Custom Made Alienware Themed Iphone 4

The purpose of this thread is to gather help on a few things:

I have recently finished a custom paint for the Iphone 3GS. I made a Ferrari theme. Ferrari Themed Iphone 3GS

I am now looking for an Alienware themed Iphone 4. My thoughts are to the Alienware logo through the inside panel of the glass and add some ultra thin LED to have the eyes light up.

I have checked and know how to do all that except on how to power it through the Iphone. I am not sure yet on how to do that or even if it will be possible.

Maybe connected through the LCD power cable.

Anyone has suggestions, ideas?



Thanks in advance for the help.

 

Wow, that sounds pretty cool.

 

powering it fromt he iphone would require hacking the iphone and following the lane on the pcb yourself up to where you can get power

or you would need to make hardware ahck with ar arduino and such good luck i look forward to the result

 

Yeah I agree it might be difficult but I think it's possible. I have a few ideas, I just have to test them. I am thinking I could get power the LCD power cable which seems to provide only power once the home button is pressed or the lcd is on.

This would solve power drain issues, etc... by tapping onto this wire.

 

that would be possible but it create new issue like ensuring suficent resistance so that the led dons not short the power around the llcd


if you sucedde i might really try to do something similar to my touch 3rd gen

 

I am pretty sure it is possible. I already found a blue LED that is flat like a piece of paper and uses almost no energy.

I am just worried like you mentioned it could create interference with the LCD.

 

we it could theoricaly be calculated and compensated by a resistor the trip will be to find the needed value for it

 

you might also require a buffer depending on how the LCD is implemented. I you suck current from the lcd screen, it might happen that you dimm the screen

 

You should paint it black and have a red LED for the eyes...

Anyway, I would say that if you do tap into the LCD backlight make sure you do it in the circuit before the controller that limits the amount of power the backlight can take. In other words, (it's hard explaining over type) if the backlight is allocated 5v and you take 2v from that after the controller that sends power to the backlight, the backlight will only have 3v to work with. If you do it before the controller, 7v will be taken from the battery, and 2v will go to the led for the eyes leaving 5v to go to the screen through the controller. Make sense? By controller I mean resistor or variable resistor or whatever the iPhone happens to use.

 

if you set up the LED and LCD in parrarel, you are dividing the current not the voltage.

Can you not tap into the button itself?

 

I don't know a ton about this stuff but I was just speaking in theory.

 

you would be deviding provided your led offers enought resistance to current so not all flows throught it and let the screen out of the circuit as it's being shorted by the led

you could put it in serial after the screen that way you would use the power left over that the screen did not use

 

Maybe, I have to find out further details on the design of the Iphone 4 and make some voltage measurements.

 

Might be the best way. Remember the point is not to have the LED powered directly from the battery which would be simple but would drain the battery quite fast though if I can find an ultra low consumption LED it might not affect the battery life much having it directly connected to it.

I will keep you guys posted.

 

whats the problem of adding a resistor before the led? You would still have to do that as otherwise it would fry.

I would try tapping it into the button, then you can make the eyes lit up when pressing the button. If you add another capacitor, you can make the eyes slowly discharge the cap making the eyes dim out slowly instead of going out.

 

I like the eye dimming idea with a capacitor.Do not forget you also have a +5V on the USB connector (I think?). But that would be direct to the battery.

The suggestion running in series with the screen but after it is good but only if the LED is VERY low resistance to make sure that it will not alter the voltage or current to the screen. Depending on the power needs of the screen (particularly the current) you could also consider going in parallel to the screen. You really need to figure whether it is voltage or current bound. You should get a little wiggle room introduced by regulator circuitry.

 

LED's dont have any resistance. They are diodes after all. They require a resistor to limit the current flowing through them otherwise they fry.

I would only recommend attaching LED's in parallel. I think the best bet is attaching it to the button.

 

Actually they do have a resistance....it is usually denoted as Rd and is typically on the order of 5-20 ohms

 

as scook9 stated LED's have a resistance everything that use curent curent has a resistance even a wire has a resistance

attaching it to the power button might not be a good idea as the buton is presed down to send a "on" signal and presed down to send a "off" signal and thus the LED would light only while the buton is pressed wich is a very short amount on time

 

please retype that post from a keyboard.....(hoping that was using a phone)

 

i'm on my m17 -.- but i'm sufering from dyslexia and english is not my native language so you can consider that i'm permanently typing on a phone keyboard

 

No offense meant of course, I have seen your posts many a time, that one was just....a mess lol

 

I think he is saying:

 

The problem with a resistor is space. There is not much room to play with in the Iphone 4.

 

have you looked at tiny surface mounted resistors? They get really small

 

I have to do a lot more research, I have ordered a few parts so far such as a flat blue LED. I am going to check out if it fits.

 

I just jumped on this forum looking for some Alienware gonzos. Keep updates with your progress, I have the 4G Iphone and the MX17x would love to see if you can pull this off
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Huge brownie points if you make the LED the RGB variety and control it with AlienFX lol

 

Scook, you are asking for too much...

 

I have seen your work in the past, I am sure you will figure it out lol

 

Just saying, you know the speaker grills? They have an uber thin RGB LED and you may be able to get dell to send you an extra one.

 

That is true, and it is already compatible with AlienFX

lol

 

i might be able to make you do a hudge jump on that one as long as you can figure how to make a arduino run controled by the iphone i can provide quite a bit of help like what i found on my project to bring alien FX to my m17 wich is progressing quite well