More Progress On the Bezel Mods

Things are really starting to come together now. I'll start out with a shot of the switch array ready for wiring. The way the LED is mounted may seem strange but the last thing I want when I'm out navigating the Mississippi River at night is an LED shining directly in my face. So it's mounted sideways which will give it a nice glow without being in your face. I just want something to indicate when it's powered up.

 

Here's a shot of the drilled bezel, followed by a picture of it in place over the switches

    

Now we get to the fun part, my technique for making professional looking labels for projects, making hamemade microwave touchpad style switch arrays or in this case individual switches. First I use a product for making your own indoor sign labels, it's basically photographic printer paper with a peel off back like an 8.5"x11" sticker. In this case it was just four labels printed on a laser printer using the white paper as the lettering and everything else solid black. The other product I'll use is self laminating pouches

 

I separate the two pieces and mainly use the sticky half but don't throw the other piece away, it makes a handy insulating material or for use in my switch array by punching out a circle with a hole punch

Which I then place on the back of my label just before I apply it to the panel which not only makes it wear better, it provides a little relief so you get a little bubble from the switch plunger without too much pressure  self activating the switch

Here is a picture of the bezel with the labels in place followed by a shot of the bezel with the laminating material applied

 

Normally I'd leave it as is although I would have made the lamanting one piece, but I need to deglare the bezel so I'll be painting it flat black. Flat black paint is the prototyper's/modifier's best friend. It's essentially a primer so it sticks well and because it doesn't contain so much plastisizer it doesn't react to surfaces or orange peel like regular gloss spray paint. It will build up layers real nice and is easy to touch up or repaint. It also hides small scratches and imperfections ... plus it looks industrial, rugged and IMO cool. So all I have left to do now is scuff up the gloss on the bezel with some fine wet/dry sandpaper so the paint adheres better and mask off the labels (I'll keep the 'Acer' at the bottom by the 'Aspire One' is getting painted over.)

Tomorrow I'll paint the bezel and wire the switch array and will have some more progress pictures in a couple of days ...

More Pics Of Bezel Mod

As I mentioned earlier I am adding 4 switches to the bezel, Power, WWAN, WLAN, and Bluetooth. The first picture is the two outside switches, as you can see I had to glue on some shims to level the board. The middle 2 switches go where the camera used to be and already have a little platform molded in.

Nothing fancy here, just thin PCB material with pads cut with a dremel

Here they are in place, I haven't soldered the middle 2 switches, I'll do that after I drill the holes in the bezel. The outside switches can be slide independently for final alignment. The extra pads I cut are in case I want to mount a power LED

 

Finally the bezel, I have the opening filed to just about the right size, I just need to knock down some slight high spots and make a groove for the flatcable so it doesn't get pinched. You can see I'm about ready to drill my holes

 

 

In a couple of more days I should have the bezel ready for preliminary testing of the touchscreen, then labeling and painting. 

Modifying The Screen and Bezel

Here are a few progress pictures. The first shows the before and after views of the back of the LCD and the wiring harness

The original

Here is the modified LCD and wiring

I undid the shielding around the LCD wiring and pulled back the wiring for the digital mic and the webcam. The webcam wiring will eventually go to a stripped down wireless mouse USB dongle so I can use A1ctl to turn it off and on.Then I just folded the flat part of the harness back on itself and secured with some foil tape.

Next up is the back half of the screen casing, first the original

 

Here is the partially modified case

 

 As you can see I've removed both the WWAN antennas  since I'll be running the inputs to the modem and GPS to separate jacks for my external antennas and I need the space to add some switches. Also removed is the webcam which is space I'd like to use for switches also. The WLAN antennas were swapped side for side and the wiriing rerouted down the opposite side. Next comes the fun part, finding tactile switches with the right heights so plunger/button top sits even with the top of the bezel.

Here is the bezel, I've taped it off so I have an idea of how much I need to file off and something to go by to keep it all neat, straight, and square. I haven't got too much left to take off

Hopefully in a couple of days I'll have some more photos documenting the addition of the 4 switches and my way of making them look professionally done.

