Hey allll,
FInally gaining some momentum with the "XE Book" project. Took a whilel to get the video situation sorted out.
I am using a 12" 4:3 aspect ratio (no wide screen) 800x600 flat panel display along with the LumaCode+RGB2HDMI Pi mod and the picture looks great.
This is that Aabic PAL board I found on eBay and made a USA ASCII ROm for it so only the keycaps will have the funky Arabic symbols :)
I found some pretty decent speakers and a cool little amp with volume up/down buttons so I dont have to have an alalog pot sticking out tof the enclosure. The only thing I don't like about it is on a power cycle the volume goes back to its default but that should only be a minor annoyance. I am now debating wether or not to embed the fujinet inside or just have it plug into the SIO on the back. My initial plan was to embed it and have some softkey buttons and OLED display to be able to toggle it on and off but maybe thats overkill...
Next thing to tackle is th epower management wich will be either one or two lipos, a charging circuit etc, Thinking about making it so the original DIN power jack remains as an external power source as well as the cherging input to keep it old skool. If I leave the Fujinet as an external then I will probably put a USB out on the back so you can plug it directly into the laptop. Heres some photos and a video: Video: http://sideburn.com/vid/xebook1.mov
Cool project...
3 hours and 35 minutes all in with Fujinet, sound amp, display, and rgbtohdmi. Not too shabby. Looks like it’s charging while powered up. Bonus! :)
Oh and I got an ultra 1MB I’m thinking of putting in it but not sure how well that jives with the Fujinet.
I think I got the power management sorted out finally! I wanted to use thin flat lipos but I just couldn’t get it to work right with all the stepping up I needed to do so I’ve gone with 3 3.7v 18650’s to get me 11.1v and then made two in parallel to get me 5 amps.
Timing it now but hoping for 3 hours runtime.
Here’s some quick pics of it running off the battery pack and 1 hour in so far! :)
I am having a hell of a time with the power management stuff.. the boost converters cant handle the load, the flat liFE pack is only 3.2v but it was all i could find that had 15A to handle the amount of power this thing needs... the whole thing draws abotu 4Amp and i want it to run for at least 3 hours... anyway, I am getting it sorted now.. more parts coming... I am going to go with a thicker 18650 set of cells and make it 11.1v so I dont need to boost the voltage and then it will only pull about 2 amps so i can have a smaller size pack but it will be thicker. I was going to use a flat lipo inside the display but now i will make the display thinner and put all of the power stuff in the back and just make the whoile laptop a liitter deeper... i am thinking now since im extending the back that I will ditch all the ports on the back... Maybe relocate the cartiridge slot or maybe ditch that too and just go with the sd card on the fujinet...
Awesome project! Man that video quality is just so much above a UAV