HDMI to VGA Converter, an other Upcycling project

One does not simply trash things at home, every object that can be repaired should be.
Recycling is a thing, Upcycling is another.

• Recycling is trashing unused or broken goods into pieces, revert them to raw material and use them to rebuild new things
  Usually you can't do it at home.
• Upcycling is reusing things, either as is, or using parts of them to make others. That's something we can all do, the only things needed are time and will.
• Upcycling in hight-tech is not only about being "Green" (and where is "Green" in playing with broken highly toxic high-tech materials?), not about saving money either (that converter is less than 10€ on ebay).
  It is more about being able not to throw away unused goods but give them another life.

HDMI to VGA + Audio converter
Why upcycling it?

I didn't have any of those HDMI to VGA converter, and they can come in handy sometimes. I found this one torn down, without its box, and some wires partially ripped off.
It was time to rebuild it.

The mod
Upcycling isn't only repairing but improving too

Beside repairing the converter, I got it modded with an external 5V 500mA input (USB).


Why adding that external 5V power supply, doesn't it gets its power from HDMI ?

HDMI 1.3 standard states the following limits: [source]

This converter is based on the LT8511A chip to convert HDMI digital signal to VGA+Audio analog signals (considering the datasheet, this chip is meant to be powered by an external source...)
This converter is used a lot by Raspberry Pi users that complain about burning a 200mA max rated diode with it and similar converter chips when powered directly by the HDMI input.
==> Looks like it draws a lot more than the 10~50mA expected, As my devices with HDMI output are quite old (the most recent is from 2013) I didn't want to risk the source in the eventuality it doesn't have any over-current protection.


Finding where to solder the +5Vin and mass wires

From the HDMI documentation we know that +5V is coming to the pin 18. Luckily the pins were numbered on the board, after checking continuity with a multimeter, pin numbered 18 was actually pin18 +5V as expected.

Testing

The USB cable used is from a R.A.T.5 mouse

The converter is detected as LTM 40" 1920*1080 display when plugged alone.
When an external display is plugged in, the converter passes through the display specs to the PC:

Finding a case

To stay in the same idea, I couldn't simply go an buy a case. So I took the first plastic case that was there: a battery case for a led strip light (that has already been re-purposed)
Here is the result:

Yeah, Hot glue everywhere...
PS: the audio works well too

Conclusion
Not pretty, but it works.

The result may not be pretty, but it definitely works well. And it proves again that something that was meant to be recycled could be still used after some repair and work on it.
This project has been 99% made out of trashed materials: even the screw is from an old electronic component, only hot glue and solder aren't.
PCBs are hard to recycle, so using a device longer and/or repairing it is "greener" than buying a new device -and paying a few € cents of "green tax" regardless the human work cost of it-.

Whenever possible:

• Don't trash,
• Don't recycle,
• Upcycle!

Repairing a Cyborg R.A.T.5 with an old Acer Mouse: Frankenstein Project

One does not simply trash things at home, every object that can be repaired should be. Here is the story of a broken Cyborg R.A.T.5: it came home broken, and was 'resuscitated' like a Frankenstein's monster. But is it fully back to life?

The R.A.T.5
Which disease killed it?

• Main symptom: no left click
• Secondary symptoms: Some of the secondary button facings are broken, ghost click sometimes happen

==> Looks like the left click button spring is bent or broken, this can be "easily" fixed if bent. Though if it is broken, it needs to be replaced (either the whole button casing, or only the spring if possible).

Disassembly

As a video is better than a written tuto, here is one made by Kuba Orpel:

To open the button casing: pry the little clips on both sides if possible (on the RAT5 left button only left click can be reached)

See how the clips look on this top button casing (black) from an Acer NetScroll mouse (the donor, as explained later)

A little button spring will pop: (see the break-line on the bent part, this one is dead and need to be changed)
Do NOT loose the little green piece (for the RAT5, red for the Acer here), use some tape to stick it in place: it will come handy in the process of re-assembly

The Donor
An old mechanical mouse: the Acer NetScroll

Donor spring in its original place:

The donor Button and the faulty one: they are not the same shape, but the same size... so one can take the other's place

The Repair
Swaping springs

Re-assembly is quite tricky:

1. The contact part should be placed under the contact pin,
2. The bent part should be placed towards the indentation of the center pin, and gently forced into it
3. The triangle part should be pulled gently and its indent placed against the last pin
4. Pushing the center of the spring should make a click sound : it's correctly placed

Be careful: the process is try 'n fail, and the spring is really easy to break!!!
The Acer button spring in place in the R.A.T.5 button bottom casing:

Re-assembling the top case isn't difficult -as long as the previous part was a success-.

Is it fixed?

Hmmm, yeah the left click is back to life... but it still has a kind of ghost click for which i din't catch the cause yet... maybe one of the side buttons is dead or something (i already scraped two of the side ones without success)

Half a success, but still something to consider,
So the Frankenstein project is still a WIP... I'll update as soon as I find the definitive fix for the ghost click.
Note that i have already saved my own Logitech M505 from death by re-bending the spring of its left button. that spring issue is well known and well documented, but it is always nice to know that it can be possible to swap spring of some switches without having two broken mice.

Quickie #6: Nitecore MT06 and Thermal Throttling

I recently bought a Nitecore MT06 at my local retailer (i went in to get a Nitecore Tube, but bought both the Tube, and the MT06. The Nitecore MT06 is a great pen sized flashlight featuring a 165lm max light output.. but for how long before the thermal throttling feature starts?

The specs
the official ones

Benchmarking
The tools

To get an idea of the flashlight performance i needed a way to measure the Luminous intensity (cd). Having no professional tool for that i used the CT406 light sensor that is embedded in the Moto G first gen (XT1032) : the results won't be complying with the ANSI/NEMA FL1 standard but will be good enough to get our own idea of the flashlight performance.

Tools and Methods:

• Power source: 2*AAA Energizer Rechargeable NH12 (Brand New)
• Light sensor: CT406, giving results in illuminance in Lux(lx) turned into Luminous intensity via this formula:
  Iv(cd) = Ev(lx) × (d(m))^2
• Calculated light output in Lumens (lm) :
  lm = cd × ( 2π(1 - cos(apex angle in °/2)) )
• Calculated throw (beam distance in meters) :
  throw (lm) = sqrt(candela/0.25)

How to get the experimental light outpout?
As written above, the formula is the following : lm = cd × ( 2π(1 - cos(apex angle in °/2)) )
The measured apex angle is roughly 18° (result that we also can get using the advertised light output and the peak beam intensity [165lm, 2120cd ==> 18°])


EDIT: How to get the Surface temperature?
A simple crappy medical contact less thermometer (the Powerscan TH23F -that i recently got for 3€, and does not worth much more-) allows to measure the surface temperature of the flashlight body (with a maximum inaccuracy of about 1°C) , this does not give the real chip temp, but gives some interesting clues.

The experiment was carried out during 40 minutes. In three phases :

1. MT06 set to high, as long as it can (meaning until it was too hot to even touch and hold... the ON/OFF switch!
2. After a two minutes cool down (from really hot to warm), another period on high mode. untill it reaches the same heat trigger : human pain...
3. Sixteen minutes in low mode to see how consistent the light output is when regulated.

EDIT: A second experiment is now added : full run from max to 1lm, to show both thermal throttling and runtime

Results...

Measured vs Advertised specs (high mode):
The FL1 standard asks to wait for 30 to 120 seconds before measuring the peak beam intensity
The first result (max) is obtained right after turning ON the flashlight, the second (FL1) complies with the FL1 standard and is compared to the official specs.

	Advertised	Measured
Peak Beam Intensity (max)		2238 cd
Peak Beam Intensity (FL1)	2120 cd	2114-2135 cd
Light Output (max)		173 lm
Light Output (FL1)	165 lm	163-164 lm
Beam Distance (max)		94 m
Beam Distance (FL1)	92 m	92 m

Considering the inaccuracy of the angle measure and the use of a CT406 as light sensor, it seems that Nitecore claims are absolutely legit.

Measured vs Advertised specs (low mode):

	Advertised	Measured
Peak Beam Intensity (FL1)		422 cd
Light Output (FL1)	32 lm	32.5 lm
Beam Distance (FL1)		41 m

... and Thermal Throttling

Here is what Nitecore says on the MT06 user manual : "NOTE: The MT06 will begin adjusting output lumens automatically after 5 minutes of use, thus preventing overheating and extending battery life"
Let's see how much this is true and how long we can get the advertised 165lm!