Preliminary Teardown And Planning

Well after week and a half fighting software trying to get my new motherboard, processor and video working with Windows and even worse getting a 64 bit Linux Studio back up and running I've finally gotten into the hardware part of this project. The good news is the hinges and screen case are symmetrical and all you have to do is unbolt them at the hinge and swap them and it folds down perfectly into a tablet. Swapping sides for the wiring harness wasn't a problem either since I was removing the webcam and the microphone both of which I'll use in other projects. BTW the microphone is truly a digital unit (It has a nano technology 1-bit A/D converter built into the electret element, very cool) and I was surprised to see this relatively new technology filter down into the low end market so quickly. The bad news is since there is no touchscreen kit made for my model (AO531h) the closest was one was for a D150 so as I suspected a little soldering would be necessary, no big deal. The problem is the 531's are a slimline model and everything is packed in pretty tight including the LCD screen. The touchscreen I'm using is simply too thick and you can't get the bezel to snap down over it like on other models. I used a rigid one made by Hoda but the flexible models may be thinner and fit (If anyone knows chime in please). So i have to file the bezel opening down about a 1/16" on all sides. I have other work I need to do to the bezel too like add 4 switches for Power, WLAN, WWAN/GPS and Bluetooth. so I can power down unneeded devices to conserve power and I also want to paint the bezel flat black so it doesn't reflect when I'm navigating the river at night.

Anyways here are a few photos that show the insides and also how the hinges make it the perfect candidate for making into a tablet. Having to take a little off around the bezel is a piece of cake compared to having to cut a new hole in the back of the case like I've seen some guys do to make a tablet PC from a netbook.

 

 

I'll post some photos of the mods I'm doing to the bezel and display wiring in the next day or two and explain some of the mods I'll be doing like moving several switches to the front panel, adding Bluetooth, adding SMA jacks for the WWAN and GPS external antennas.

Catastrophe Strikes .... and a Fishing Database

Catastrophe strikes, my main computer's motherboard gave up the ghost and died. Well actually not the entire motherboard but the CPU socket is toast. The top (plastic of course) stud where you clip the heatsink two broke loose and when the fan and heatsink fell the suction created by the thermal paste pulled the CPU out bending some pins and apparently damaged the AM2 socket as a new CPU I had but hadn't put in yet wouldn't work either. So I got an upgrade motherboard that can handle AM2, AM2+ and AM3 CPUs so I can use my new Athlon X2 6400+ and 800Mhz DDR2 RAM now and upgrade to a quad core and 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM in a year or so when I feel the need to pep the system up again. I also upgraded my video card so it has more game performance as well as the HDTV/Blue Ray performance I already had.

So although I haven't gotten the 3D and depth maps together yet I did get my fishing database ready for others to download and use or modify or whatever. You need to have Open Office with Base and Writer installed (Everything else is optional for this case) You can download the Fishing Database here. Place it where you like, probably your My Documents folder. I also made a shortcut to it and placed it on my desktop so I can just click it and Open Office Base opens with it loaded. It should look something like this

 

 Make sure Forms is highlighted on the left and double click Fish Log to open the database. It should look something like this

Many of the entry boxes have drop down lists you can choose data or numbers from, making entry a lot easier. The form is set up in such a way that if something isn't on the list you can add it by manually typing it in and the new word (or number) will automatically be added to the list. Be aware that removing an entry from the list is a little harder as you have to do it in the Form Editor. Those who have some experience in Open Office or Microsoft Office probably won't have much problem modifying the lists or the basic database form.

Once you get some data into the database you can start doing Queries to look for patterns. You do this from the opening window and I added a few simple queries to get you started. To make you own queries you can just use the 'Wizard' to make your own queries, it's fairly self explanatory. 

 

 There are a couple of more things I would like to do to improve it. First (and undoubtedly the toughest) is make the GPS coordinate entry automatic or at least a lot easier. I'd also like to be able to link a database record to a waypoint on a GPS map. An easier addition would be adding an entry for Water Level Trend so I could note if the river/lake/reservoir is rising, falling or steady. Here's a couple of more screen shots of some entries in my personal database

 

  

Actually I had planned on having the netbook apart by now and having started on the hardware mods like touchscreen, adding wireless mouse and Bluetooth, and jacks for 3G and GPS antennas, etc. That still looks to be a week away as I'm doing a major cleaning and rerouting of cables and power lines for the rest of my stuff (I have 4 radios that are all controlled from this computer as well as recording gear). In the next couple of days I'll finally finish the 3D and depth maps and get them posted and hopefully late next week have some photos (and tales) of a dissected Acer 531h netbook.

