PRS-600 Hackery!

[conundrum]

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...oducts_id=7892



anyone interested in ditching that nasty resistive touchscreen which ruins readability, for a nice magnetic interface?
admittedly the calibration would be a challenge but its doable.

Having dismantled my '600 for "unrelated" reasons (it still works btw) i discovered that unlike the '505 it has substantially more exposed screen backplane area for adding a backlight in the form of EL sheet etc.

So, combine the two hacks. Remove the touchscreen, and add either EL or a front downlighter inside the casing where the glass normally sits.

for reducing the likelihood of screen damage maybe it could be replaced with thinner glass coated with antireflective coating?

Now this does raise the interesting possibility of adding a touchscreen to the '300 and '505 if someone writing custom firmware can figure it out.
i noticed that someone has implemented a similar mechanism using resistive touchscreen on a calculator of all things...

Note:- the sensor featured here is only a 2 axis but as long as it is kept at a reasonable distance from the casing magnets and SS backplane sheet it should still work.

EDIT: I also found another chip called the FC30 (orientation sensor) which runs on 3.3V and generates both single/double tap and direction indicators.


-A