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Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: critor on August 03, 2011, 05:14:59 pm

Title: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: critor on August 03, 2011, 05:14:59 pm
Lionel Debroux has built the 1st homemade Nspire dock connector... :)

... and tested it successfully on a TI-Nspire CX! :) :)


Check the photos in the TI-Bank news:
http://ti.bank.free.fr/index.php?mod=news&ac=commentaires&id=1268
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: Jim Bauwens on August 03, 2011, 05:21:40 pm
Very nice :D
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: Juju on August 03, 2011, 05:32:53 pm
That's awesome! And it looks easy to do.
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: Munchor on August 03, 2011, 05:33:38 pm
How much does making it cost?
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: critor on August 03, 2011, 05:35:47 pm
Allmost nothing?

But remember that depending upon what you intend to do, you might need an additional TTL/USB adapter which will cost you something like 5$.
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: yunhua98 on August 03, 2011, 05:38:44 pm
wow, that's pretty sweet.
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: pianoman on August 03, 2011, 05:50:12 pm
Wow, looks great :)
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: bsl on August 03, 2011, 06:17:57 pm
 I made mine out of more common materials:
A pencil eraser, 3 bare wires and a heavy rubber band
The 3 parallel wires make contact with the dock RS232 contacts,
and the heavy rubber band presses on those contacts and keeps
the dock door open at the same time....

Code: [Select]
RS232 contact wires[Rx,Tx,Gnd] dock connector side
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |  pencil eraser
   |       |
   |       |
   v       v
-------------------
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
-------------------
    ^
    |
   solder Rs232-USB adapter wires to this side
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: Jim Bauwens on August 03, 2011, 06:44:24 pm
I just soldered directly to the pins x)
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: critor on August 03, 2011, 07:46:30 pm
bsl, could we have some photos of your dock connector which looks very interesting to me? ;)
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: TIfanx1999 on August 03, 2011, 08:39:39 pm
Very nice Lionel! =)

Quote from: bsl on August 03, 2011, 06:17:57 pm
I made mine out of more common materials:
A pencil eraser, 3 bare wires and a heavy rubber band
The 3 parallel wires make contact with the dock RS232 contacts,
and the heavy rubber band presses on those contacts and keeps
the dock door open at the same time....

Code: [Select]
RS232 contact wires[Rx,Tx,Gnd] dock connector side
   |
   |
   |
   |
   |  pencil eraser
   |       |
   |       |
   v       v
-------------------
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
|  |||             |
-------------------
    ^
    |
   solder Rs232-USB adapter wires to this side

Wow, BSL is McGyver! :P
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: bsl on August 03, 2011, 09:17:43 pm
Quote from: critor on August 03, 2011, 07:46:30 pm
bsl, could we have some photos of your dock connector which looks very interesting to me? ;)
I got a problem with my camera driver,  but I think my description is easy to follow.....
I will try to get photos later...
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on August 03, 2011, 11:17:24 pm
Awesome! Someone should move this to news
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: Lionel Debroux on August 04, 2011, 01:15:46 am
Thanks critor ;)

The bulk of the work on the adapter was done by my father, who is an electronics engineer, and knows mechanical matters (bending the pins at 2.54mm step without breaking them) better than I do :)

The USB - RS232 TTL adapter would be more like $15-$20 (or 15-20€...) + transportation fees.
critor (seemingly EVAL-232R) and I (TTL-232R-3V3) use adapters based on FTDI chips, but adapters based on the widely used PL2303 and CP2102 USB-serial chips should work just fine. Oddly, the CP2102 Evaluation Kit is quite expensive compared to the FTDI- and PL2303-based kits.
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: mrmprog on August 04, 2011, 02:00:15 am
Yet another reason to get my hands on a CX...
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: Lionel Debroux on August 04, 2011, 03:51:13 am
But don't forget that CX Nspires are less programmable than Clickpad & Touchpad Nspires ;)
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: willrandship on August 05, 2011, 11:33:46 pm
@mrmprog, the CX has the same dock connector as the original.....

Cool stuff! I was actually looking for a lab station on ebay for cheap, just to get the port :P In the meantime, I have a header soldered to my extra 84+ pad. I want to use those 2 GPIO pins from the Touchpad connection :D

Spoiler For pics of the connector I soldered:
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/KeyPadCable.JPG)
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/KeyPadCable2.JPG)

Speaking of GPIO pins, the nspire is full of them. SD cards can somewhat simply be run through them as well  :thumbsup: so no more 32 MB limit!
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: critor on August 14, 2011, 06:08:09 pm
A new kind of homemade Dock connector, this time by Levak:
http://ti.bank.free.fr/index.php?mod=news&ac=commentaires&id=1283
Title: Re: The 1st homemade Nspire dock connector
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on August 14, 2011, 06:35:23 pm
Nice critor! Maybe someone could update the first post with it :)