ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
That's good news.
Count me in for two kits :-)
/steffen
Hello Lausvi !
Yes the E-ink display comes with the kit ! I forgot to include it in my previous message !
I will work to produce an installation manual that shows how to align the PCB, but basically it boils down to roughly lining up the big holes on my PCB with the big holes on the BL5000 PCB, them fine tuning to ensure the marked pads on my PCB (RST, D0, D1, D2, D3, etc...) are right above the matching pads on the BL5000 PCB. You can see those on the last picture of my previous post.
I certainly want to support this wonderful project, so please put me down for one.
A photo above shows the display visible from behind – is it possible to install the display keeping the transparency?
I’m definitely interested in a kit once available 👍
Hello Tom_M,
Sadly retaining the transparency is not possible. The original display was a purpose built LCD, and my attempts to find a transparent display ( either LCD, or OLED as I wanted initially ) failed. The E-Ink display I finally found fits good enough in the same spot as the original display, but sadly it is not transparent.
Hello,
A big week has passed since my last message here, and the potential order count is still at 7, which I have to admit, is a bit lower than I hopped for.
I am still aiming for a first batch with at least 20 kits to keep the cost reasonable.
I am not sure if the demand is really lower than I thought, or if most potentially interested B&O owner are simply not looking on the forum.
I will make a post on the B&O reddit to attract more visibility on this post.
If you happen to know other B&O communities on social network, the best way to support this project at the moment is to let them know about it.
Let's see in a week how things evolves !
One kit for me :)
blah-blah and photographs as needed
Hi there - I was just wondering how the order book is filling up? I noticed a recent post asking advice on a broken BeoLink 5000 screen here - your mod is cheaper than a BeoLink 7000!
https://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/p/7940/70320.aspx#70320
Hi L Spad,
The order book is actually filling slower than expected, there seems to be demand for about 10 kits at the current time.
I am not exactly sure how I will proceed from here : up to now, my plan was to keep going anyway, and run a first batch even if I made not profit, but at the current time the electronics components shortage is making the whole thing a lot more expensive than I originally budgeted for ! Some key components are actually sold around 3x the original cost !
I'm aware this kits can offer a quite cost effective solution, yet demand seems quite small.
I'm stalling things a bit, see if more interest pops up ( and if components prices eventually start to return to sane numbers)
In the meantime, I'll keep counting potential orders :-)
Hi! Don't give up. This forum just isn't that busy. I myself rarely log in, as it tends to be slow around here.
I am on board for one kit!
I will try to log in more often to follow any updates.
Cheers!
Very nice.
I would like to buy a kit.
Best Regards,
/Di ck
http://tinyurl.com/qj9cjsf
Hi,
I just started production of a batch of 20 PCBs. I'm still having trouble sourcing key components at decent prices, but it seems manageable. In the meantime, I've uncovered a small issue in my original design, where the display would sometimes restart when batteries are not completely new.
As I have implemented other fixes in the new design, I believe it solves this one too, I'll confirm that once I receive the new PCBs.
As usual, I'll keep posting the updates here, so stay tuned !
Staying tuned!
Hello, and thank you all for staying tuned.
I have received the latest PCBs just before christmas, and have spent the last days on 2021 installing one on my Beolink 5000 and fixing a few last gripes I had with the firmware.
So, basically, on the hardware front, I managed to get all the components, everything works as expected, all the minor issues from the previous version are fixed, and I could not find any fault in this version.
Firmware-wise, I have added a few optimization, like avoid refreshing the display when the text is blank ( the Beolink 5000 CPU loves to just write blank text before writing the real text ), and a 5 seconds delay before displaying the standby screens, that makes up for the few seconds lost to refresh.
I also worked on an Installation guide PDF, which you can find there : Installation Guide v0.1
That document is not as detailed as I would like, yet I felt it was complete enough to publish it here.
Feel free to leave your feedback about it !
And now, the real business :
If you feel confident you can complete the process described in the installation guide (see especially the parts in red), I can ship 5 kits in the next days.
The remaining 14 kits are still lacking their display, which I will order soon.
Please keep in mind there might still be a few issues that pops up, despite my testing. I will do my best to fix them with you.
Each kit includes an E-paper display, the assembled PCB, a 3D-printed "cradle" for the display, and a lone red wire.
The price is still 50€ 60€ / kit ( see my next message ), shipping from France excluded.
If you are interested in getting one of these kits, please contact me in private.
And last but not least, have a nice 2022 year !
Contacted in private!
Great job! Contacted in private
I would like to take 2 kits too.
The first 5 kits are now sold ( sorry Vintage_B&O, saw your answer here a bit late ).