Having nothing to measure the own flashlight temperature, an apparent temperature has been used instead (human felt temperature in a subjective range : room temp, warm, hot, and too hot)

• Phase One:
  • for 5 minutes is at about 165lm (as advertised) but heat is increasing quickly until no one would like to hold the flashlight any more... (green circle)
  • Then, Thermal throttling start and the driver limits the led to 145lm which is still acceptable, though temperature decrease, the flashlight is still to hot to be comfortable to hold for a long time! (red circle)
  • Nitecore advertises 165lm, 45 minutes of life time with two 1.2V 750mAh batteries, this mean that roughly 1A of current is flooding through the flashlight. Considering that a LED turns about 20% of energy to light, it means that 80% is turned into heat... so here the flashlight needs to dissipate about 2W of pure heat with its small aluminum boddy.
• Short period of cool down (from minute 10 to 12)
• Phase Two: This time the flashlight starts throttling less than one minutes after lighting up (not cooled enough during the 2 minutes stop period)
• Longer period of cool down : about 4 minutes
• Phase Three : Low mode, not much to say about it... It works without thermal throttling -hey, the heat to dissipate is only about 0.25W!-

EDIT: I made another benchmark with Surface temperature measurements:
This time, i made a full run from full batteries -at max output (aka 165lm mode)- until getting as low as 1lm of output (after 41 minutes of runtime)

Here we can see 4 phases

1. Phase 0, the flashlight is turned ON and gives maximum output until thermal throttling strikes (when reaching a surface temp of about 50°C)
2. Phase 1, thermal throttling shows up, and reduces the max output to limit heat dissipation, light output is really stable, but temperature rises slowly until reaching about 58°C
3. Phase 2, thermal throttling gets a little more aggressive, lowering output to stop heat from rising more than 58°C, temperature is maintained this way for about 2 more minutes
4. Phase 3, End of game: Batteries are dying and simply cannot supply enough current to maintain the light output, so it decreases - and so does surface temperature-

Conclusion

Don't expect to get 165lm for more than 5 minutes when the flashlight is starting at room temperature (but before thermal throttling start your hand won't feel good with that little heater after 3 mins...)
Nevertheless, this little flashlight performs great at low mode (high enough for what it's made for) and provides 165lm if needed, for short times (thanks to thermal throttling you won't get heat burn...).

Keep in mind that the MT06 is not meant to be a tactical kubotan but more to "provide great assistance to engineers, mechanical and medical personnel" (quoting Nitecore). for the late group (medical personnel, this flashlight lacks a firefly/moonloght mode (0.3lm - 3lm) that could be used to perform Pupillary light reflex without blinding the patient...)

Note that although i couldn't see PWM in low mode, i could hear a very little noise (near to ultrasound) that appears both in low mode, and during thermal throttling. Don't worry this sound can only be heard with the pen light close to the hear -i never noticed anything like this on my Fenix LD12.

Quickie #5: Inside of the Fenix LD12 tail switch

The Fenix LD12 is quite powerful (125Lm) and small size (powered a single AA cell); the flashlight is quite tough with it aluminum body but it has two weaknesses : the rubber capped buttons.
Although i found a way to protect the side switch, i still didn't found any good way to protect the tail one.

But... Before trying to protect it, what's inside?

Let's open it

From Left to right :

• A Circlip, that holds firmly the switch into place AND make contact to close the circuit between the switch and the flashlight body.
• The switch (with click and momentary ON features.
• A washer that press on the rubber cap to keep everything sealed and waterproof
• The rubber cap
• The tail body
• The whole Tail switch

The switch
A closer look

Here we have a simple two sided and circular PCB, with a mechanical switch on one side, and a spring on the other one.
To pass through the PCB, a simple tin droplet in a hole makes contact between both sides :

The spring is held by three tin droplets that pass trough the PCB to connect the switch races.
The switch features both ON/OFF by full click and momentary ON by pressing gently on it.

Fenix went far in making the rubber cap: they even added their brand logo:

Note that this rubber cap is dead already:
I would have liked a lot if Fenix had supplied spare rubber caps with the flashlight...

