The Mystiq (27" Nonsense)

[thegrumbliestpuppy]

Hey everyone, I've been lurking these forums for a few weeks now but I'm deciding to post my build finally!

Me and my girlfriend's anniversary just came up, and her birthday is coming up, so I figured hell, why not combine them and make her a Cintiq.  She is going to art college for animation and has ogled Cintiq's for years, in the same way that most people would ogle a Lamborghini.  "I'd love one but it's WAY too expensive."

We also play a lot of PC games together and she's always been jealous over my huge monitor (she has a 15" one), so I decided to make it big.  If she puts it on an Ergotron she can use it as both a gaming monitor and pull it closer when she draws.

So I got a used Intuos 2 12x18 on Amazon for $130.  I was ogling lazy_mosquito's build with the 27" asus monitor, as I wanted something that had been proven not to provide jitter.  However, the $375 used price tag made me decide against it. All I know is that I want to try having the electronics away from the screen to reduce the chances of jitter, so I want an LED bigger than the active area.
Luckily I live right next to a Microcenter, so I tried out a cheaper AOC 24" LED for $129.

I obviously hadn't researched enough, because I didn't know how freaking fragile that brown tape on the LCD controller (or whatever it is) was.  I stripped and mounted it on the tablet only to have it display nothing but black lines.  No picture of any kind.

Bah, back to the store.  Luckily Microcenter has a really great protection plan.  It's $20, and they don't really check what went wrong with it, they just give you store credit for the original amount you spent.
So I lost $20 but got the rest of my money back by reassembling the monitor and returning it.  I'm a bad person, okay? 

While there, I found that they had a Samsung S27C750P 27" LED Ultra Slim monitor that was both refurbished and open box.  In fact they had 3 of them.  This monitor is on Amazon and Newegg for around $300, and at the store I found it for $150, so I scooped that up quick as I could!

I brought it up and immediately started stripping it, much more carefully this time!

Man did I luck out!!! If you get a chance to use one of these monitors, DO IT.  Not only is it Ultra Slim, but it has an EXTERNAL power supply!!!
It was really easy to take apart too.





Look at how long those cables are!!! I'm not sure if that's because it's refurbished or if those are the original cords, but that's gonna allow me to skip soldering completely.  Woohoo!

[thegrumbliestpuppy]

Halfway through stripping the Monitor, disaster struck.
I think they must have glued the LCD screen to the metal bezel, because when I tried to pull it out, I had to use a bit of force, and the screen cracked!!! Horrible, big spider cracks all the way down it.

Wellp, back to Microcenter, down another $20 protection plan.  Put the whole thing back together, and traded it for another of the 3 refurbished screens. Same exact model, same price.

I got back home, did 3 shots of whiskey to drown my sorrows, and went to bed.  Back to work first thing the next morning!

I asked for advice and profaldo gave me the idea of using a hair blow dryer to warm up and loosen the glue when removing the screen.  I tried it out and it worked like a charm!
However, there were 2 parts to this problem.  The back half of the bezel came off, along with most of the layers of the glass, but the LCD was still sticking to the back side of the metal shield!!!
I was terrified of shattering it again so I held it gently and tried to wiggle it off one side at a time, nice and slow.  Eventually it came off.

Turns out these little metal pins hold it in place VERY snugly.



Easy enough to get around once you know about them and just go slowly, but a dangerous surprise if you don't!

With that I finished up stripping the screen with no problems. Pretty straightforward.

[thegrumbliestpuppy]

BUT WAIT! ONE LAST WONDERFUL SURPRISE FROM SAMSUNG!
This screen is really a dream come true for this sort of project.



The LED bar comes on it's own little strip of metal!!! It slides right out of the metal shield with no trouble!

It hooks right around the screen.  Easy peasy.  I took some scissors and cut off some of the excess metal so it wont block the pen, and taped it to the screen.

Now for the easy part! Taking apart an Intuos 2 is as simple as grabbing a screwdriver and taking out the screws.  Done.

I put the plastic thing from the front of the Wacom onto the digitizer as a perfectly sized shield.  It's even adhesive.



I mounted it on top and taped the electronics to the wall just as a mock-up to test out the whole deal.

[thegrumbliestpuppy]

First test!  It needs to be calibrated, but it works!

Best of all? No jitter without any shielding of any kind.

There was a little bit at the top edge, but I just pushed the screen up on the digitizer by about a half inch and it disappeared completely (the screen was a little too low anyways).

[Aerendraca]

Another non-jitter screen! This is awesome. I think manufacturers must have changed the way they make TFT panels in recent years if we're now seeing so many non-jitterers. I llok forward to seeing how you get on with this build.

[thegrumbliestpuppy]

Thanks! So, I struggled a bit to calibrate this thing. First I tried to follow the calibration guide on tabletmod.com  but it didn't work.  Finally figured out having a screen larger than your tablet means you have to do it differently!!!  I'm a little slow.
No matter how I did it, as I'd go to the left or right side of the screen, the cursor would move faster and run away from the pen.

You (Aerendraca) gave me some great, in depth help.  However, I ended up figuring out a WAY lazier solution.
I moved the screen off of the tablet and put a piece of tape marking exactly where the bottom edge of the tablet was and exactly how long it was.  I put the screen back on.  I went into the wacom properties and chose Mapping.  I chose Proportions for the tablet first.  Because of the tape I knew exactly where the left edge of the screen was, but had to guess how high up the top edge was.  So I purposely guessed too far, and kept tapping slightly further down until I reached the sensor and the instructions told me to tap the bottom right corner.  I put a little piece of tape on my screen to mark where the top left corner of the sensor was, and then tapped the bottom right corner (as the instructions said), which was easier since the tape showed me exactly where that was.

I then clicked ok, and chose Proportions for the screen.  I then took my mouse (not the pen) and clicked exactly where I marked where the sensor was on both corners.  Success!
Easy, and perfectly calibrated!

[Aerendraca]

Lazy solutions are as welcome as complex ones as long as the end goal is the same. I'm glad you got it calibrated ok.

[thegrumbliestpuppy]

Preciate it! Gifted it to the lady today, though I still need to build an enclosure.  Honestly that daunts me more than the rest of the project!

I moved it over to her drafting table and taped it together to make it stable and safe to use before presenting it.  Taped the electronics to the back of the table.

She was ecstatic, so, mission accomplished. Boyfriend of the year 





Onwards, to figure out how to make a damned enclosure and finish this thing    :'(