K-Jintiq, a 15" IPS modded into Intuos 3 A4

[Hieron]

Succes!! Fully finished build!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs-vZkcxYc4

-great IPS panel, 1400x1050 pixels
-no jitter
-no heat
-mostly inside original Intuos 3 package


Original first post:

Massive text warning Will try to compensate with some more photos later, are on another camera.

Parts:

After reading a lot of the topics on bongofish.co.uk we decided to build one of these things for fun and actual use of course.
Several topics, especially the Wei tab made us decide to put the whole thing inside the Intuos itself.  Certainly because of the esthetics of the whole thing. So Intuos 3 A4 was going to be the base, we already have one (5 years old?) but that one is in constant use so a newer one was needed.

So to start with the parts:

-We found a barely used Intuos 3 A4 for €180,- (1.5 years old)

A lcd panel was a bit more troublesome.
A lot of the topics discuss panels but we wanted to have it as cheap as possible since we didn't want to make a big a sacrifice to the silicon gods when the whole thing went off the deep end.
After some searching on a national 2ndhand website a used panel from a IBM T60 laptop was found which should do the trick, for about 80 euros.

-This is an 15" S-IPS 1400x1050 LP150E05-A2K1 panel.

Now the controller, which we found on the E-bay site of nyjtouch.
They helped us finding the correct one and although they could't guarantee us it would work since they didn't have the panel itself to test they thought it would work. We ordered the whole package, a DVI / VGA lvds controller, a ccfl inverter and some extra cables.

-R.RM5451 LCD Controller Board Kit with DVI for $39 including shipping.

China --> Netherlands by China Registered Airmail, ordered 10th of November and arrived 19th.

So this puts the total cost so far to: 300 euros

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The screen hooked up to controller.


First we took the Intuos 3 apart.
The screws didn't pose any problem, but this was only the beginning. The whole thing is kept together with annoying amounts of double sided tape. This took quite some time to remove properly without ripping PCBs apart or some other form of irreversible damage.

What worked best for us to start somewhere, where the tape was most visible and use a small flathead screwdriver to pry the pieces loose. Then the large green sensor PCB was still stuck to the casing with two L shaped sticky foam pieces, a long sharp blade took care of that. We did tear one piece of copper foil which seems to be used to connect the different ground-planes of the PCBs together. Should be easy to reconnect later.

What we noticed was the Intuos3 we bought differs a bit from the one that was already in use.
The difference is that with the one we bought there is a small "gutter" so to speak in the top layer where the grey protective sheet is taped to the plastic top cover. Probably to make the overall solution of the gray protective sheet stuck to the top plastic layer more smooth. So the top layer isn't entirely smooth compared to the old one. May swap the casing with the "older" Intuos 3 A4 to counter it.

Now the Intuos was in pieces it was time to turn to the LCD.
We did a small test with the LCD completely assembled and putting it atop of the Intuos to see how much disassembly was needed.
At tabledmod.com this seems to be the approach to take. We noticed that a large piece of covering metal at the side of the CFFL was completely blocking the signal so that had to go. Also the PCB for the row and column drivers and LVDS signals was blocking the signals so that needed to be folded outwards. No jitter noticed what so ever, but that is understandable since nothing on the LCD was connected anyway.

This all meant we needed to remove the metal bezel and remove all the tape surrounding the panel.
Since we were scared as hell to break anything we took our time but as with many things over time we got more excited.... and lost some of our restrain and went too fast. This led to our first sacrifice to the silicon gods by breaking the CCFL. (CRAP!!!!)

Some searching online and we found a replacement including cables etc in Germany (www.ccfl-roehre.de) . 30 euros including shipping (DOH!) (arrived 23rd) On a side note, we found a cheaper replacement in the UK later on. (www.backlightweb.co.uk) and in the US they seem cheaper but with all the shipping cost and delay it didn't really appeal to us.

We wanted to keep the metal bezel part that housed the CCFL for some support and reducing the risk to break it again.
We cut of the excess metal and used a sander on it to make it all a bit more smooth.


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The internals of the Intuos 3 spread out, after quite some effort of getting it apart.

-------------

Testing:

We hooked the whole thing up and surprise surprise the thing crapped out on us. It seems the controller is configured for the incorrect resolution, although we explicitly e-mailed and got confirmed it would be configured for 1400x1050. Nyjtouch has been helpfull as to trying to figure out what went wrong but with the time difference it is a slow process.

The panel gets detected as a 1920x1200 screen, some parts of the screen overlap and some parts of the screen are missing. With some driver options in Linux it is relatively simple to override the EDID that gets detected with one of your own. We did that but no result....

Without the CCFL there is almost no jitter at all which is a good thing, but without proper graphics alignment it is only a small up-side compared to the controller crap at the moment. We have ordered the programmer and another controller so we can do the programming ourselves.

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LCD still works, but the controller is programmed wrong. Here we were still waiting for the new CCFL.


