Just two rubber nubs glued on the backside edges of the lid and everything is okSteveM said:
mali said:Just two rubber nubs glued on the backside edges of the lid and everything is ok
Yep, that would do it alright. I just mean that the hinge would also need to take the offset into account and that you're always going to be left with a gap (which you may somehow want to fill).
I have seen plenty of gadgets with this "exposed" flex cable setup.mali said:
j.pickens said:
I will ask my girlfriend to provide her camera. I don't know how long it will take. I will start when I know it will work. My biggest concern is the dimension of the upper tubules of the hinge that control the tilt of the screen. I will have to put the wires through on both sides, because they are so many. The lower hole will be bigger by default, because it will have to withstand higher forces. I think for the upper tubules i will use peaces of a telescope antenna. They are usually made of chrome-plated brass and pretty stable despite their thin walls. The lower tubule might be made of a compressor connector part. I will have to see, how much space there is between the f-keys and the edge of the case. Maybe i will let it overlap a bit, if there isn't much space. The middle part will be made of a brass block, just some holes to drill and to give a nice shape.Kloplop321 said:you seem to be prepared mentally for it, if you do, can you past some pictures?
mali said:I will ask my girlfriend to provide her camera. I don't know how long it will take. I will start when I know it will work. My biggest concern is the dimension of the upper tubules of the hinge that control the tilt of the screen. I will have to put the wires through on both sides, because they are so many. The lower hole will be bigger by default, because it will have to withstand higher forces. I think for the upper tubules i will use peaces of a telescope antenna. They are usually made of chrome-plated brass and pretty stable despite their thin walls. The lower tubule might be made of a compressor connector part. I will have to see, how much space there is between the f-keys and the edge of the case. Maybe i will let it overlap a bit, if there isn't much space. The middle part will be made of a brass block, just some holes to drill and to give a nice shape.Kloplop321 said:you seem to be prepared mentally for it, if you do, can you past some pictures?
Go for it
You are correct, I did, it was in the subsequent posts that I started approaching the idea of making and selling a conversion kitFrozenIpaq said:
Chip said:From a purely practical standpoint, this is not a mod to be undertaken lightly. There are two basic "convertable" designs. One is to have the display open 360 degrees and lock that way, as the OP suggests.
Neither option is possible without significant structural modification to the Pandora.
The fold back design is actually the more problematic of the two. In order for the display to fold past 180 degrees, the hinge has to be at the back of the unit. Not on top of the back side (as it is now), but actually on the back. This creates a bit of a problem for the ports and trigger buttons that already reside there. In fact, in searching for an example of an existing computing device that converts in this manner, I could only find non-functional prototypes and concept designs. I'm not saying you couldn't somehow squeeze in a couple hinges between the ports on the back, I just don't know how you'd do it.
Actually, the foldback method would be my ideal for preserving the clamshell form factor, as I hate the swivel hinges on most tablet laptops - they're too wobbly, and working that and the ribbon cable of the LCD would be gigantic mess of a nightmare. A private mod would take weeks, and selling a kit would be nigh impossible. One goal of just about any mod kit would be to avoid any sort of soldering or hardware restructuring if possible.
As far as the foldback method goes, I was thinking that rather than move the existing hinge, what if I added two more hinges with a form of locking mechanism on them, so that when playing in clamshell, they're locked, and when converting to tablet, you "unlock" the second and third hinges, tri fold it backwards, and then lock it in place again.
Though even a design of this sort would probably mean a full case replacement and not a "mod", but I'm resigned that that's probably going to be the case regardless, as I cannot conceive of a way to cut into the Pandora case for a tablet conversion that wouldn't wind up requiring so much plastic deformation it may as well be a new case anyway.
I need to talk to a friend of mine with a 3d printer to see if it would be capable of prototyping something like this - I don't have the money to get an injection mold made, but that's the kind of step to be taken close to production anyway. For now, I'm just in the theory stage and I need to see how viable this is and whether it can be made to work, which means waiting until I actually get my hands on the housing schematics and start tinkering with them in CAD (assuming they were done in CAD...)
Also, as for the LCD ribbon cable - I'm sure the one included with the Pandora probably won't work, as it's not designed for the stress of 180 degree folding on a regular basis - however I was under the assumption that the physical ports used by the LCD and the PCB are of a somewhat standardized variety and that it's possible (not terribly EASY, mind you) to find other ribbon/connection cables. Do you know whether or not this is the case?
QUOTE
A mod of this magnitude is not impossible, but it would require some serious engineering. Do not expect a commercial aftermarket kit to do something like this. The first market is barely large enough to support design and manufacturing costs, the aftermarket certainly isn't. This is a Benheck-caliber mod, and I wouldn't suggest even attempting it to anybody without significant experience in this area.
Very true - it was a bit naieve of me to expect an aftermarket kit for this. Hence the reason I'm thinking of doing it myself instead.
Heh, maybe I should contact Mr Heck to see if he has any ideas for a better way to make this happen
And thank you for that - if I'm treading ground that's already been pretty thoroughly covered, I find it helpful to have you point out that these things have been discussed. I'll have to track down the thread where a triple hinge was discussed.Chip said:The ribbon cable is definitely a custom job. I remember Craig complaining that the cable they were using with the dev boards was either too short or too long to work in an assembled Pandora, and having the correct cable run off for the convention in Germany would have cost something like $5000.
As for the tri-fold hinge idea, it had been brought up previously. The main concern at the time was that the middle section would need to be large enough to compensate for the thickness of the base while in tablet mode, and that this added height would make the lid stick out when it was closed.
I'm sure you'll find all this out when you start drawing up design ideas. I just wanted to give you the heads up
It's a really nifty idea, but untenable in the current design, if I understand correctly, as the contact points for the keyboard keys are located on the underside of the PCB, meaning that making the keyboard detachable would also mean detaching the PCB, which...doesn't work.Polossatik said:
You mean like the link i posted to DaveC render on the previous page, Quoted below.Karel Jansens said:
trooper said:
