Canon PowerShot A560 Teardown and Salvage

I recently got my hands on a broken Canon PowerShot A560. It's not a very good camera. It's not a very special camera. It's capable of VGA video at 30fps and 7.1MP pictures. I'm not 100% what's wrong with it (other than a broken battery door), but it won't take full resolution pictures. Videos work just fine, but they're not worth fixing the battery door for. So we're going to take it apart the camera and see what we can salvage from it!

Make Something That Isn't A Computer A Computer

I asked my girlfriend what I should do for my blog. She suggested that I "make something that isn't a computer a computer." So I looked around for something that I could do that to. I have a router, but that seems too easy with things like OpenWRT and whatnot. How about something a touch more obscure. Why not a drone? I have most of a Parrot Bebop Drone, so we can use different parts of it if we want. I want very much.

Making a Game Console Part 3 - Operating Systems and Software

Now that the computer is built, it's time to put some operating systems on it. There's a specific order I want to do this in because it's very important. We'll look at how I think I'm going to do this, and compare it to how I actually did this and see how close they come. I can't imagine they'll come close at all. But at least I have a plan, right?

Making a Game Console Part 2 - Parts and Installation

Every computer needs parts. For this one, I'm sourcing my parts from the Sony PCV-RX550 I found in the garbage at my apartment over the summer (and the DVD drive from the other computer because it looks better than the other ones). This was to be computer that ran the game console. Fitting it to the case that I desperately didn't want to cut or damage because it's pretty was very hard, and I had to make some serious concessions. Let's get started, shall we?

Printer Partout #3 - Yet Another One

Yes, I have yet another printer part out. It was in the "Take a part, leave a part" pile at my maker space so I decided to take a part and restock their hot glue supply in return. I really only needed the scanner light, but I wanted to save everybody the trouble. Basically, this is a very similar printer to the one I last parted out, but this one has wireless capabilities. So we're going to take it apart and see what's running it. Everyone else can have the neat stuff like the motors and whatnot. I don't care about that bit. I just want to see the cool stuff.

Reusing a VCR Remote

They don't make things like they used to anymore. Technology has certainly advanced, but things just don't last long because they're cheaper to make than to make well. That's why it's so much fun to work with old devices. They're durable and they're simple. I'm going to work with a VCR remote with a jog wheel on it in order to make a sort of handheld video editing control board for some of the programs I use. It's time to get in over my head with USB HID devices!

Reverse Engineering a LED Display PCB

While salvaging the case for my retro gaming computer, I neglected to take the display board apart. That's because I wanted to trace the pinout of the whole thing so I could perhaps drive it and make it into a clock or something. As always, I'm sure this is easier said than done, but you never know unless you try, right? This isn't a super duper complicated circuit, but with several shift registers, 8 light bars, and 14 14-segment displays, programming something to run it may be the real challenge here.