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Joined: 26 Nov 2007
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Thanks to Joe Moore and Colten for the below guide. I have also included a few items that were not included in Joe or Colten's instructions that may also help you along. The photos are only showing the installation of the Video Jack, but I did include an image that Colten made of the circuit board that illustrates both the audio and video signal locations.
Remove the Cover
First, we recommend removing the batteries & leaving the battery covers off. Probably a good idea to have a bowl or tray to hold screws and small parts.
We hate crawling around under the desk looking for tiny screws in the dustball farm...
There are seven screws holding the two halves of the case together. The first 3 screws are easily accessible, two on the handle and the third up near the viewfinder. You'll need a relatively small phillips screwdriver.
Carefully pull off the rubber feet and remove the four remaining screws under them. Then pull the top half of the case away and set it aside. There are several things which are held in place between the two halves and will now be loose. A couple parts are completely removable and it may be smart to set them aside. The eyecup, lens hood, viewfinder lens, and the run/stop button are detachable. Some other parts such as the mic and the inner run/off toggle, are attached by wires and go where the main body of the PXL goes.
After you have them removed, open the battery compartments and run a razor blade down the grove and through the battery orientation sticker. This way later there is no guessing to how the batteries are suppose to be installed.
Lift the Metal Circuit Board Cover
With the circuit board exposed, at the top rear section of the camera, directly behind the wide gray cable that connects to the board at the front of the PXL, a metal cover is soldered in place over our target area. There are four points where the cover is soldered to the board. If you have desoldering yarn or something like that, groovy. It is fairly easy to just separate the cover from the board by touching the hot iron to the solder and lifting away with a screwdriver or pair of plyers while the solder is melted. When I did my first mod, I just cut the damn thing off and threw it away.
At the rear of the pixelvision the cover folds around and when the 4 points are cut, desoldered, whatever, it can easily be bent back to expose the board underneath.
Soldering Signal and Ground Wires
Adam just happened to have a monstrous, archaic oscilloscope in the basement of our house. He also had some books about troubleshooting television which provided good examples of how locate & identify the waveform of NTSC by probing with the scope. Since we knew where to find the signal the 2nd time around, we've skipped that here.
If you really want to find it yourself, and you don't have an oscilloscope handy, the same thing could be achieved by running a cable to the video-in of a VCR with a monitor/tv plugged in. If you ground the ring of the cable to some metal part of the PXL and probe with the tip, you'll get an image from the PXL on yr tv when you make contact with the signal source (of course the PXL must be powered & in record or pause mode.)
Take four 4" lengths of shielded copper wire and prep them by melting a little bit of solder on the end. Carefully solder the audio and video wires to the spot as indicated in the picture. The video signal is the second solder point inwards diagonally from the crook in the board where the metal plate has been pulled away. Then solder the audio signal wire to the illustrated connection. (please see the picture!)
Depending on your soldering abilities it may be a good idea to line the underneath of the metal cover before resoldering it in place. This will help prevent grounding out one or both of the connections.
Push the metal cover back down and resolder it to the four points. Then solder the other 4" ground wires somewhere on the metal case to provide a ground.
Circuits to use:
Solder the wires in:
Replacing the Metal Cover:
Solder the Ground Wires:
Adding the RCA Jacks to the Camera:
Somewhere on the rear of the PXL case would be good place to drill, gouge, cut, or chew a hole. Make two holes perfectly round and about 1/4-inch ( 7/32-inch for a perfect fit...) round.
Remove the nut and washers from the jack. Insert it into the hole and replace the washers & nut. Now the jack is mounted securely to the PXL case. It might be a good idea to solder the ground wire to the thin washer-like piece of metal before putting it back together on the case.
If you made the hole too small, the jack won't fit through, and if its too big, the jack may slip thru the hole and won't be secure enough.
Now feel free to solder the other end of the signal carrying wire to the inside tongue of the rca jack. Solder back where the little hole is, you wouldn't want to block the recess of the jack from receiving the male cable, would you?
Drilling the Holes:
Grounding the Jack:
Completely Wired Jack
Installed:
Replace the Cover:
Carefully replace the cover of the PXL. It might be tricky due to the loose parts which must fit perfectly in each half or the case will not close properly. It tooks us about five minutes of careful maneuvering to get it back on right.
Sources:
*http://www.speakeasy.org/~joem/Pxl/guide.html
*http://www.colten.com/pxl/ |
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