An iPAQ Hack Attack

[Darius Wey]

<i>"This mod I came up with allows you to place your PPC at an angle in landscape orientation. I mostly use it to watch movies without having to hold the PPC in my hands or balance it between a book and any available weights -- usually the airline magazines on long plane rides. By moving the slug up and down the back of the PPC you can easily adjust the viewing angle. All you have to do is cut a small slit in one corner of your CF slug and then slide the slit over the outer body of your PPC. I am using this with a 4705 but I believe it should also work with other CF equipped models. A Dremel with a reinforced cutting wheel makes this mod super easy."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20041215-hx4705Hack1.jpg" /><br /><br />Pocket PC Thoughts reader, <i>Tye</i>, has conceived an interesting iPAQ hx4705 hack job that effectively permits the device to stand up at an angle, without the use of hands!<br /><!><br />Here are a few more images:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20041215-hx4705Hack2.jpg" /><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20041215-hx4705Hack3.jpg" /><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20041215-hx4705Hack4.jpg" /><br /><br />This seems to work great, as long as you have no problems with "messing around" with the bits and pieces of your device. Does anyone else have any other interesting hack jobs worth sharing to the community?

[Menneisyys]

This seems to work great, as long as you have no problems with "messing around" with the bits and pieces of your device. Does anyone else have any other interesting hack jobs worth sharing to the community?

http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?s=&amp;threadid=97690 - a decent, wood-based "cradle" for the VGA Toshibas. Can't be hard to custom-build one for any landscape machine, either.

There were also pictures of landscape "cradles" cut of foam paper in some minutes, also in the Brighthand e800 forum, but can't find them. They ARE funny :)

[johnm]

That's pretty creative. I assume you are watching Video with BetaPlayer? I just gave it a try on my new 4705 and was very pleasantly surprised to find out I could copy a full 700M divx movie to my microdrive and it would play perfectly smooth. I've even been able to stream full res Divx movies to the Ipaq via Wifi. That's impressive performance for a pocketPc. It helps me feel better about all the money it cost.

You can read more about my experiences with the 4705 and Betaplayer here if you are interested:

http://www.nullstream.com/archives/000058.html

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Pretty creative mod. I had gone out to Office Depot and purchased one of their business card holders (not the foldable/portable kind, but the kind that just sits on a desk). For just a few dollars, this served as a perfect cradle that I could rest my iPaq 4700 in as well. It is particularly handy when I'm using my BT keyboard and my 4700 in landscape mode as well.

[ipaq_wannabe]

That's pretty creative. I assume you are watching Video with BetaPlayer? I just gave it a try on my new 4705 and was very pleasantly surprised to find out I could copy a full 700M divx movie to my microdrive and it would play perfectly smooth. I've even been able to stream full res Divx movies to the Ipaq via Wifi. That's impressive performance for a pocketPc. It helps me feel better about all the money it cost.

You can read more about my experiences with the 4705 and Betaplayer here if you are interested:

http://www.nullstream.com/archives/000058.html

wow!!!

i was wondering if you could tell me the properties of the specific video you played? bit rate, video size (screen), etc.

thanks!!!

-@PIE@Loox

[Deslock]

I forget where I saw this, but someone cut out the ribs from the CF-slug and stored spare SD cards in there. He was able to fit either 2 or 3 of the extra-thin SD cards (like the KingMAX 66x 1GB). It's not a bad idea now that SD is actually as cheap as (or cheaper than) CF.

ipaq_wannabe: BETAPlayer plays 640x480 30 fps high-bitrate DIVX files on both the X50v and hx4700 just fine. Here are some benchmarks I ran a couple weeks ago with the Matrix Trailer (RL_HQ_640x352_1024_128.avi):

hx4700/X50v SD (1GB 32x Lexar): 211%/243%
CF (1GB 40x Lexar): 206%/191%
filestore: 239%/238%
RAM: 251%/253%
The 640x480 RL_HQ trailer runs at about 75% of those speeds (still well above 100% and without dropping any frames). Also, newer versions of BETAPlayer are even faster (there have been 3 or 4 releases in the last two weeks).

So you don't need to compromise quality when encoding for handheld playback anymore (for smooth playback anyway... file size may still be a constraint). Get the latest BETAPlayer UNSTABLE build from:
http://betaplayer.corecodec.org/
http://forge.topcat.hu/frs/?group_id=5 (for X50v, also get 2700 plugin here)

[Darius Wey]

I forget where I saw this, but someone cut out the ribs from the CF-slug and stored spare SD cards in there. He was able to fit either 2 or 3 of the extra-thin SD cards (like the KingMAX 66x 1GB). It's not a bad idea now that SD is actually as cheap as (or cheaper than) CF.

A bit like Image #4?

Tye, I redid that image a bit and formed two into one. Hope you don't mind. :)

[Deslock]

A bit like Image #4?
LOL. Was that there before? When I looked at all the images originally, I didn't notice any SD cards in there.

Anyway, cool mod!

[Darius Wey]

A bit like Image #4?
LOL. Was that there before? When I looked at all the images originally, I didn't notice any SD cards in there.

Not originally. I changed it after you queried the whole SD-CF thing. Basically, I incorporated the original and the new image into one major image as I stated in my previous post. ;) Tye sent us multiple images of this mod in action from just about every angle. I only posted some of them.

[Janak Parekh]

Actually, we did a frontpager on the stuff-SD-into-CF-slug hack before. As phpBB doesn't let you search two-character terms, though, I'm not going to try looking it up. :|

But this is a very cool hack nevertheless. :D

--janak

[foebea]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/phones.jpg

I was actually talking about this last night. and for a few weeks now. Ive been using this for about 3 months and absolutly love it.

