Stephanie's Visor Modification Page
Update: January 2002
It's been about a year now since I first posted this page on the internet. Thank you to everyone who has written me about it. It has also been almost a year, since I stopped using the Handspring Visor. For the (approximately) 3 months that I used it, I loved it. To my mind, it was better than the Palm Pilot that spawned it. It's springboard module gave it expandibility, and that made it very powerful. However, late January / early February 2001, I started to get to know Apple's Newton. Since then, my Visor has been shelved, and now it's prime function is dust-gathering. I will keep this page posted, as I feel it still serves a useful function for people who own and wish to modify their Handspring Visors. I am also posting a FAQ to hopefully address most of your questions. I apologize if I am unable to respond to your emails in a reasonable amount of time, as my business is starting to take more and more of my time. Thanks again for your interest.
Please click here to Check the FAQ.
Please note: I have only had experience with Handspring's Visor Deluxe. I have never used, handled, touched, or seen in person, any other Visor, and cannot answer questions about them.
Introduction
The Handspring Visor is a handheld PDA which uses the Palm operating system. The Deluxe model comes in 5 different colours, has 8Mb of RAM, and uses a USB docking cradle. It is Macintosh compatible right out of the box. See the reviews by The Gadgeteer
Click here to see my Springboard page!
While I think it's a super piece of equipment right out of the box, and at a very good price, there are still a few things that I felt would make it just that little bit better. The first thing I wanted, was to have a Tale-Light style device. Basicaly this is a blinking light, which some hacks and apps use instead of audible alarms, or to augment games and other apps. While a commercialy-made Tale-Device is available for the Visor (see review by The Gadgeteer), in my opinion it is over-priced, especially when taking into account that it does not conform to Handspring's Springboard specifications: It requires you download and install software from a 3rd party.
So I set out to get me my blinking light on the cheap. While working on this project, I came across the idea of using rechargeable batteries in my Visor, and having the Visor charge the batteries while it was in the cradle. This was a much easier (and way more useful) 'hack', so I will describe it first.
The Warning
Doing any of the following things to your Visor could kill it dead. Doing any of the following things to your Visor will void your warranty. The following things I have done require a steady hand with a soldering iron, tweezers, and sometimes a magnifying glass. If you drop a blob of solder in the wrong spot, your Visor will die. This is not my fault. By reading this sentence you have automatically agreed that I am in no way liable or responsible for anything you do with the information contained on this web page. Skip to the dissassembly instructions.
Charging Batteries While In The Cradle
This mod requires a quick bit of work in the cradle (USB only I'm afraid. If you can do it with the serial cradle, let me know!) Then there is some more intense work inside the Visor itself. You can do this on the Visor or the Visor Deluxe. I'm unfamilliar with the Visor Platinum, and the Visor Prism already works this way. If you are careful it requires no cutting or modifying the plastics.
About The Batteries
After reading some research on the 'net, I elected to use so-called rechargeable Alkaline batteries. The reason in the long-run is that when NiCd's and NiMH's start to wear down, they go from useful to stone-dead in such a hurry that you may not get any warnings at all. 'Renewals' are basically just normal Alkalines, that the manufacturer says can be recharged. Their 'drawback' is that if you let them get too low in power, then they won't take a new charge. So the trade-off is that if you can leave your Visor in the cradle for an hour each day, you're laughing, but if you do run the batteries down low, you may have to get new ones. On the other hand, they will behave with the same usage curve as normal Alkalines, so depending on your useage, you could go a few days to a week before you actually needed to top them up. Though I imagine most people hot-sync at least once a day.
I make heavy use of my back-light, (I play games on the Palm in the dark before falling asleep, or read e-books on it) and with my 'Tale-Light' mods, use the serial port a fair bit too. I made the recharging modification on 05 December 2000, and in the evenings I leave my Visor in the cradle for about an hour or two, while I'm working at my desk.
As of February 7th 2001, my batteries are starting to wear a bit. I'd run them down to about 2 volts, and getting them back up to the 3 + volts is taking some more time. If I leave the Visor in the cradle overnight, that does the trick... Still, it remains fully useable, and I've only actually been recharging it ever 3 or 4 days.