What's next?
Planning to make a remote switch

As i have two tail bodies, (and everything twice, only the rubber cap has no working twin here), i am planning to make a remote pressure switch based on what Fenix made for their bigger products :

DIY USB camera for an optical microscope

I recently got a "new" microscope : a Lemardeley from the 60s featuring both mono and binocular eyepieces (x5, x8, x10) and x10, x25, x60 and x120 objectives Taking pictures using a standard camera/smartphone is possible but gives some vignetted pictures, what about making a dedicated camera?

The Lemardeley microscope
Old good guy

On this picture the microscope is mounted with the binocular eyepiece, note the monocular one securely placed on the left wall of the wood box. also the objectives and oculars have a place in a sliding rack.
Luckily objectives of my previous microscope (from 2003) are using the same screw thread so i could adapt its x4 objective! (and potentially the x10 and x40 but that is quite useless here)
So here is the magnifying range :

X		Ocular Lens
		5	8	10
objectives	4	20	32	40
	10	50	80	100
	25	125	200	250
	60	300	480	600
	120	600	960	1200

Modernizing
adding a camera

After reading a lot on the web, i found that best results were given with a lensless camera module and without any ocular.
What is needed :

• USB webcamera (here it was taken from an old ASUS laptop)
• Old roll of film box
• USB cable to connect the camera (either the webcam's one or a dedicated DIY one for embedded webcams
• Hot glue, pasting tape, anything to cut or drill holes

How to

1. Getting webcam and disassembling it to only keep the PCB, -not removing the lens yet-

2. Checking if the roll fits on the eyepiece tube and drilling a hole on the back of it

3. removing the camera lens and adapting roll box to fit the camera, hot gluing it (note the dust on the sensor, this will be an issue later...)


4. make/adapting the cable (will depend on the camera used...)

5. Testing

Result
looking at a random chip

Here is a sensor on an HP scanner board : click for full size, -red circle shows the region zoomed on the right -one after the other-
Pictures are taken with guvcview.

Note the black dot (circled in red) : this is the result of the dust on the camera CCD

Bringing a LG G2 back from the dead

A friend of mine had shattered his LG G2 screen, and replaced it succesfully -once-; after a while and a new fall he got another replacement screen and messed up the re-assembly. Some connectors were over bent, some pieces weren't at their own place... The following is not a step by step tear down as there are pretty good ones all over the Internet. Here are a few tricks not to definitely kill your device...

Right things at the right place

On one ifixit tutorial (here) at the 6th step you can see there's nothing where i marked 'nothing' with a red circle (below pic is from the ifixt teardown):

Actually, there SHOULD be something, a very little board coming from the LCD screen+digitizer:

This board full of capacitors is meant to be above the blue PCB, pasted on the cold plate.
On the Ifixit teardown, the board has simply fallen below it while prying -not an issue, but to re-assemble that picture can't help you-; it is MANDATORY to remember that it should be above or you cannot close the case... That's what my friend did: the capacitors board was below the blue PCB, thus preventing to further reassemble the device.
How it should look -how i reassembled it -but not pasted, yet-:

When tearing down a device, take your time and take pictures of the process to successfully re-assemble. It is extremely difficult for someone else to re-assemble a messed up assembly without knowing exactly where should be what!

Fragile connectors

The connectors that help closing the electrical circuit aren't tough: they easily bend -and overbend- if touched without care.
i broke one while unbending (it is the same process as unbending LGA1155 connectors), luckily it was one connecting the loud speaker. So no more Rings and sounds, but that's not like if it was a vital organ.

The Unbreakable trick
Not booting after the process? here is a fix

After putting everything at its own place and try to save some other bent connectors -succesfully this time-, i tried to boot the device: epic fail, nothing happened. I had heard of a thread by george7565 at XDA of a hardware process helping un-hardbricking the G2: here

I simply followed the process step by step (george7565 documented it really well!)
Here is my own picture:

I did not needed to flash any files though, shorting the capacitors was enough to get a full boot (i had no other choice, since the ROM installed on the device was unknown to me ...)

Some issues left
The G2 was saved, but has some sequelae

• Non-working LoudSpeaker (the loudspeaker is ok, but its connector (on the motherboard!) is broken, i still have no idea about how to fix it without replacing the motherboard...
• Partially unresponsive screen : the touchscreen has a partially non-working zone at the bottom. This zone is about the size of the navigation bar -only the center part is still ok- marked in red:
  

Random pics of the inside
Electronic Pr0n