More Custom Fishing Maps

Now I'm going to talk about my favorite source for maps, unfortunately it's only for the state of Iowa. Check your state government website to see if they have a similar thing. Since this was created mainly for agriculture use I'd bet most states with a lot of agriculture will have something like this. Modern farming uses GPS and mapping more and more to keep track of things like crop rotation, fertilizer and pesticide use. The Iowa Geographic Map Server gets a lot of it's current data from USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program.

I usually set it for 1500 x 1500 pixels squares which I can later stitch together into larger maps, for instance I have complete aerial and topographic maps of Pools 15, 16 and 17 on the Mississippi as well as Coralville Reservoir and the Iowa River from the Coralville dam to the dam in Iowa City. Center the map on the area you want by clicking on it and zoom in to 20 meters and hit the Refresh Map button, click on the map to center it better and then choose 1 meter and hit the Refresh Map button again. You can adjust the map again by clicking on it to recenter it. When you get a view you like hit the 'Download map' link at the top and download the 1x1 meter GeoTIFF. This can be imported into most GPS program and is pre-calibrated.

Here is a screen shot from a portion of a 2000x1700 meter (pixel) map in OziExplorer, you may recognize it's the same area as one of the hydrographic map screenshots earlier

Now you can hit the back button and choose another map in the exact same area. The map server has several current years as well as 1930's and 1950's maps and topographic maps. Here is a screenshot from a 1930's map same size same area. Note that this was just before they finished Lock and Dam 16 and flooded the pool. The average river levels are 6-7 feet lower than today

Next is a composite map from the two maps above. This is a little trickier to make because when you make your layers and save the finished picture you lose the geodata in the TIFF header so you have to get it back in there (Or hand calibrate). A basic overview of how I make the maps is first I open The Gimp and open as Layers the two photos with the most current color map on top. Then I adjust the transparency of the top color photo to 30% and save as as TIFF. For some odd reason you can't make this TIFF work in GPS mapping programs (At least in OziExplorer or Fugawi) it does all sorts of weird things when you resize it even though it works fine in most picture viewing programs such as IrfanView. So open it in IrfanView and resave as a TIFF. Next we need to get the geodata back in the EXIF header. Next you need the libTIFF library and GeoTIFF Tools GUI from libTIFF.org. First I open one of the original photo maps and use the GeoTIFF Tools to read the header data with the 'listgeo' button. This will also place the data in the next (2nd) box. In the third box I enter the new layered TIFF I just made and it will automatically sent it to the next (4th) box with '_gl' tagged at the end of the name. Now hit the 'geotifcp_1' button and import the finished image into OziExplorer (Or other mapping program that accepts GeoTIFFs). Here is a screenshot of the same area from the new map

Here's another set of examples, this is the same area in Credit Island Slough as one of the hydrographic maps earlier

The waypoints for the rockpiles are a little bit off, this is mainly due to the way I had to mark them, I nosed my boat up to them while the GPS antenna was in the back of the boat. I tried to nose up to each one from the same direction so they'd all be off about the same

Here's the composite map

And here's another composite map, this time showing the wingdams below the water along side Credit Island

My next post will show you some depth maps I made myself as well as some 3D bottom maps made with Dr. Depth

Odds and Ends - And A Progress Report

I noticed a little anomaly in the sending the GPS Enable DOS window to the tray using the TrayIt application. If you set it to send the DOS window to the tray then it will do this every time you open a DOS window. You can bring it back simply by clicking on the icon in the tray. To me this isn't a real big deal because I don't use it all that often, mainly when I'm setting up and tweaking a system. If this is an issue for you, don't use the TrayIt application and leave the DOS window open when you enable GPS but since you can get the window back with a single click on the icon in the tray I can't really see why anyone would want to disable TrayIt unless they use the DOS window a lot