If you use the stock USB cradle with your Visor, and you have that cradle plugged into a powered USB hub, then your cradle has access to 5 volts at up to 500 milli-amps. What does this mean? Well, by soldering one jumper into the cradle, you have changed the stock cradle into a 'Charging Cradle'. If you look at the 8-pin connector in there, with the cradle facing you, the 2nd button from the left is pin 7, officially called VDOCK in Handspring literature. It is not connected to anything 'out of the box'. But Handspring's documents say it is designed to be connected to a source of 4 to 6 volts, with a maximum of 500 milli-amps. Hmmm.
Though I started with a simple wire jumper, I have replaced that with a 10-ohm resistor. This does not affect the voltage noticably, but it does help limit any current surges when first placing the Visor in the cradle. Solder the resistor between Test Point 1 and Test Point 4, as in the following image. It doesn't matter which direction the resistor goes, they aren't polarized.
Please Be Careful!! The little plastic hot-sync button is not attached and YOU CAN LOOSE IT when you take the cradle apart. Then, when you finaly break down and buy a new cradle just to have that little button, you have to buy a serial cradle so you can claim you're really buying it to see how it works, to try to feel a little less foolish. Until a week later, when you find the original plastic button, where the cat left it.
If you are using a serial cradle, click here. Also, some instructions for testing.
This is where things get complicated and tricky. You will be soldering very small things onto other very small things, in proximity to other small things. See the above warnings.
Let's get started. Take your Visor apart (see below for details). You only need to go as far as getting the button-board free. In a nutshell, what we want to do is connect the +5 volts from the VDOCK pin at the hot-sync port, to the positive battery terminal. Along the way, though, we need to get the voltage down to about 3.2 volts. Those of you who know what you are doing and know electronics might roll your eyes, and point out that there is just gobs of space in the cradle for a full-blown voltage and current charging regulator system. If you want to do this, fine, just hook a small wire from VDOCK to the positive battery terminal on the button-board and you are done.
However, the Handspring specification says for 4-6 Volts at 500 ma to be on that pin, and they did this for a reason. VDOCK is a direct connection to a pair of VDOCK pins in the springboard port. For those springboards with their own rechargeable batteries. So to adhere to Handspring's specs, I've elected to do the voltage regulation within the Visor, without affecting the voltage that goes to the springport.
What I have done is pretty cheap, pretty simple, and cuts a few corners. I have taken two 1N914 diodes, soldered them in series, and put them in between VDOCK and the positive terminal. I would have liked to add a 10 ohm resistor in this series too, but was unable to locate a chip-sized one, so I put the resistor in the cradle (above). I have positioned the diodes and the rest of the wire, so that they do not interfere with any of the Visor's plastics.
Diodes are polarized and it makes a big difference which way you put them in. Most diodes have a line or bar indicating which lead is the 'negative' lead. When diodes are installed 'forward-biased', the 'negative' lead is at a lower potential than the 'positive'. Anyhow, you want to solder your diodes with the 'positive' lead of the first diode connected to the VDOCK pin of the hotsync connector, then the 'negative' lead of that diode to the 'positive' lead of the second one. The 'negative' lead of the second diode is connected, via a small piece of hookup wire, to the positive Battery connector.
Click here for a Very Simple Schematic.
The voltage-drop across the two diodes brings the 5 volts down closer to our desired 3.2 volts.
Important: Never put your Visor into the charging cradle without any batteries in it! The diodes alone will not bring the voltage down to safe levels - the batteries are part of this circuit, and without them, the cradle-voltage may kill your Visor. If you do these modifications, then try to use the Visor in the cradle without batteries, you could kill it!
Now, it's one thing to just say your Visor Deluxe recharges in the cradle, for my money, it's not complete without a light to tell you it's getting power. So I have added another wire to that VDOCK pin. Over at the backup-capacitor, I have fixed an LED. The short-lead of the LED goes to ground of the capacitor, and the long-lead of the LED is connected to the VDOCK line. To limit it's current a little, I added a 120 ohm chip resistor. Obviously the LED's leads have been trimmed and shaped to make it fit nicely. My Visor is 'Ice' colour, so I went with a white-light LED. Whatever colour you use, be sure to get a 5-volt LED for this application. If you want to use a 3-volt one, you must increase the value of your resistor. I believe, 1000 ohms is the value for a 3-volt LED.
I should point out that if you have a Visor in an opaque case, you will probably want to make a very small hole in the case, so that you can see the charging light. It is inconceivable that you would want to simply not have a light. "Real electronics should glow in the dark."
