So a few months ago I had an idea I kept mostly private because I was not sure of the feasibility of it but after talking to Kerm and a few other people throughout the past 8 months I have a set of features that seems reasonable to use.

Now at this point you all have probably read the post title and wondered what I mean by "drop-in" PCB hardware mod. By this I mean a PCB that you place on top of the calculators PCB and solder plated pads directly to the calculator PCB making modding easy and with minimal fuss for anyone competent with a soldering iron.*
(*minimal fuss still requires some case redesigning to fit the new parts but should be achievable with just a pair of snips and a drill.)

Now features I want to to have in list of importance

1. Usb rechargable battery
   
2. Overclock
   
3. Calcnet usbhid/arduino adapter built in
   
4. Back light
   
5. Speakers
   
6. Fancy Lights
   
7. SD card storage for programs
   

Now explanations of all of this:

• Rechargable battery: a to be decided on size rechargeable internal battery. need I say more? no more AAA's!!
  
• Overclock : I needed the pcb anchor points so why not add it its cheap!
  
• Calcnet/usbhid/arduino: for a handful of the features below I need some kinda auxiliary processor so I figured why not throw in an ATmega32u4 (the same processor that's in an arduino Leonard). This will be tied to the data lines on the calc and a few other items and will handle all the auxiliary hardware and computer interfacing.
  
• Backlight: this has always been an issue on the 83+se so the solution I have takes after the lights used on gameboy/colors/advances and installs a light rod you can position to illuminate your screen! (will probably be the hardest to install item of the mod)
  
• Speakers: who doesn't love sound, a pair of speakers "gutted" from phones they will be small speakers that pack a punch and are easy to install (gutted means ordered from amazon)
  
• Lights: who doesn't like link activity lights and lights that change colors based on the music being played I know I do!
  
• SD card: This is last because I just thought of it and will take a lot of work to implement software side. But would be an awesome feature.

More to add will edit this post as I find the links to the info and start sketching out things. SO what do you all think?




EDIT: Anything below this is a link dump so I can find it all later thusly it is not formatted or edited for clarity

sd http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DM3CS-SF/HR1972CT-ND/2602740

el wire http://www.coolneon.com/ particularly the angelhair aqua or the HBS white

struggling issues for EL the inverter takes up a lot of space. maybe shove it behind the lcd that would free up the space needed? Possible interferance with speakers tho????

You might find it easier to design a board to completly replace the main board in a TI83. This would be a bunch more work, but might work out better.

here's an example for the HP41

http://systemyde.com/hp41/

I think that's a little more work then I want to do and a little more cost prohibitive sadly I am not made of money and I much more enjoy working around what I have then making new seems more of a challenge ^^

Actually, with a bit of ASIC/FPGA chops, it might not even be that bad. One of the holy grails of calculator modding I've considered would be a Beaglebone/Raspberry Pi-like board, a 320x240 LCD, and some native C++ version of jsTIfied crammed into a TI-83+SE case.

That would be cool but like I stated in irc id like it to be discernible from actual hardware unless opening the case. regardless cool ideas! any thoughts on the features I have posted and or other ideas to add/remove?

So this is what i was thinking about LED light bar



Just a small rob embedded on the side of the screen that you pick up(well push on the bottom of in this case) and it shines A light onto the screen. Will look a lot more professional then the screenshot of course ^^

Note the rod is embedded in the screen so its flush I just messed up the drawing.

In other words, a bar you can lift up to shine down onto the screen? If I'm understanding that correctly, where does it go when you're not using it?

That is pretty much it. It would sit recessed in the screen bezel with some kind of clip to stop it from flapping around wildly there would be a cut out near the top to allow you to push on it to pop the rod up so you could grab it. Just an idea only thing it's missing is a diffuser and I'm slowly thinking of ideas for that.

I see what you mean there; that seems pretty cool. I still wish we could come up with a reliable method of back- or front-lighting the screen, as Kaslai is mentioning in IRC and as I and others have attempted before, but it's a hard problem. The best results I've seen so far have been from putting EL panels behind the screen or EL wire around the screen (see also this tutorial on EL wire side-lighting).

Seem's like it could be a good idea. The 83+ is easily taken apart and is really easy to make some space behind the screen, I've done it a few time, though never actually completed that mod. The ones I would want would be OC, speakers which i think would be super easy, and as for the arduino/ calnet.. that's going to be a bit harder to fit but it could be done. You could also possibly do a "drop in" battery pack that sits in the battery case part that's just a rechargeable pack, or an extended battery with a voltage regulator to power the calc, and possibly send power to another mod you have installed. As for the SD card, could work, but it might be hard to remove the sd card to a stuff to it, unless you just add a usb port to the case and plug it into your computer. Interesting idea though, I want to see where this goes.