I started to disassemble the case to install the touch screen and then decided I still didn't like the way the system was set up. Even though I removed all the Acer bloatware, unneeded Windows programs and tweaked things up I felt strongly that I needed a better way to re-install the system when necessary. I like to do a clean install once every year or two but using the Acer system dics I made means you reinstall all the junk and have to go through the process of culling out the junk and tweaking the system which is time consuming. Also I wanted to install the Tablet PC 2005 SP3 additions which includes not only handwriting recognition apps but all speech recognition and voice control apps which I want to use with a Bluetooth headset and an embedded Bluetooth module. The Tablet PC additions can be found here

Then I used nLite and the instructions on that page to 'slipstream' the Tablet PC additions and preload most of the system drivers. nLite also allows you to tweak many parts of the system and enable/disable your Services which saves a lot of time on re-install. The trickiest part was getting and setting up the proper drivers for the SATA controller so the install doesn't hang. (XP doesn't have any native SATA drivers) That took me a couple of tries to get right so a rewritable disc is recommended. Once you get it right you can copy the rewritable image over to a regular CD for permanent storage and reloading the system. Highly recommended for culling out unneeded Services is Black Viper's website and doing this can significantly lessen the memory 'footprint' and make the system more responsive and more secure.

My main computer has an 80 MB partition with Studio 64 Linux with a 'cubed' Beryl desktop manager that I really like. This is a really efficeint way to work when you have several full screen apps going at once and each desktop can be set up seperately ... and it looks very kewl. I couldn't find a good free version for XP but I have found a couple of reasonably priced ones that I'm experimenting with. One is Think in Byte's Cube Desktop ($19.95) and the other is Otaku Software's Deskspace ($24.95) . I'm leaning towards Cube Desktop because it has a couple of more features like Flip Desktop (Like in Vista) and Window Exposer (Like Mac OS X Expo) and is 5 bucks cheaper.

So basically all I have left before I tear this down and start the touch screen install and other hardware mods is to load in all my map data, import my Fishing Log database (Open Office Base) and copy over my MP3 collection. I'm especially proud of my Fishing Log database because it is much more comprehensive than anything else I've seen and I set it up with a lot of drop down lists to make data entry easier when out on the water. Plus the last time I did any kind of work setting up databases was dBase under DOS 5.0 back in the early 90's so just getting it all to work was an adventure in and of itself. I'll upload the template to the database as soon as I figure out how and how to export and import the data. I'm still learning how to make reports to process the data. The 'learning curve' is pretty steep but the end results so far have been more than worth it and it's time to share it with interested fishermen and fisherwomen

Until next time ....

Enabling GPS On The UNDP-1 Gobi 1000 Module

Sorry about the delay, the Holidays and an impending ice storm are slowing me down but here is a step by step tutorial on enabling the GPS on the UNDP-1 Gobi 1000 module. This will be Acer One specific but the steps should be essentially the same for any brand/model that uses the Gobi 1000 module but doesn't have the GPS enabled by the OEM. I didn't write any of the software being used, it's all Freeware that I just managed to tie together into a nice neat 'one click' solution

The heart of the system comes from the creator of the MWconn Connection Manager http://www.mwconn.com and is an 'extra' from their Wiki. The Wiki is in German, you can use a translator like I did http://translate.google.com but you should be able to identify and download the program without translating http://www.mwconn.info/wiki/index.php/Qualcomm The program you want to download is MWqcgps.exe ... Now make a new directory for it, I used C:\maps and gps\enable gps ... Find the QCWWAN.dll file, on the Acer Ones it is in the C:\Program Files\Acer 3G Connection Manager\bin\ directory, other users will find it in the folder for their 3G connection manager. Make a copy and place it in the '\enable gps\' directory where you put MWqcgps.exe

