Worklog DIY Concept UFO
- Thread starter Dmcke5
- Start date
Okay so small update. First semi successful run of buttons. Not exactly what I had in mind but I don't hate them so they'll do for now.
Something tells me they wouldn't be keen on the 35 or so hours of machine time in the housing alone haha. Plus they've already got their own, they just need to put them on sale already!
Didn't make much progress this weekend as Covid restrictions are finally lifting in our area so we were able to catch up with some friends instead. I've got everything I need to be able to start prepping it for paint though so I'll probably pull it all apart and begin sanding tonight.
A question for the guys here who are far more knowledgeable than I am with electronics.
I have a slight issue with my plan for charging. The tablet only has one micro USB port that is shared for data and charging. Originally I was planning to back power the tablet through the USB hub so I can charge but I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. From what I can tell, once you short the USB host pin on the micro USB plug the tablet then provides its own 5v to power whatever is attached. Obviously hooking a 5v supply up to an already powered USB port is a bad idea so without some sort of electronics trickery to disconnect the host pin when charging I doubt I can charge through the USB port. Even if I could work that out, I suspect I would then be stuck without usb ports whilst the unit is charging which would obviously prevent charge and play (since the gamepad controls are connected via usb). That would also end up powering up the controller whilst charging, meaning RGB on constantly while the unit is charging even if its switched off.
My fix to this problem is to use a separate charging circuit hooked directly to the battery. This works but it has one unexpected side effect, windows has no idea what is going on with the battery. The battery percentage doesn't appear to be generated based on voltage and it appears as though regardless of what state the battery is in, windows will not allow the percentage to increase until the "charger" has been connected to the charge port. I'm confident I can disable all of windows battery protection so that's not an issue, but it does mean I'll have to come up with another way to monitor the battery. I think I have a spare pin on my arduino so I'll probably use the LED behind the controller mode select button as a battery indicator if I can't work out how to make windows play nice with my charging setup.
So if you made it through that wall of text, I suppose my question is:
Can you think of a way to charge my tablet that still allows the USB to work but at the same time will let windows know its actually charging?
If not, can anyone recommend a faster 1s lithium charger? I'm running a TP4056 based one at the moment and it isn't fast enough to keep up with the power consumption of the tablet when its running, so all it does is slow down the discharge rate rather than actually charge.
First few coats of metal primer applied and sanded. This is probably the final coat of primer before I move on to colour. Managed to fill up most of the bits I wasn't happy with and the finish is looking great so far! Didn't take much sanding to get a nice smooth surface.
Should be able to get some colour on tomorrow afternoon, as long as the temperature isn't too low for it. It's almost winter here and whilst it doesn't get really cold compared to a lot of other places, it is still too cold for painting by the time I get home from work some afternoons. Fingers crossed for a nice warm day tomorrow!
Should be able to get some colour on tomorrow afternoon, as long as the temperature isn't too low for it. It's almost winter here and whilst it doesn't get really cold compared to a lot of other places, it is still too cold for painting by the time I get home from work some afternoons. Fingers crossed for a nice warm day tomorrow!
Got some white on this afternoon. Looking good, little bit of an "orange peel" effect in the paint at the moment, but should be able to get rid of that with some 2000 grit sand paper before I move on to the clear coat tomorrow. Also chucked the touch screen digitiser in to see how it looks in the white housing. Can't wait to peel that screen protector off when it's all finally done!
Will have to do something about the front camera cut out in the digitiser. Not sure what yet, but I'll try and make it as invisible as possible.
Will have to do something about the front camera cut out in the digitiser. Not sure what yet, but I'll try and make it as invisible as possible.
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Okay, this paint was a huge mistake. Its had a full 24hr's to dry and it still feels tacky. Its also impossible to sand, it just clogs the sand paper up immediately. Have done a quick bit of research and I think the paint I should have used was acrylic, rather than enamel. So time to break out the paint stripper and try again!
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Before you do strip everything back: Enamel really needs the better part of a week to "bake off" and at that point it usually becomes really hard and durable and consistently has a finish as described on the box. We've still got time in the competition so you might want to wait a little to get that enamel finish 
Yeah I figured it would dry eventually. I painted the housing of my CNC with enamel and I didn't notice the long drying time with it, however because I don't have to hold it to use it I wouldn't have felt how tacky it was while it was still drying.Before you do strip everything back: Enamel really needs the better part of a week to "bake off" and at that point it usually becomes really hard and durable and consistently has a finish as described on the box. We've still got time in the competition so you might want to wait a little to get that enamel finish
I'm much more familiar with automotive style paint as I've repainted some car parts before with good results. I should have gone with that to begin with but opted for the cheaper option thinking this would be pretty similar.
Unfortunately impatience got the better of me and I've already stripped 95% of the paint off (just working on the last bits now) so too late to go back now haha.
In other news, I got a bit more programming done on the controller whilst waiting for the paint to dry. I can now change accent colours, brightness and patterns of the LED lights with button combinations. I've also now got all the buttons (on the first PCB) mapped to keyboard and joystick inputs and can swap between the keyboard and joystick mode by holding the "hotkey" for one second.
Much happier with the acrylic! I was going to polish it but I'm actually quite liking the matte finish so I've decided to keep it like that. Still heaps of work to do, need to make the remainder of the buttons, the heatsink/fan mount, the left side PCB and tidy up the wiring inside.
One thing I've noticed since putting it back together tonight is that I should have painted underneath where the screen goes black because at the moment I can see a slim sliver of white so I'll have to take the screen back out and fix that eventually too.
One thing I've noticed since putting it back together tonight is that I should have painted underneath where the screen goes black because at the moment I can see a slim sliver of white so I'll have to take the screen back out and fix that eventually too.
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I wouldn't be too worried, there's plenty of other great looking projects on here and plenty of other people doing far more complicated stuff with their electronics.Hey now, this is supposed to be a contest, not an absolute trampling of the other participants. I'm gonna need you to tone it down a bit and get back down on our level.
You can still vote for it if you want, I don't mind
We had a pretty lazy day here so it was a great time to load up some games and test them. Some of the older games are a bit tricky to get running due to the "native resolution" of the panel being in a portrait orientation. Windowed mode fixes it for most but it does bring with it some complications for a few games too. Need to work on the mouse input (maybe introduce some exponential) if I intend to play mouse based games with it. Here's a few pictures of a variety of different games running on it. I also had a go of Diablo 2 but forgot to take a picture. Asides from the mouse input needing some work, it was quite good to play like this! Definitely need to get the other side of the controller done so I can really start testing some of these games properly.
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Thanks mate! Yeah once I saw the matte finish I knew I couldn't bring myself to polish it!
Here's a bit more photo-spam for everyone. Made some more progress with the buttons, thinking I'll leave the start and select buttons aluminium and just sink some black paint into the engravings as I'm quite fond of how they look like this. I have to pull the hotkey button back out and machine the back of it out so I can fit some plastic in there so the "tri-wing" pattern glows but at least I've got something to fill the hole for now.
Also just in-case anyone was wondering, the screen still has its plastic protection film on it which is why it looks a bit funny in some pictures. Once I'm finished I'll peel it off (don't worry, I'll video it lol) and put a proper screen protector on it.
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Omg, how did you get this totally official Dell Project UFO early? /s
Good luck with the competition, you have a pretty strong submission.
Good luck with the competition, you have a pretty strong submission.
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YOU ARE AMAZING I'M SPEECHLESS WOW