Bye Bye Standby double wall switch

I’m a big fan of Bye Bye Standby and am slowly replacing all switches and lights with their products. One thing that is sorely missed though, is a double wall switch. The kind that sits at the bottom of your stairs and controls the lights upstairs and downstairs. Home Easy do one, but that protocol is not compatible. So I combined the best of both worlds and cobbled one together myself :)

Start by stripping all switches down to their bare PCBs. The idea is to use the push button switches inside the Home Easy HE308 switch and connect them to the push button switches from the Bye Bye Standby wall switches and then stuff it all in the wall.

Carefully solder wires to each BBSB switch and then solder them to the HE308. As the PCB of the HE308 connects some of the pins, it wouldn’t work when I tested it. No problem though, it just meant that I had to get my faithful Dremel out and dremel away all PCB lines surrounding the switches.

Make sure you test it once it’s all been connected up, not just when you’re finished putting it back into your wall ;) At this point in time, make sure you have set the address codes to the correct modules.

As the whole package is larger than my backbox, I removed the bottom from a plastic backbox and used a hammer and old screwdriver to chisel away at the wall behind it. Once I had everything inside and made sure that it was still working, I discovered that the edges from the backbox were larger than the switch itself. Doh!

I took everything out again and carefully reduced the edging until it all fitted neatly underneath the switch.

For those who are worried about the batteries, they are no more difficult to replace than a normal BBSB switch. I would replace both at the same time though if you have to :)

The Mul-tea Charger

Who doesn’t have a multitude of devices, phones and other gadgets on their desks? I certainly have, and I finally had enough of all the chargers and wallwarts that each item seems to bring with them. With two iPhones almost constantly being charged, and a Nokia phone thrown in for good measure, I needed to have something flexible enough for those plus any future gadgets. So, I googled a bit, and found the IDAPT I3, and the beautiful, but ridiculously priced The Sanctuary. And then I started to think, how easy would it be to put a mains powered USB hub inside a box and have several USB charger leads coming out of the box, each charging a different device?

And the answer is, very easy :)

I started off with a 4 port powered USB hub, which I had lying in a drawer and plugged my iPhone charger leads into it, expecting them to instantly charge my two iPhones. But to my surpise, nothing happened… so another quick Google later, I came accross a blog entry of Carl Hutzler, which details why they won’t charge. All you have to do is sacrifice the hub and forego it’s PC functionality by cutting the D+/- lines and short them. A quick test shows they now finally charge themselves. Apparently it is better to stick 2x 100K Ohm resistors on the D+/- lines, which I will do at some point, but for now, this will do.

All I now had to do was find a suitable SWMBO friendly container, and as our furniture is all beech, the tea storage container I found for £1.99 at QD stores was perfect. I just needed to gut the compartiments out and put something on top of the plastic lid. At my local crafts store I found a small foam pad for 50p which was nice and soft. Unfortunately I got my measurements all wrong, so I messed up the black pad, but SWMBO came to the rescue by rummaging through my kids crafts drawers by digging up a piece of brown padding.

The final thing to do is then drill some holes at the locations convenient for your devices, and put it all together. Job done!

The secret of comedy is

… timing.

Happy 12:34:56 07/08/09 :D

An Apple a day

It’s been 4 long years since I last bought an Apple. But today I took delivery of a nice shiny Macbook Unibody \o/

Glad to be back again

Update 11.06.2009

Just typical… 11 days after I received mine, Apple announces the new 13″ Macbook Pro’s at the Worldwide Developers Conference… I phone the Apple Store the next day to see if I can exchange it for one only to be told that I would have to return and re-order. So I did. Only to receive a new Macbook Pro today on my old order, whilst my new order is now in ‘Prepared for Shipping’, which means I can’t cancel it!

Guess I’ll be keeping the courier in business this month ;)

The Eee PC Digital Picture Frame

I just can’t help myself. It all started way back in 2002 with The Swedish Chef, followed in 2005 by the (still) popular Project Bling: the desire to create the ultimate digital picture frame.

So here it is, the third (and hopefully last) instalment: The Eee PC Digital Picture Frame aka The Eee PF.

I’ve divided it up in four sections, for easy digesting ;) All pictures can be enlarged, and the complete set of pictures can be found in the gallery.

Part 1: Disassembling the Eee PC
Part 2: Mounting the LCD
Part 3: Building the frame
Part 4: Finishing touches

Part 1: Disassembling the Eee PC

It starts off with an Asus Eee PC 701 2G, which is perfectly small, yet cheap enough to destroy in the name of science.

Push the three tabs at the top of the keyboard in and lift the keyboard up to reveal the keyboard connector at the bottom of the keyboard. Using a small flat screwdriver, push the two locks open and remove the keyboard completely. Next to the keyboard connector is the touchpad connector which should be disconnected as well.

