’. There are 4 LEDs in one web camera. I dissasembled several ones and collected 12 (in last edition 16) bright white LEDs.

baltų šviesos diodų projektą.

Here is last PCB test before finishing assembly:

I compared light output using simple cheap incandescent bulb, but powered from one Liion battery. Bulb is 2.4V and 0.75A. As it was powered from 4…3.7V source, output power is much more. And it was very hot- plastic details near lamp melted.

“Light power” comparison:

Conclusions:

After comparing both types of the lamp I can definetely tell, that LEDs are better in case of energy use. But only if LEDs are connected using special driver chip. Cheap China torches are made without any driver and are not very good for advanced use. Looking from spent money, the situation may be different. LED driver chips and custom hardware is expensive. Another advantage using drivers chips is that light power is constant during all liftime of battery.

(more…)

This is not up to date post (post date 2008.02)

I rescanned DVB-T channels using areal antena and found some new stations. As my antenna is quite big I am receiving TV stations from some near cities. I find new transponder at 778MHz. Maybe it is TEO? During tests all channels were uncoded. Now I need card to view.
Some changes in free to air channels. Also, picture size is smaller. Size is reduced from 720×576 to 544×576. But bandwidth is same, so overall quality is same. Also, less CPU power is needed to decode TV programs. Maybe size is changed because cheap TV tuners are with very “thin” CPU.

The are only 3 channels in 786Mhz…

Screenshots:

More cropped pictures: (more…)

At last I repeated experiment from youtube about burning DVD laser. I dissasembled old DVDRW drive. I noticed small crack in laser diode, so I removed the glass. As open laser is very prone to external damage, keep it from water, dust and agresive liquids. I placed laser diode to some colimator from old laser printer. I pumped power up to max- I have few diodes, so decided to burn it to death.
Best way to tune laser beam is to use black, matte material. I used side of the match box- it is brown, but no shiny spots. Also, phosphor on it make nice little smoke. I recorder this experiment with camera, but as the beam is very shiny, the quality of the image is not very good.

Snapshots from video:

And here is the movie about it (Xvid, ~1Mb):

First Run, double matches.
Second run. Single match.

Current is about 0.5A.

More links form my blog (Lithuianian, still not translated):

• Laser PSU.
• Tuning laser PSU.
• IR laser. Some theory.
• DVD laser.
• About colimators.

Next you can see images of laser diode modification. (more…)