Uzebox/Digital Photo Frame love child

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Gotta love the Uzebox. Good old fashinoned fun. But now that my main TV has nearly a dozen devices in the AV switch loop I need a stand alone version of my favorite homebrew videogame.

I picked up a Sunpak 5.6 inch digital photoframe from Fry’s for $20 (online for < $25). Inside a resonably attractive case was a Sharp LQ056A3AG01 lcd, audio amp, speaker and power supply; just the thing to host a stripped down Uzebox parasite.

The parasite uses a ATMega644p but does not need the AD725 RGB to NTSC coverter as we will be driving the lcd directly. I opted for surface mount resisitor nets for the D to A ladder because
i) I had some lying around
ii) It needed to be small
iii) I hate drilling holes
iv) I hate soldering 805 resistors

I needed to cut 4 traces (RGB and SYNC) on the board near the lcd’s FPC connector (note that this is a zif socket, pull out the dark brown bit rather than yanking on the cable) to get the video signal into the lcd.  There are 7 attach points – VCC,GND, Audio to the TDA2882 amp, RGB and SYNC.

I drilled a hole in the case between and inserted a SNES controller cable, knotted it for strain relief and soldered the 5 wires (VCC,GND, CLK, Latch and Data) to the parasite. Double sided tape holds the beasty in place.

Close case, enjoy. $20 for the photo frame, $7 for the ATMega644p,  $2 for crystal, caps and resistors, $3 for the controller, $1 for the homebrew board.

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7 thoughts on “Uzebox/Digital Photo Frame love child”

  1. zap

    Very cool. Can I ask some questions? 🙂
    1. Does it really work? 🙂
    2. Did you connect the SD card reader to your parasite? If no, how do you change game ROMs, do you reflash every time?
    3. How it deals with the different LCD resolution? Have you modified the usebox code for LCD?

    Reply ↓
  2. rossum

    1. yup
    2. This version isn’t hooked up to the SD card, but now that Uze has the SD bootloader running (like Uze has the SD bootloader running (http://uzebox.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=520&p=4033&hilit=sd+bootloader#p4033) it makes perfect sense to do so.
    3. The LCD has a native resolution of 320×234, but uses SYNC to generate an internal pixel clock. That means that the uzebox code works unmodified at various horizontal resolutions and the LCD will do the right thing.

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  3. cifo

    “That means that the uzebox code works unmodified at various horizontal resolutions and the LCD will do the right thing”
    Can a 480×234 LCD display be used with the same unmodified uzebox code then?

    Reply ↓
  4. rossum

    As long as the LCD can be run SYNC mode horizontal resolution won’t matter. Pacman will look a little chubby tho.

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  5. jhegedus

    This completely rocks! So how small and how cheap do you think you could make a wireless transmitter?

    Reply ↓

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