Next we need to create some virtual com ports, go to http://www.eterlogic.com/Downloads.html and download the Virtual Serial Ports Emulator. This is a very nice, easy to use port emulator that's completely free in the 32 bit version. Install the program and start it up. First we need to create a virtual pair to tie to the output of the MWqcgps program. Click Device -> Create and choose 'Pair' from the dropdown list and click 'Next' .... Here we assign com ports to our virtual pair, since we won't actually be hooking our mapping programs to either we'll give them a high Com number to reserve the lower for Com ports used by various USB devices and created and enumerated on the fly. Port 1 will be COM20 and port 2 will be COM21 ... Hit the Finish button. Now go back to Device -> Create and choose Splitter from the dropdown list and click Next. Here we set our com port numbers again. The first will be the port we tie our mapping software to. I like to use a low Com number so it's compatible with older and Freeware programs so I left mine as COM1. The second is the output from our virtual pair, set it for COM21 and click finish. Now choose File -> Save as and save it as GPS_Port.vspe in the same directory as the others, 'C:\maps and gps\enble gps\' in my case. Now right click the GPS_Port file and create a shortcut. Right click the shortcut and choose Properties. In the target box type < "C:\Program Files\Eterlogic.com\Virtual Serial Ports Emulator\VSPEmulator.exe" -minimize -hide_splash "c:\maps and gps\enable gps\GPS_Port.vspe > Note the quotation marks, they are necessary ... Now in the Start In box type < "C:\Program Files\Eterlogic.com\Virtual Serial Ports Emulator\" > .... Next place this shortcut in the Startup folder of the Start Menu so it will automatically load on boot.

Next open Note Pad and type * CMD /k MWqcgps 1 > \\.\COM20 * (without the astericks) and save it as GPS.bat in the same folder as the other files 'C:\maps and gps\enble gps\' .... Right click on it and create a shortcut, place the shortcut on your desktop, you can also choose an attractive Icon for it. This little batch file enables the GPS on the UNDP-1 Gobi 1000 module and redirects the output to COM20 of the virtual pair we set up earlier. OK there is just one more thing left to do before we are ready to use it. Go to the Control Panel and choose 'System' and select the 'Advanced' tab. At the bottom click on the button that says 'Environment Variables' and in the bottom box highlight the 'Path' variable and click the Edit button. Append the line in the second box with < ;C:\maps and gps\enable gps >

Reboot your computer, make sure the 3G is turned on and click the GPS shortcut you made. This will open a DOS window and is running but since we redirected the GPS output to the virtual port you don't see anything except the command. As long as there is no error message or flashing Command Prompt you are OK. Now hook your mapping program to COM1 (Or whatever you chose) and you should be good to go, most mapping programs have a utility that shows the NMEA data or shows the satelite postion and shows your GPS coordinates. Make sure you are either on the top floor of your house or better yet out in the clear. To stop the program in the DOS window hit Ctrl and 'C' at the same time and close the window. Since we also created a splitter we can hook up to 8 mapping programs at a time and since it's all virtualized they all will use COM1

Next I'll show you how to use another Freeware program that will automatically send the DOS window to the tray where it's out of the way yet accessible so you can turn it off. If you gave your GPS shortcut a pretty icon, it will show up in the tray making for a nice looking professional setup

Testing The Netbook

I got the Acer One the day after Thanksgiving. The first thing I did was give the unit a thorough check to make sure all ports and devices worked properly. Refurbs are usually checked out better than new units from the factory, new units are assumed to be fully working, refurbs are assumed to have problems so they are more thoroughly checked out. Most of these Acer One AO531h refurb units were from AT&T and simply had a bad out of the box webcam but were otherwise fully functional. Then I got all the updates from Acer and ran Windows Update.

Next thing I did was pull the SIM card from my USB Edge modem and install it in the Acer One, chose the generic GSM profile and filled in the APN of my provider (iWireless, on the T-Mobile network) I took it upstairs where I got a decent signal and it hooked right up for me. Eventually I'll be using an outboard 10 dBi colinear antenna and I expect it will really rock then. ( I'll show everyone some antennas I built along with their dimensions down the road in the coming New Year)

Once I made sure everything was updated and working I proceeded to cull out all Trial Programs and Bloatware from Acer/Microsoft. I also got rid of any XP default software I wasn't going to need like most of the games, fax, email (An internet account like Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail works better for Mobile in my opinion) Telnet and shut down a few services I knew weren't needed or I felt were risky (like Telnet). I'm sure there will be other Services I'll be able to disable when I go to streamline and tweak XP.

Next up 'Misadventures in Linux'