With the CCFL hooked up and everything open and the grounds still severed we got some succes, but writing the standard " yay, it works"  is a bit tough with a wrongly programmed controller.. With the CCFL it seems we lost some 4 pixel rows somewhere on the edge of the panel  Not really that bad, it is close to the edge. If we drive the LCD panel at the wrong resolution, jitter is really really strong. At the native resolution it is promising.

So for now, we'll have to wait for the China mail

Succes:
-Intuos 3 A4 taken apart, still works
-IPS panel works
-New CCFL works
-Not to bad jitter, without shielding efforts

Fails:
-Controller doesn't match resolution of panel
-Killed our first CCFL
-IPS panel lost 4 pixel rows
-Some jitter so far
-Waiting for new controller


With the new controller we can do serious testing, start shielding and put it all back together, incl probably this backside of a nice Samsung LCD screen. Fits rather well with the Intuos.

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Backside that mounts well to the backside of the Intuos and will hold the controller etc.

[bernard]

Welcome Hieron!

It seems you are not doing this alone (unless you refer yourself as "we"). 

Nice shiny backside you have there (from the Samsung LCD).

It appears you did a lot of reading and already have quite some experience for a first post!  Lots of things happening!

1920x1200 for a 1400x1050? One is widescreen and the other is 4:3 aspect !!  It is the second time I hear that the wrong native resolution has been programmed by Njytouch -- and maybe this was exactly the same resolutions (I am trying to find back the other thread, this forum search sucks and Google is not helping either) -- I see a pattern here so, I wonder if they have some sort of confusion in their files... How can they pick the wrong native resolution again? Is it that hard to do?  Did they give you a deal on something else? (like the programmer?)  They are generally very kind and helpful.  I wonder what can we do more to "help" them pick the right stuff?

Did you say you ordered another controller?  Why so? you couldn't re-program the one you had already?

You should have tried driving the LCD before dismantling it. Is it missing 4 rows because of the dismantling or because of the controller?

I am not sure if you did it, but make sure you keep the metal backplate of the wacom -- it is important. It was placed at a precise distance. Some have moved it further "away" to boost the reading height.

Good find for the stores -- maybe I should start putting the sites people find on a wiki page.

S-IPS panel?  wow, that would be impressive -- I always thought these were too thick to work.  What is the LCD Panel thickness?

Jitter: do not forget to try driving the LCD at a different frequency.  Even a single Hz can make a difference. This is like radio tuning.

[Kareltje]

Hi,

I'm the other part of the "we"  

We ordered another controller since the package deal wasn't much more expensive and for other electronics projects it would be nice to have another controller around. They aren't too easy to get here so seemed a good thing to do.
No clue what exactly went wrong with programming or if something else is wrong, we'll just have to find out when the other stuff arrives.
They did give us a deal on the "extra" controller but apparently they are expanding / moving and really busy but they promised us and hopefully figure out what the problem is. We hope it is a simple reprogramming of the controller to fix the whole thing.

Driving the LCD before dismantling is indeed the way to go but since we hated waiting for a controller to drive the whole thing we wanted to speed things a long a bit.  The 2 - 4 pixel rows that are missing are most likely because of the re-assembling of the ccfl. Maybe it can still be fixed but we don't want to mess around with it too much until we can properly test everything and assemble the whole thing.

We didn't touch the metal back plate so we should be good there.

The viewing angle on the S-IPS panel looks really good and overall quality is really nice. The thickness of the panel, whole thing assembled,  is about 6mm.
Without the metal bezel it is about 5 - 6 mm, you don't loose all that much.

The jitter really reduced when we switched from VGA to DVI. That made all the difference.
We didn't mess around with frequency all that much the 60Hz it seemed stable enough.
It was difficult to differentiate between the "jittery" movement of my hand and the actual jitter introduced by the panel/ccfl.


Will post more photos as we move along but we don't expect the programmer to arrive before next Friday so hopefully we can report something new next weekend.


On a side note, we found another site that offers LVDS controllers etc. (http://www.cosacool.jp/archives/51376078.html) . Indeed Japanese so you would have to use Google translate but they are really helpful through e-mail in English. If we can't get the thing to work we might order one from there. They provided us with the following offer:

We can provide contoller kit based BlueBaby board
for PC input only.
The Controller Kit is included
-main board x1
-DC-AC Inverter with interface cablex1
-LVDS Signal Cablex1
-OSD keyboard with interface cablex1
-D-Sub15pin(PC) Input adaptorx1
-12V AC-DC Power Adaptor x1

USD98.00/1set
Shipping Fee:USD19.00
Total:USD117.00





Thanks to all the people on the forum for all the information!


Karel

[bernard]

hello karel,

Another LVDS vendor? thanks for the info!  I might add it to the wiki. I wonder if they have other offerings. This one seems to have RGB input.