Sounds nice, although if someone can do it... it is you.


Yeah. That would be nice but a lot of work. If that were done, we'd need a new version of Doors to go with it that works as the operating system, and it would logically be a different model number - I mean like "TI-83+ Platinum Edition".

Ok lets address this in order.

@ KermM I am totally in love with the EL wire idea it seems easy effective and it wont have horrible glare. Do you know where I can get some for a reasonable price(googled and found http://coolneon.com looks promising). That's the issue I have had with it. Last I looked they were out of my price bracket(which with above site is no longer the case!). The reason I like the led rod idea is its a simple manget/connector on the inside. A rod a wire a led and a diffuser. All of which are cheap and easily available. (I will do a hand drawing of what It looks like in my head if not tonight on hcwp tomorrow)

@ Rcfreak0 that is the idea of a custom board I can slim and consolidate the circuitry a lot more then basing it off the default arduino schematics. For the battery I am thinking of using a 3.7LiPo battery with a buck boost to power everything. That should supply enough power for a good while of charge and not make to much heat or take up to much space. Space is being achieved by removing the battery mount in the back case of the 83+se that gives you about a 1.5CM x 2.5" x 2.5" area to work with, which is more then enough for everything if the layout in my head is correct. For the sd card I want to use an adapter like http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DM3CS-SF/HR1972CT-ND/2602740 if I have the board space. It doesn't involve any slits in the case its hidden and most importantly its easy to remove the SD card and put it back in with minimal force. I have had these in older smart phones and they were awesome! If it does not fit then I will probably break it out to another portion of the calculator and put a slit in the side of the case and put in a push eject SD card slot. The speakers will be mounted behind the LCD in an acoustically positions way to make the left and right ear pick up each speakers audio with hopefully minimal mixing, at least that's the plan!

@ Caleb Thanks for the support! And yeah it would just be to much work for my scope. This is a project to learn more about hardware and software development and get something cool about it. I am still learning so developing a whole board is just out of my scope I'm afraid.


Edits: Grammar/Punctuation needed a touch up

The only thing I have is pink EL wire, and only because an ex-professor of mine gave it to me and a colleague among a bunch of interesting gadgetry odds and ends to "create cool stuff" with. I don't have a good EL wire/panel source of my own. It would certainly be a very easy solution, I give you that; the trick would be making it look as clean as possible. Also, did you get to make that drawing on HCWP?

Sparkfun sells some pretty cheap EL panels. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10800
If it's not possible to backlight the display, you can try gutting a GBA SP (make sure it's an AGS-001 model) for it's frontlight.

I actually did not get on hcwp last night updating my computer hit a snag....i forgot to label my hard drives as i took them out so it took me like 5 hours just to get windows transferred to the new hdd...


Soon as I get some money i think ill try the cool neon place. the real question is can we find an inverter that is small enough to work in the space we have.

I'm not confident removing the reflector on a Ti+83+SE screen is even feasible with out some really good tools which I definitely don't have so im going for a different approach cause of that

Removing the backing is pretty simple, all you need is tweezers and a hair drier Also, Supertex sells a lot of really tiny EL driver ICs http://www.supertex.com/pdf/misc/el_driver_ics_SG.pdf.

Supertex is actually exactly who I was looking at And is it really that easy? Guess I will have to Google it more it ifs easily achievable I have no reason doing an el panel backer. I just fear the success to failure rate is very steep.

Most failures come from people breaking the ribbon cable instead of actually damaging the LCD.

Hey I can fix that! Seriously googling it now tho.

googling brought up a cool idea but the more I look at it the less feasible it is sadly. So scratch Fiber optic fabric off the list.


Looking at a old UTI post using an el panel is certainly feasible. But has its large inherent issues of breaking the screen and that concerns me as I am trying to make this project as noob friendly as possible because I would love to release easy(ish) to follow instructions.

A better way of doing it in my experience is letting some isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol dissolve the adhesive bonding the backing and screen. It makes the adhesive rubbery, stringy, and non-sticky, which makes removing the residue quite easy. I'll have to try the hairdryer method some time, but I worry about the effect of the heat on the LCD itself.

Pretty much any kind of actual back backlighting is going to require hardware modifications far out of the comfort zone, if not the abilities, and these so-called noobs. Have you considered frontlighting using a layer on top of the screen? I've never experimented to see if it's feasible, though I've toyed around with the idea in my head.