mattw.fn_blog()

Adding a backlight to the Zipit is a bit more advanced than the 5 wire serial mod on the AiboHack page, but is still do-able for your average hardware hacker. In my opinion, this makes the device much more useable, and of course, with your choice of EL colors, gives you a bit of personal bling.

The first thing that you need to do is order some parts. The Jelu Web Shop has an awesome little EL Backlight Driver that is smaller than any of the driver kits available at the EL outlets I found on google. Second, you’ll have to get a piece of EL Panel. I ordered a nice red panel from Florida, but of course, it wasn’t in stock. Rather than wait around for the postman, I ripped apart a Virtual Bartender I had laying around (christmas gift?) and gutted it for it’s panel. It’s a little short, but hey, it’ll work until the red one shows up.

The EL Backlight Driver comes with a schematic, and this page has instructions for soldering to a yampp. For the Zipit, you’ll need to connect the EN pad on the board to RP4 on the Zipit motherboard. This will make the backlight shut off when you close the lid (running Zipit application only, Linux blanking is not supported yet). It’s a bit of a tricky connection, so I had Rob do the soldering here. Thanks Rob!

The LCD in the Zipit has a peel-off backing, so you can just peel that off and stick your EL on. I actually removed all the gummy bits with some goof-off, but I think it may have been an unnecessary (and brain cel killing) step.

With all of these mods, the wire snaking will be your own personal nightmare. I suggest you don’t use bits of Cat5 and go with a lighter gauge solid core wire.