Now, if you have been careful about positioning these new components, you should be able to fit the button board back in place without trouble. First though carefully check your work to ensure there are no short-circuits or solder-bridges. Another hint here, test the button-board's fit while doing the work, add a part, test for fit, etc. so you can make adjustments as you go.
To test, reassemble your Visor, put in the rechargeable Alkalines, pop it in the cradle, and monitor the voltage. There are lots of 3rd party programs which give you very accurate readings of voltage. Check it in the cradle. Check it out of the cradle. I get a steady 3.27 volts while in the cradle. This is a good level, to ensure the batteries will get a full charge, without being too high for the rest of the Visor's circuitry.
The Blinking Light!
Here's what we wanted in the first place. The way the original Tale-Lights worked, is by putting an LED between the serial TX line and Ground. Programs and hacks that use the Tale device, do so simply by turning the serial port on and off. Although the serial port in the Visor does not work like it did in the Palm Pilots, it is still there, and when the serial port is active, Handspring's specs say that you can find 2.7 volts. You can 'test' for yourself how this works. You need to turn on your serial port first. You can find programs for the Tale-Light, or use the dot-command to activate the serial port. Whatever method you use, once you have the serial port active, place the Visor face-down. Now use a 3-volt LED, and just touch the long lead to pin 8 of the hot-sync port, and the short lead to pin 4. The LED should light. Now, turn off the serial port, and repeat. The LED should be out. (If the LED is not out, you have to go into Prefs / General and set Beam Receive to ON. Otherwise the Visor will never turn off it's serial port and your batteries will go quickly.)
I have mounted not one but two blinky lights in my Visor.
One is opposite the stylus silo, facing upwards, so it is visible if the Visor is in it's leather pouch or a shirt pocket or the sort.
The other is mounted on the top of the button-board, next to the microphone, so that it is visible when the Visor is in it's cradle or resting on a desk.
So here's how to do it. I'll talk about the blue one first, it's easier to get to, though both of these are somewhat difficult as far as making them. The blue LED is a surface-mount device. This means it is really really tiny, and has no leads. It is so tiny that it just sits on top of the button board, it's so small that it has no affect on the plastic case or buttons. The LED is held in place by the two tiny bits of wire connecting it to the circuit. You might prefer to use a dab of glue to hold it down. Make sure your glue is non-conducting. Electrically, here goes. Look up at the image above, of the Visor Button Board. In the upper left side, you will note a bit of pink wire near the microphone. This pink wire carries the positive voltage to the LED. It is soldered to the middle resistor out of the three surface-mount components you see there. It is soldered at the end of the resistor facing upwards in that picture. (For those of you who want details, this is the TX-Power signal between the microprocessor and pin 8 of the Hot-sync port.) Now look just to the right of there, and see the silver solder-pad just at the end of the hot-sync connector. This is Ground. A tiny bit of wire goes from there, to the negative end of the LED. In the picture below you will see the top of the button-board, and the LED.
I have found Surface-mount parts hard to acquire, and they are tricky to work with. But for adding lights to something as small as a PDA, they are great.
This mod puts an LED in parallel with your serial TX line. While I don't use serial hot-syncing, I did recently use the serial hot-sync cradle to copy the ROM file. It ran at 9600 baud, and took about 7 or 8 minutes of non-stop transmitting, without any trouble. So I don't think this mod will have any affect on your ability to do serial hot-syncs. As always though, your mileage may vary.
Now for the green LED. This one is sort of easier on the one hand, because you can use a normal LED in a T1 case. However, it is mounted on the motherboard next to the infrared assembly, so you really have to get your Visor completely apart to get to it. Also -- I lied, I did have to cut a little bit of plastic. The red IR window, internally, has a bit of plastic that I shaved to make some space. This is inside, and it doesn't involve cutting or removing the window.
So here's how we do it. The metal enclosure of the IR assembly is at ground. This is where we solder the negative-line of the LED. I've actually cut the negative-lead very very short, and between it and ground, I have soldered a 120 ohm chip resistor to limit current. As you can see below, the LED is positioned over C1, facing away from the IR assembly. The positive-lead of the LED is bent and goes along the back of the IR assembly. See the images below for wiring. The positive lead of the LED goes to the back of the IR assembly, to the 2nd trace from the right. Carefully solder the positive lead of the LED here. I used a tiny piece of tape to cover all the other solder traces to prevent the chance of a short circuit. That's all there is to it.
What we have done here is wired a visible LED in parallel with the TX IR LED. I have verified that after doing this mod, I can still send files via IR. I tested it at a range of 30 inches. Your mileage may, as usual, vary.
