LCD Repair

February 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 42 Comments

lcd

[Andrew] sent us this great breakdown of an LCD monitor repair. After his wife’s monitor developed an issue with rippling in the picture, he was forced to decide between trashing it, or fixing it. He decided for the latter, possibly to his wife’s disappointment. The rippling image could easily be attributed to a failed filter in the power supply. Knowing that capacitors are a prime suspect in these cases, he tore in, looking for failures. He found that there were, in fact, 2 bad capacitors on the back light circuit. After replacing them with newer, higher quality ones, the monitor was as good as new.

Deogen, Tiny Monitor Tester

August 5, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 5 Comments

Deogen is a small, self contained device for testing monitors. It was designed back in 2000 to reduce the amount of space and effort required to test monitors in a computer shop. The initial design used an AT90S1200 microcontroller to generate test patterns for the monitors. Being about the size of a portable CD player, it was much easier to take to any monitor and plug in for testing.

Version two of the device, pictured above, is much smaller, being about the width and height of a credit card. The depth is slightly larger than a 9 volt battery. Compared to the last vga test project we ran, this one is tiny. The unit boasts a decent set of features, such as; eight test patterns at four different resolutions, battery or DC power, and small form factor.

The processor of version two is an ATtiny2313 at 20MHz, and controls the H sync and V sync signals directly. The RGB is converted to analog using a resister network. The power circuit is custom made for low power consumption, though they note that a 78L05 equivalent unit could be used in its place.

The plans for the PCB and the software are available from their site. Head on over and check out some pictures of it in action.

[Thanks, Philip Fitzgerald]

Rear View Jacket

June 21, 2008 by Eliot 10 Comments

Is your popped collar so epic it emulates horse blinders? Are punk teens always skitching your coattails? Are you constantly moonwalking into power poles, trash cans, and the elderly? [Paul Coudamy]’s Hard-Wear Jacket solves all of these problems. It has a micro-camera embedded in the back of the neck and streams live video to a sleeve mounted monitor. The goal is to expand the perception of the wearer and how they interact with the environment. We know this is just a small step and doubt many people will be scrambling to never turn their neck again. It’s something interesting to contemplate though: how will people behave when brain taps allow their peripheral vision to have the same clarity as normal vision?