S-IPS are great panels. Typically 8 bit colors and bundled in more "high-end" monitors.   The thickness of yours is equivalent to a TN panel it seems.  I guess mine is super thick (~2cm) due to having 6 CCFLs -- probably located "in the back" (instead of being on the edge).

With the programmer in hands, you should be fine.  The cable appears to be correct and your resolution is not exceeding what your board can do. You should get it to work. Tell us how it worked out using the programmer.

[Hieron]

We'll just do duo replies here

the nice PVA panel on the dismantled samsung LCD has 4 ccfl's and seems =< 1cm thick. This current S-IPS panel is much thinner and has great viewing angles, even though brightness seems low(just 1 ccfl). Also, having 2 controllers isn't bad..  the 2nd one can be for K-Jintiq 2.0

If we try to close the lid etc, it seems that the LCD panel is taking a bit more height than the plastic panel did, so there's a small gap around the sides. Not sure if that really matters much though. We wouldn't want to cut into the cover as it seems a great and easy way to provide something to draw upon. If the surface feels so so, we may consider another option. Don't think Wei said much about that.

The way to actually take off the grey paint seems vague. Paint removers as suggested on the forum can be quite agressive etc.. Anyone in NL that had good success with a specific brand? Cellofaan perhaps?

[Kareltje]

Success!!

The first "hello world" is a fact. Will post pictures later.
The programmer arrived Tuesday and yesterday we managed to program it correctly.
The software is a bit funky and manual is written in Chinglish and sometimes doesn't make too much sense.

The jitter is almost non-existent and the viewing angle of the IPS panel is really great.
We still have to put the whole thing together but it looks promising now.

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Karel

[bernard]

  Give me five! -- IPS Panel with an Intuos3 A4 -- great stuff!!

Keep us posted with the case and all!   

Still: continue to watch out for not breaking things. Till the last screw is put down, never let the excitement make you overconfident at manipulating the parts!  It's really easy to get too excited -- I know what I am talking about. 

[bernard]

Can you take a picture of the programmer? I am curious to see how it looks like.

[Hieron]

*gives 5*  

Yeah, still quite some work to do, like stripping the paint and drilling holes. Then taping the whole thing down and closing it up. The CCFL is currently a bit loose too, we'll need to push it in more (for some reason it doesn't want to easily) and fix it into place.

Not there yet, but the lack of jitter, great cursor -> pen tip correlation etc make us hopefull. The quick tests were alot of fun already.

At first jitter seemed to vary between non existant and annoying. Some early tests seemed to show that it is due to the cut through ground plane connection. If I push them together so they connect for a second, the jitter is gone for a while. I guess Wacom put that connection in for a reason...

So much fun this mod..... really rewarding, lets hope we don't mess it up

ps: still not sure how to remove the paint from the Wacom cover...  tried a range of subtler options and it didn't do much...

[Drewid]

I've split the paint stripping guide to the "useful knowledge" section

http://forum.bongofish.co.uk/index.php?topic=1783.0

[Hieron]

k, thx. Renamed this thread to take out the paintstripping part.

[chasent]

How hard was it to program that controller correctly? My controller also displays an image just fine, but at the wrong resolution and with weird image cropping.

[Kareltje]

How hard was it to program that controller correctly? My controller also displays an image just fine, but at the wrong resolution and with weird image cropping.

Dear Chasent,

This seems like the exact same problem we had. Probably it is programmed incorrectly as well.
Although they ensured me this wasn't their business model I'm starting to wonder

If you have the programmer and a Windows XP 32-bit machine it is not such a problem.
The English in manual that comes with the programmer isn't that great but understandable, although plain wrong in one aspect that you need to connect it to a different VGA connector than what is indicated.
The software is probably on the edge of legal since you need to run it in a specific order and everything.

Make sure you can find a program on their Ebay website that you feel comfortable with and have some confidence about that it is going to work.

Hope this helps you a bit.

Karel

[chasent]

Out of interest, did the panel work first time after burning on the program corresponding to your panel? I informed them The idea that the controller was't not programmed at all and they were on some sort of default firmware popped into my head.

NJYTouch did offer to sell me a programmer and told me it might be possible to fix it when I informed them of this problem (The problem seemed to confuse Christina, she first said that she did not understand why the controller was failing and that she would have to consult an engineer. The answer i got back was fairly vague, "it has the wrong program").
However I choose not to buy it as it would cost the same as the LCD and controller combined and because the exact model of LCD I have isn't listed on their page (they list an ITSX95L2, I have an ITSX95C).

[Hieron]

hmm... as Karel said, it sounds like a business model...  When Karel managed to get the software (rather odd way of getting it to run.....) to load the correct file into the controller (just select from list, done), it worked flawless right away. In principle a 1 minute job really, if the program works and you connect it to the other vga connector in contrast to what the guide says.

So yes, it does make you wonder... I believe he got the exact same e-mail response but I'll let him answer that.



I managed to strip the cover fully, hopefully get the thing running during the holidays   The NuShield screen protector is on the way as well.