The Lenovo Yoga Book is a interesting thing, featuring a touch-surface keyboard that also doubles as a Wacom tablet. [TinLethax] sadly broke the glass of this keyboard when trying to replace a battery in their Yoga Book, but realised the Wacom digitizer was still intact. Thus began a project to salvage this part and repurpose it for the future.
The first step was to reverse engineer the hardware; as it turns out, the digitizer pad connects to a special Wacom W9013 chip which holds the company’s secret sauce (secret smoke?). As the GitHub page for [TinLethax]’s WacomRipoff driver explains, however, the chip communicates over I2C. Thus, it was a simple enough job to hook up a microcontroller, in this case an STM32 part, and then spit out USB HID data to a host.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, and it’s not 100% feature complete, but [TinLethax] was able to get the digitizer working as a USB HID input device. It appears the buttons and pressure sensitivity are functional, too.
If you’ve got a disused or defunct Yoga Book lying around, you might just consider the same mods yourself. We’ve seen some other great hacks in this space, too. Video after the break.
From trash to… still trash. Electronic parts may be a hard to recycle e-waste but one’s time is truly a non-renewable resource. Working as a contractor for a major IT company, every month I should spend around $1300 just to declare “a loss” and don’t feed the government (or at least not as much) with my taxes – otherwise this money is… well.. wasted. I’ve already bought Keysight scope, Agilent power supply, Fluke multimeter, a new phone, tablet, lots of other minor test gear, parts, eval boards yada, yada, yada. All the stuff that I can declare it’s used “for work” in case tax officials ask about my puchases. I’m slowly running out of ideas for stuff that I could waste my income tax money on (sic!). If I wanted I could grab a brand-new Wacom tablet and enjoy not having to cock about with scrap parts. That’s the adult life… and I’m not event living in a first-world country.
You maybe missed the point that it’s a hobby and what you learnt in the way is your delta in wealth?
Like, instead of spending $200 in a I²C, HID and bluethooth webinar, you just repair an old tablette?
It’s true that you can just grab new Wacom Tablet since you have “income”, (Fact : My grandpa bought me Yoga Book when I was 16. and I tried to reverse engineer it since until I’m 18 (right now)). It’s true that I can just bought the full fledge Wacom tablet or any ordinary pen tab. But first, I don’t have income! It’s true that I rarely fix computers, but I
only got 20 bucks each time to fund my projects and to pay the annual subscription for my office 365. Minus everything I’d probably had negative bank account balance if my dad wouldn’t help me find computer fixing jobs. You said you already bought Keysight scope, Fluke meter bla bla bla. I only have 1 crappy multi meter given by my Grandpa. I use Arduino UNO AS a LOGIC capture in this project. See, you have much more opportunity than I have. You’ve got many tools that If I had them 3 years ago, I would’ve complete this project since. But one thing that you totally forgot is the “trash” that I build, the “trash” that I spend full 3 months on it, taught many things from STM32 to I2C to USB standard to USB HID to way to reverse engineer electronics devices to Bluetooth HID to how design low power device. I would miss all these chance if I just “grab a brand-new Wacom tablet”. This is the ACTUAL adult life. If you don’t learn something new. You better consider your self. PERIOD
Good project and well defensed ;)
> chip which holds the company’s secret sauce (secret smoke?)
secret sauce is quite right because it boils and turns into magic smoke when heated by to many angry pixies.