With the keyboard removed, the bottom half of the case is next. Remove the nine screws as indicated in the pictures. Turn the Eee PC over and remove the six remaining screws. For good measure, also remove the battery by sliding the two latches outwards, and slide the battery out. Flip the Mini over again and open the lid again. Using a plastic wedge (or your finger nails if you have them), pry the case open using some gentle force along the sides. Be patient at this point as the plastic latches inside the case, are fragile and will snap if you exercise too much force.

Now we just need to remove the motherboard. Disconnect the speaker and display connectors. There are two latches holding it in place, located at the bottom edge of the PCB. Lift the motherboard up at the right hand side and then pull it out up and sideways.

Time to separate the LCD from the bezel. Six screws are hidden underneath the plastic covers which are stickied in place. Use a plastic wedge along the side of the bezel but be very careful, it is very fragile. Take your time and be gentle. Just four screws and four sticky metal tape strips to remove before you can lift the LCD clean out.

Voilà, the Eee PC naked! Now we are ready for some serious modding ;)

 

Part 2: Mounting the LCD

Whatever you do, make sure you buy a frame and mount which have a high WAF since it needs to live in the living room. You don’t want to find yourself building something like this and then SWMBO tossing it in the bin because is clashes with the design ;) Take the mount and measure the dimensions of the LCD and frame and carefully cut it to size. As usual; measure twice, cut once :)

The LCD driver board sits neatly underneath the LCD, but when you mount the display into the frame, it doesn’t fit. Cutting away a bit of the frame allows it to be sunken into it and sit flush with the frame. Some double sided tape holds the mount in place.

On to the motherboard. This needs to be mounted with enough clearance above the LCD so that heat can escape and to do this I made my own spacers using normal motherboard spacers which I had plenty of from my PC building days. The screw holes on the Eee PC are tiny, so cut away at the top of the spacers to make them small enough to fit. Looks rather neat, eh?

 

Part 3: Building the frame

Before we create the frame, we need to think about an alternative heat sink. Normally, the bottom of the keyboard would dissipate the heat, so after doing some testing, I settled on an Akasa Southbridge cooler and some tiny Maplin heat sinks. Tests showed that the temps remained nicely around the 50ºC mark, which will rise to about 65ºC once the back cover will be on. Well within the limits :)

Using some 4mm Pine Stripwood cut to length, mark out all the ports and crevices that need to be carefully removed from the frame to allow access once everything is closed up again.

Here’s a quick mock up of how it all will fit together once we’ve painted the frame and glued it to the photo frame’s back.

Because the power switch would be covered up when the back is glued on, we need to move the switch’s function to somewhere more convenient. Reading this blog post over at Infinity Squared on an external power switch, I decided to go for the smallest I could find at Maplin. My soldering is definitely not the best, so a bit of heat shrink camouflages most of it ;)

I also wanted to have some sort of visual indication that the frame is on or off (other than the tell-tale display ;)). But how to get the minuscule surface mounted LEDs displayed through the frame? I had seen something previously, where light was transported using a small transparent acrylic tube. And when I was killing some time wandering around my local Tesco, I found my 48p answer… translucent golf markers! Remove the heads, drill a few holes and Bob is a relative.

Almost there. Using some left over black paint, paint all the sides and make sure that once assembled, all the small blemishes are hidden. Well, most of them ;)

Ready for assembly! Some glue, some patience and some skilful balancing of weighty items on top of the corners and all that is left to do is add the back cover.

 

Part 4: Finishing touches

A sheet of hardboard has been cut to be the approximate size and then using patience and lots of sanding made to fit exactly. The space at the bottom of the frame is perfect for the speakers, so using a small drill, create lots of small holes where the sound can penetrate through. It won’t be high fidelity, but it’s good enough for announcements. At the top of the frame, the microphone has been mounted, so we may be able to support voice commands in the future! A quick lick of paint finishes it off.

We’re re-using the stand from the picture frame, but instead of hammering it in the backboard, we have to glue it. I’ve used Araldite, which should create a long lasting strong bond.

And that is it! I’m quite pleased with the result, and even SWMBO commented on how nicely it looks in the living room… result!

As a final note, I haven’t mentioned at all what software the frame is running, so before you bombard me with questions, I better list them here ;)

The OS is a standard Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop, with /usr compressed with squashfs/unionfs so it can fit on the 2GB SSD. After booting, it starts Firefox on my homepage, a PHP/Ajax/MySQL slideshow script which displays the pictures, weather and clock. The mousepointer is hidden using a small utility called Unclutter and the display is automatically switched off at night using sudo vbetool dpms off and switched on again in the morning using sudo vbetool dpms on. It’s still all a bit rough round the edges, but for now it works :)