Never even thought to mention it through submit news. Here are some details from my recent post:

"These headphones are a godsend for me. When i combine these with an ipaq stand (the bottom bit of a metal clothes hanger covered in the sheath of a network cable, compensates for the angled side of the ppc to make it level) I can watch movies comfortably from a cafe without fear of launching the ppc for a short and damaging flight due to wire mismanagement.

It is inspired by bluetooth keyboards. I always long for a stand of somekind, but never really bothered with it because none really suitted my needs. Along comes Bluetooth keyboards and I came THIS close to buying one, just for the stand. Then i got this idea; its adjustable, so i can set it on a shelf at work and it is at about 87 degree angle, almost straight up, or on a table top at about 25 degrees.

I leave the tips of the stand open so I can put the tip of the stylus in either side when im not using it. all in all i am extremely satisfied with them and now have 4 of them. Best of all is it can be adjusted to accomadate landscape or portait, and it accomodates for the uneven build of the 2215 ipaq. also, it easily folds up to fit in a coat pocket. It doesnt break, if it is too far out of shape, just straighten it and rebend. Easy!

I wish I could front page this thing somehow, because its cake to make, and i bet alot of people could benefit from it.


Another project I am working on is a floor stand.
I was sitting in my beanbag lounger watching a movie, arms all scrunched up so i could see the screen at a comfertable angle and distance and I thought of my car gps mount. the one with the bendable arm, such as those you get with cheap bedside lamps. So i want to have a heavy base and study but bendable arm coming out of it, say, bout 50 inches long. Study enough that i could tap on the ipaq without it moving a foot away from the pressure, just enough to keep it in place.

Look Ma, no hands!

Its tough to find the bendable arm thingie, but I am looking for a microphone stand which has this and will find some way to make it work.

I will post pictures when complete."



So get crackin people. From my projects and those others have done you can see how easy and inexpensive it can be to do this stuff. Lets get some innovation going on!

[Tye]

Hi Guys,

Glad you like the mod. I was doing the SD cut out thing way before it was posted here but like someone else mentioned, I never thought to submit it as news. I made some obscure post in the forums and then forgot about it. This time I wanted my 5 minutes of fame! :lol:

The reason the mod has been so helpful is that I don't like to carry any extra stuff around. If it doesn't fit in the pockets then it's more than I want to carry. This mod just reduces the load a bit.

Darius, hack away at those photos I sent. I don't care at all.

foebea, that's a cool trick too. :)

Just like others have said here already, get BetaPlayer. It's an awesome piece of software.

-Tye

[johnm]

"These headphones are a godsend for me."

Oh you are very lucky. I keep checking the HP link every day and they are still sold out. Have you had any problems running out of memory using them with BetaPlayer? I hear that the bluetooth stack takes about 20m, plus I'm using BetaPlayer with a microdrive so I have a pretty large buffer setup.

[foebea]

"These headphones are a godsend for me."

Oh you are very lucky. I keep checking the HP link every day and they are still sold out. Have you had any problems running out of memory using them with BetaPlayer? I hear that the bluetooth stack takes about 20m, plus I'm using BetaPlayer with a microdrive so I have a pretty large buffer setup.

I use it primarily with beta player, and only partially for mp3s and audiobooks.

I have been tweaking and working with bitrates and it seems to be resolving overtime. At first it would not work at all. I uninstalled some programs from main memory that i really didnt need and then it worked fine.

With microdrive it is typical that it buffers for about 10 or 15 seconds at first, then plays fine for the rest of the movie. With these, it buffers for those 10 or 15 seconds, then is fine for about 25-30 minutes before buffering again becomes noticable in frame drops. I have dropped the microdrive buffer size from 16 megs to 12 megs and this makes it completely usable and the very very rare framelose is barely noticable. I would also recommend bringing an extra battery with you at all times :)

I havent had to sacrifice quality at all. if you use pocketdivx encoder here are my settings:
pocket pc
video quality is set to the default
audio quality is raised to the very top
sound % is raised to 20%
deinterlace, VHQ, bframes, 2-pass

[johnm]

i was wondering if you could tell me the properties of the specific video you played? bit rate, video size (screen), etc.

Like Deslock mentioned you can play full size Divx files with this combination. That means you re-encoding down for the smaller device. For example the first movie I tried was 640x336, 24fps. The bitrate was variable as it was a 2 pass encode.

[johnm]

I would also recommend bringing an extra battery with you at all times :)

He he. Battery life was one of factors in my choosing the HP over the Dell. The bluetooth headphones were the other. I'm a bit worried about using the microdrive for watching movies for the battery life reason. It works great for MP3s as it gets to spin down for 4 minutes or so until the next song, but for continuous video! I decided to pick up a 1G SD flash card for video use. They are getting quite cheap now (even 60x speed ones), and a complete Divx movie will fit on one no problem.

[foebea]

not really that big a problem.

1 full battery gets me through about 2 hours and 15 minutes of nonstop video off the microdrive with bluetooth audio. If you also plan on listening to an 4 hours of audiobook, and maybe play an hour of Arvale, then you need to have 2 batteries for use in a day. i use a modified Veo Traveller CF Camera metal case to carry CF Wifi card, 3 sd cards, and an extra battery.

Alternatly you can get a much higher capacity extended battery, but then your ipaq would look like it has a cancerous lump growing from its hind quarters :)

Some day I will do an expose on all of the stuff i carry about and how it all works together. I get way more than my moneys worth with this thing :)