Wipers on Hip Gear

scherzo · Post by **scherzo** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 9:50 am

Will the screen still function if I don't hook up the brightness, contrast, and saturation wipers? Or do I at least have to have some resistors from the wiper common to each one? Or should I just stop being lazy and make my own little control board like ladyada did?

Lucretius · Post by **Lucretius** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 11:05 am

I'm gonna go with stop being lazy...just do it!

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 4:56 pm

It looks like crap without it. I tried it without the adjust board just cut off and it was WAY too bright, the contrast was BAD, and the color was awful. Trust me, you need it.
I just today finished adding the color and contrast pots on my NES p0cket and the screen looked beautiful! It hurt my eyes before...

scherzo · Post by **scherzo** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 4:59 pm

That's pretty much what I was wondering. What is the range of those pots?

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 5:05 pm

Range? Not sure what that means, but they were 10k micro pots from Radio Shack that I used. I went ahead and built put them inside the case once I adjusted them right. For brightness I used the original pot and had it stick ouside since it was easier to adjust then the Radio Shack ones.

scherzo · Post by **scherzo** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 5:43 pm

Sorry. I don't know my terminology. I need to school myself more in electronics. I assumed that a potentiometer had a min a max resistance. But I guess min is always zero then, and in order to impose a min resistance you just throw in an extra resistor in the circuit.

This very moment I spent a good deal of time reading up on pots. One thing I'm missing. If a pot is a variable resistor, why is it necessary for it to have 3 terminals? By following the leads on the controller board for the pots that alter the video, I see that the 1st and 3rd terminals of each are connected to two different resistors. The middle, I guess called the wiper, goes back to the main board. Can someone give me a quick explanation of this?

If there isn't a quick explanation I'll just assume it's magic for now and just make sure to duplicate the same connections on my own board with mini pots.

Thanks.

elliott · Post by **elliott** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 6:28 pm

I don't know what you are "supposed" to do, but I experimented with connecting wires together that go to the contol board. I found if you connect three of them together (don't have it in front of me so I don't know which three) the screen looked good enough to use. I am in the process of remaking the control board, so I won't use this as a permanent solution. I don't know if this could damage the screen or not, but it worked fine for about 3 hours using a constant 5 volts.

*o* · Post by ***o*** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 6:30 pm

dont be lazy!

scherzo · Post by **scherzo** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 6:53 pm

Another question. OK, I understand that I can run anything higher than 5v into the Hip Gear as long as I'm not using the audio amp. Now what about power to my NOAC? Can I also just just an unregulated current of around 5v into it and it'll be fine? Or is there is there a place on the Hip Gear I should pull 5v from?

usbcd36 · Post by **usbcd36** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:39 pm

scherzo wrote:This very moment I spent a good deal of time reading up on pots. One thing I'm missing. If a pot is a variable resistor, why is it necessary for it to have 3 terminals? By following the leads on the controller board for the pots that alter the video, I see that the 1st and 3rd terminals of each are connected to two different resistors. The middle, I guess called the wiper, goes back to the main board. Can someone give me a quick explanation of this?

I was confused by this for awhile, but its actually quite simple, the outermost leads are the two leads of a normal fixed resistor. The middle lead is connected to the wiper. Basically, the wiper contacts a certain point of the resistor and(depending on how close it is to the source voltage) outputs a current either lower or the same as the source. The other way is to have the current coming from the wiper and leaving via the outer terminals, depending on the position of the wiper, one current will be higher and one lower. It is easier to understand if you have the schematic of a pot in front of you.

electromaster64 · Post by **electromaster64** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:32 am

How are you powering the audio amp? did you remove/replace the 7808? The control board going to be a pain to fit in the case but if it looks much better with it attached then I want to use it.