Thank you to those early buyers, I cannot wait to have your feedback !
( Also, that means 5 remotes back into service, yay ! )
I am now ordering 15 E-Paper displays to produce 15 others kits, expected delivery time in a few weeks.
Also, I feel kinda bad for this, but from now on I will increase slightly the price of each kits to 60€.
I want to keep those as cheap as I can, but when calculating the original price I simply factored in the cost of each part, and a small assembly time. I completely failed to account for the time and cost of individually testing (and fixing) and packaging of each kit ( turns out you cannot ship things without putting them in a box first, who would have thought ! )
I will probably end up building a small rig to simulate a Beolink 5000 CPU, to test each kit easily.
Preferred way to order is still through private messages, but I will try to keep a closer eye on the thread to avoid missing orders.
I will post here as soon as I get the new E-Papers.
Well, I sent you an email through the system here, but never heard back......
But I am ok with the slight increase. I am also nearly moved to the new house, so will be ready by the time you get the next kits made. Mail has been changed, etc.
Hopefully we can get in contact. I have no idea if you replied or not.
TheTinman: Well, I sent you an email through the system here, but never heard back...... But I am ok with the slight increase. I am also nearly moved to the new house, so will be ready by the time you get the next kits made. Mail has been changed, etc. Hopefully we can get in contact. I have no idea if you replied or not.
I answered to your email, and assumed you had received my answer.
I just transferred it to your backup email address.
Please confirm if you received it. If you did not, just send me another email stating which email address I should use to contact you.
Hi! Thank you, I got that one and replied.
Marc
I saw this post and kit. Looks very interesting and with a wee bit of work I think I can do the modification. The LCD in my 5000 cannot be replaced according to my local B&O repair man. I love the ability of programming the unit with the 5000 and currently there is a bit of guesswork with the LCD panel and the manual because I can see limited pixels. I only have one 5000 remote, what would be the shipping to Toronto,ON Canada M4E 2P7?
BeoSystem 2500
Shipping to Ontario would be about 30€.
I'm still waiting for the delivery of more E-paper display before I can produce more kits, hopefully that should happen in the coming days !
I'll post here when I have more kits ready to ship
I have moved in the meantime, and am now ready for a kit whenever you make a few more.
Ok, I've now installed the kit in one of my for-parts remotes. And it looks great!
The installation instructions (linked above) were good. The kit relies on a new PCB being soldered on top of the old one and I had issues with one or two contacts not making it all the way. With the help of the creator I was able to find the issue and fix it (I ended up using one extra jumper wire as I couldn't get the RST line making good contact).
My remote needed some work as the battery holder (a flimsy design to start with) was slightly damaged as was the mount post associated with it.
The remote I worked on had it's LCD flat-flex already ripped off so it was beyond repair, and a perfect candidate for installing the kit. I have one more physically much nicer BL5000, which has most of it's original display still working (after I managed to partly repair it, although it did lost some lines some time after the repair). That one I would not tear apart, but with any other BL5000 with already messed up LCD (cable) I wouldn't hesitate to consider this kit!
I must admit the BL5000 is not one of my favourite remotes, but I hope enough people with skill and gear can get these kits from pilatomic and get at least some of those dying BL5000s back to life!
Most of the process is already shown here in this thread, but here are couple of shots:
The old LCD cable (left), the LCD controller IC and some other parts are removed from the Beolink's PCB using a hot air station:
Then the e-Ink board is soldered on top of the board:
The solder points on the e-Ink board make contact with the pads on the old PCB, and only the VBAT jumper wire (top) is needed. I had issues with one the contacts not getting thrue, so I added an extra jumper wire (bottom wire) as I didn't want to remove the whole thing and risk breaking off pads:
With heat-gun the original top-glass panel can be separated from the old LCD panel and re-used with the new e-ink display. The result looks very nice! It's see-thrue as original, but I do consider this a worthy replacement!
Thank you Lausvi for this nice review !
It has been quite a long time, much longer than I expected, but I finally took delivery of the E-papers I ordered.
I now have 6 kits ready to ship and not reserved yet, and enough components to produce 5 more.
These kits are completely identical to those shipped previously.
I updated the installation manual to include the lessons learned from the first batch ( the main addition is a procedure to check that all signals are properly wired, that emerged from a nice email exchange with Lausvi ).
See here for the new installation manual : Install Guide v1.0.
I am also considering a redesign of the way the information are displayed, with the goal to get a more polished look. Feel free to share any suggestion !
As usual, post here or contact me in private to buy one. I can also perform the installation on your remote.