Taking Apart Your Visor
(Go on, void that warranty. Yeah, feels good.) You'll need a small Phillips screwdriver, and a small slot screwdriver. I use a #0 Phillips and a 5/64" slot screwdriver, from a Radio Shack precision screwdriver set.
Do a Hot-sync! And better still, use the Backup springboard. I can't say enough good things about the Backup springboard. When I used to take apart my old Palm Personal, a hot-sync only restored the standard data files, all my apps I had to re-install each and every time... You don't even have to worry about the hot-sync if you have the backup-module. A few minutes to do a backup, a few minutes to do a restore, and the Visor is right back to normal. In fact, if your Visor is lost or stolen, buy a new one, pop the backup-module into it, restore, and your Visor is back! No fuss, no muss.
Remove the stylus, anything in the springboard slot, the battery cover, and the batteries. With the Phillips screwdriver, remove the four screws (two in the springboard bay, two at the corners to either side of the hot-sync port). With the slot screwdriver, very carefuly pry open the Visor along one side. I tend to use the stylus side, so that there is quick access to step three. If you have an Ice or transpearant colour Visor, you can see where the four plastic catches are. Gently pry at each of these four to pop the case open without marking the plastic. If you can't see them, starting at the top of the seam by the silo, they are at: 15mm, 40mm, 64mm and 88mm - to the centres of each catch.
The front-half of the Visor is attached to the back-half, by a thin and slightly fragile ribbon cable. You will see it fixed to the back-half, at a beige and brown connector. Using your slot screwdriver, carefully lift upwards, the edge of the brown part of the connector nearest you. This brown part swings up and out about 45 degrees. This action unlocks the ribbon cable. You can then carefully pull the ribbon cable upwards and it will slide out of the beige connector. Set the face of the Visor aside somewhere safe.
The button board is held in place by friction. The rubber microphone-boot fits into a plastic 'hole' in the casing. Use the slot screwdriver to gently pry this up and free. Be cautious, as the microphone's wires are thin and fragile. With the microphone loose, you may gently remove the button board by pulling slowly at the right side. You may rock it forward and backward slightly, to help work it loose of the electrical plug. Be careful though not to stress either the button board, or the mother-board beneath. Set it aside when it is free.
Using your Phillips screwdriver, locate and remove the two remaining screws. They are located at about the middle of the device, one on each side. With the screws gone, you may gently lift out the mother board. Or carefully turn the Visor over, and the mother board should drop out into your free hand.
The memory board is held onto the back of the mother board by some two-way tape and an electrical plug. You may remove it by carefully pulling the board free at the plug side, then gently pull it free of the tape. Gently rocking it a bit may help loosen it from the plug. Again, be careful not to stress it, or the mother board.
That's it. Your Visor should now be reduced to it's component parts.
Here's a view of the three boards, from the 'bottom'. These three are part of the lower half of the Visor assembly.
This is the same 3 boards but from the 'top'. Note the beige and brown connector for the screen's ribbon cable.
A Thought About Upgrades
Take a look at the above images of the Visor's insides. Especially the memory board. Click here for a close-up view of this board. With the RAM and ROM both on the same daughter-board, it is conceivable that Handspring, or more likely, a third-party might one day offer upgrades, like ROM in Flash-memory or more RAM. However, it would probably not be something the end-user would install themselves. If I knew more about memory chips and things, I'd almost consider messing with it myself. There is 'lots' of clearance between the motherboard and daughter board for small circuit modifications. There are some websites out there describing D-I-Y memory upgrades for Palm Pilots. (See the hardware mods pages at The Gadgeteer's Palm page) so maybe someone with some more know-how could 'hack' this. A 16Mb Visor sounds good...
Re-Assembly
Putting it all back together is just the reverse of taking it apart. The bottom line is, be careful when taking it apart, take it slow and easy, know what you are doing. When putting the screws back in, be careful not to over-tighten them or strip the plastic holes. When it's all intact, stick the batteries back in. It will behave as if a hard-reset was done, or more accurately, it will behave as though it had just been put together. You will have to go through the routine of setting up the digitizer, setting the country and time and date and all. Now just pop in that backup module, hit restore, and feel glad you spent the $$ for that module.
Please note: I have only had experience with Handspring's Visor Deluxe. I have never used, handled, touched, or seen in person, any other Visor, and cannot answer questions about them.