- GT-270 battery modification
- Unmodded GT-270 wearable display
- The Need
- I've had this display for the wearable Mac project for about a year now. Its fairly rare but its a powerful Japanese Display. One of my long term, "I'll get around to it" projects was getting a battery insalled in the control unit. I knew it was possible since it was done at zerospin. Except he used a Sony Infolithium, which aren't cheap, so I shelved this one until I got closer to getting a working portable system. That is until I lucked out in Fall of 2003 when All Electronics started selling a 7.2 volt cell phone battery and charger (seperatly) for a total of $11. When I checked the measurements it was even better since it just happened to be the same general size of the battery bay in the control unit
- Dry fit of the battery in the control unit
- Contact
- Since I knew the voltage and size were good when the battery arrived it quickly became a matter of creating contacts for the battery. In the unmodified case the designed battery contacts on on the outer edges and towards the middle of the case. My first idea was a set of springs but quickly dumped this idea because 1) I couldn't find two suitable springs and 2) the spring I did find wasn't taking to solder too well. On the other hand some cleaned up nails worked fine.
- The nail contacts after being fitted in to the control unit
- This one isn't major surgery, after cutting the nails and checking to see that they were making contact with the battery I soldered them to the existing pads for the battery bay, glued in the nails and sealed it up. In total a couple hours of work tops
- The opened case, visiable are the wires connecting the new contacts and the solder pads.
- Success
- Nice, clean, quick, easy and another step closer to the wearable Mac. While It isn't the most amazing mod I've ever done it is a useful one. And it will get me 3 hours of video, 6 since I picked up another battery pack. In my eyes thats very good use of $20.
- Its working
- Powering the control unit and the display (notice the green tint on the optics- thats the startup text)
- See the Monocular conversion
- Other Wearable Mac pages
