Unneeded-i-Q 2 - Il ritorno

[DaBotz]

I still had a pretty scrappy looking Intuos 2 12x12 lying around.

My nephew "killed" his laptop (again), and gave me the screen from it... an Innolux N156BGE-E41.
It is Twisted Nematics, 1366x768 and 6 bit - in other words, crap - so for a while I resisted.

But it also has a perimetre-only frame, and the TCON is already out of the way.
No modding required!!!!   WOW, so easy - temptation, temptation.

Finally, I caved in, ordered a controller kit, a ZIF-ZIF extender and 40 cm of FFC (30 lines, 0.5 mm pitch)  

First thing, this LCD has pretty bad viewing angles for  a modern screen (but better than the ones in the LP156WH2 that was in the laptop before this last). As I think to keep it on a desk, I had to turn it upside-down in the build, as it is visible virtually only from "above" its centre line of sight, and I was going to be below it most of the time.  

Unfortunately, this means that its TCON has to be in the middle of the active area! Not ideal, but it beats not seeing the picture in the screen at all.



Having already walked the ways of Bongofish, in a day (once all the pieces were at hand) I managed to mount it all together

I carved a hole in the front of the Intuos case - surprise, this panel is as thick as the reinforcement ridges in the back of Intuos 2 fronts are tall, so it was simple to decide where to leave it.

Inside,below the original case surface, kept in place by spacers glued-soldered to the front.

To avoid worrying about interactions between its frame and the Intuos antennas board, I placed my now customary polyethylene shield behind it. A 1/3rd of mm well spent.



I placed the kit board at the bottom of the Intuos case, aside the location of the Intuos circuitry board






Them , I glued a piece of 3mm glass in the hole.

[DaBotz]

I decided to place the LCD buttons on the front lateral side of the case, and to cut the wacom metal plane to let the cable through.



By the way, anybody knows what material is? it proved much, much more brittle than I expected.  



When I placed back the Intuos 2, I manage to get the FFC from the screen to slide between the metal shield and the Intuos circuitry board, then attached the ZIF-to-ZIF plaque to the metal shield with bi-adhesive tape.



At this point, it had become mostly connecting everything together, manage the cables paths, and close the case with all in it.
    

[DaBotz]

Then, a combination of a shallow acrylic foil and my beloved black adhesive tape to cover the hole where the buttons reside, and a sheet with printed the Intuos  short-cuts completed the opera.  





Here we can see it in its final resting place, below its beautiful big sister, the sleek UbiQ3.

Oddly enough, "3" has to use a VGA whereas this runs on the DVI.
 



So, how does it go?

It is a bit jittery - nothing excessive, I have drawn plenty of stuff with the old Cabinetiq when it was on the fritz and behaved worse than this.

Also, I have to see if my usual common-mode choke trick on the USB line has any effect on this build [Note after the fact: it has no effect].

However, my desire making this was to have, for when I use "UbiQ3", the same kind of "auxiliary palettes holder" that I use with my main machine, and that integrated well with the look of "3" (which was my first build with "all inside the original case").

I have to say that it appears I have done a good work, from that point of view, and I can live with a bit of jitter.