DIDJ composite video out

posted Jun 30th 2010 1:00pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: handhelds hacks

[Nirvous] managed to get composite video out working on the DIDJ. He knew that the CPU had the ability to generate the signal, and that similar devices already had this capability. After studying some DIDJ teardowns he figured out which connection on the processor should provide the appropriate signal. Next was the firmware side of things and after sifting through a lot of code he was pleased to find a flag that looked like it would enable video out. Some cross-compiling, soldering, and a low-pass filter got it to work.

If you’ve been hacking around on the device you might try this. The CPU uses a ball grid array so soldering is a bit difficult. We covered a BGA soldering trick that might be just the thing so check it out before you retreat into your soldering-fortress of solitude.

Comments [8]

tagged: bga, composite, Didj, Leapfrog, tv

8 Responses to DIDJ composite video out

The Moogle says:

June 30, 2010 at 1:20 pm

“The CPU uses a ball grid array so soldering is a bit difficult. ” ummmm why are you removing the cpu again? We did this to a bad Didj board just to trace things out…

see this page for more info and fun traces
http://wtfmoogle.com/?p=910

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Erik says:

June 30, 2010 at 1:36 pm

Very cool – though I don’t understand why he had to buy a new device because he ripped that pad off when the BGA pin is right there on the edge of the chip?
I got a couple of these from woot way back, still think its a good investment!

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PhilKll says:

June 30, 2010 at 1:50 pm

http://www.elinux.org/Didj_TV_Out
The how to article. The only part that seems necessary is the resistor. I didn’t notice any difference messing around with the cap values or addition parts to the filter.

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Skitchin says:

June 30, 2010 at 1:58 pm

Would be neat if the extra components could be crammed inside of the Didj and instead of an RCA jack on the side you could connect a stereo mini AV jack with audio output. An external controller would be pretty swank at this point too.

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PhilKll says:

June 30, 2010 at 2:06 pm

Skitchin, good idea, you could replace the headphone adapter with the av version, and keep it all internal, there is plenty of room around the speaker area for the necessary components.

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Tomasito says:

June 30, 2010 at 9:10 pm

Could all those hacks for the DIDJ work with this? http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.21968

Here (Argentina) we don’t even know the didj, but those “pmp mp5 players” are everywere and they are very cheap.

According google, those things have an ARM926EJ inside (Sunplus 8000), the same as the DIDJ.
And, they come with tv-out, sd card slot (2gb built-in), and a cheap camera out of the box.

I would be interesting to put an eye on those things!

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Dave says:

July 1, 2010 at 6:33 am

Nice work. I hope woot has these again soon so i have pick a couple up on the cheap.

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blue carbuncle says:

July 1, 2010 at 6:40 am

Nirvous great job! And way to go, sifting through code :) I love finding flagged properties because you just know that something cool will happen lol.

Skitchin that is a great idea! I’m sure the Nirvous 2.0 version will incorporate it. It makes too much sense not to :)

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