If you've ever looked into building or buying a home theatre PC system you probably found that the case was going to hurt your pocket more than any other component. Here in the UK, the ones with all the goodies run from £130 to £290, and you can almost double those numbers for american prices. You really need one with a VFD or LCD front-mount display, an IR reciever, and a remote, or else you'll have to have a mouse and KB hooked up in your lounge and nobody wants that.
So, my plan is to rip up a buggy DVD player and salvage the LCD and IR components, then mount them into a plain black desktop PC case which I have in the garage somewhere. I guess I'll use the parallel port to interface with them... or maybe usb... either way it would mean writing my own software.
IR reciever first, as it's simpler. Here's a pic of the back of the 'daugterboard' it sits on with some physcal controls. As you can see, the metal casing of the unit goes to ground along with one of the 3 pins. The other two pins go to the 'motherboard' of the DVD player, one of them with caps to ground (presumably line filters) and the other without (power line?). What do I need to get data off this thing? Will the parallel port hande these frequencies? Anyone ever done anything like this before?
Here's the LCD (VFD?) panel. pic, pic. This thing has a lot of pins, but I figure I don't need all of them, just power and the ones relating to the main charaters on the display. I don't want to light up the 'now playing' and 'dolby digital' symbols or anything like that. I can't find the pinouts on the web, but it's a QLF0103-002 from a JVC player and it appears to use a samsung panel. Anyone know how I can start testing the unit? How can I determine the power pin for a start? And what voltages are safe to apply to the pins in testing?
All comments welcome, and thanks to anyone who can help me, especially if you're an EE! I'll keep the forum updated if people show any interest in this project.
So, my plan is to rip up a buggy DVD player and salvage the LCD and IR components, then mount them into a plain black desktop PC case which I have in the garage somewhere. I guess I'll use the parallel port to interface with them... or maybe usb... either way it would mean writing my own software.
IR reciever first, as it's simpler. Here's a pic of the back of the 'daugterboard' it sits on with some physcal controls. As you can see, the metal casing of the unit goes to ground along with one of the 3 pins. The other two pins go to the 'motherboard' of the DVD player, one of them with caps to ground (presumably line filters) and the other without (power line?). What do I need to get data off this thing? Will the parallel port hande these frequencies? Anyone ever done anything like this before?
Here's the LCD (VFD?) panel. pic, pic. This thing has a lot of pins, but I figure I don't need all of them, just power and the ones relating to the main charaters on the display. I don't want to light up the 'now playing' and 'dolby digital' symbols or anything like that. I can't find the pinouts on the web, but it's a QLF0103-002 from a JVC player and it appears to use a samsung panel. Anyone know how I can start testing the unit? How can I determine the power pin for a start? And what voltages are safe to apply to the pins in testing?
All comments welcome, and thanks to anyone who can help me, especially if you're an EE! I'll keep the forum updated if people show any interest in this project.
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