Hi I've got a rather unusual device here. it's an Elmo Tickle Me Elmo Um, it's an Elmo visual presenter. It's a P30s model uh, visual presenter and let's take a look at it. I Didn't know these things uh, actually existed.

but apparently there are all the rage in the classrooms and what they are is there are a mechanical um uh, they've got a mechanical head here with a very high quality Um optic uh camera on there I think it's got like a x 10 Zoom or something like that and it looks very much like an overhead projector and it's got two arms on it. so if we take a look, this arm comes down here to fold in place so that you can you know carry the thing and transport the thing but you lift this arm up here the camera comes up this if you're wondering what it is is a light. it's got two LEDs in there and uh, it's an LED light which lights up anything that you put on here. usually they're for a page or something like that and it's for presenting to like a classroom or an audience on a large screen.

So it's got various Uh outputs DVI output, uh uh s video output and RGB output that you can hook on to a big projector type art system and you can actually display things live. So if you're you know going through a document or something, you put your document on here and it presents it on the huge screen to the classroom and it's got an CD down the bottom here um and an SD card on the side and you can put in presentations and all sorts of things which overlay on the video apparently. um, a little 3in, uh, 3 and 1/2 in maybe uh LCD down here which shows you live what's on the screen and apparently they're quite expensive. but uh, you can pick them up I think uh, quite cheaply.

uh, secondhand in various models but I thought I'd uh, try and power this thing up and give it a go and I thought maybe maybe it'd be good for soldering. Look at the huge, uh, big usable range here and if it does have a x 10 uh zoom camera with a great Optical ability, maybe it might be good for soldering or something like that. or maybe I have to bring it down or something like that I I don't know. Anyway, um I thought I'd power it up and give it a go and here are the outputs we' got on the back of it s video composite video DVI RGB out it's got RGB in as well Rs232 control uh, 12vt DC power and some dip switches which I don't know what they do, but the problem we've got is this DC power connector and if you have a look at that DC power jack, it's one of those really annoying uh, circular ones with the pin in the center and I've seen those on various uh notebooks and laptops and stuff like that, but uh, yeah, I don't have anything that uh, fits that.

So I think I'm going to open this thing up and uh, maybe see if I can, um, hack in a different different connector. so I've taken off various screws on the bottom and it should and on a couple on the top here and it should lift off. Yeah yeah, there's nothing holding it down. Tada There we go.

We're in. and here's the main: PCB and it contains lots of electronic, uh, consumer goodness. I Guess there's a BGA device there. some memory.

another huge big BGA device from someone called I chips. more memory. beside that, probably some uh, custom. well, some video circuitry down here for the various uh video out options and uh, there seems to be quite a bit on that board.

We've got our SD cardboard over there and uh, we've got not much else down here. We've got a little uh keypad PCB there and the LCD screen. now. curious thing about the LCD screen is that uh, I don't see any data cable, any parallel data cable going into it at all.

All we got is this tiny little cable here and it runs into this connector down here. so if you look at that, there's a little shielded cable there, plus two other tiny little wires into this tiny little uh header connector here. and well, that must be like a composite um output. So I guess there's uh, you know there's power on there plus composite and that's it so that there must be a PCB under the LCD that takes a composite input and converts it directly in into the LCD I Guess that kind of makes sense I'm just, uh, think that's a little bit curious.

those little tiny itty bitty teeny weeny wires on there. and down in there we can see the DC power jack and that looks suspiciously like a standard footprint or very close to a standard footprint for a 2.5 mm, um, standard DC jack. So maybe if I take the board out and have a look at that I might. If I'm lucky, I might be able to suck that out and replace it with a standard uh, 2.5 mm 12vt DC jack.

Only one way to find out. let's take the board out now. I'm pretty sure I've got all the screws out, but I'm not having any luck prying this out at Borton this bought out at all I seem to push on it and it Springs back. It's almost as if it's stuck down with some sort of elastic or something like that.

I F It's a real pain in the butt. I Don't know what's what's going on here. Hate this. and there you go.

It actually required a little bit of, uh, percussive maintenance to get that one out. and sure enough, it was H stuck down with these two pads here. How annoying, but there's some extra stuff on the bottom. This is actually a rather interesting board.

and check out the bottom footprint of the DC jack there and aha, it looks just like one of these standard DC Jacks this is a 5.5 mm outside diameter, 2.5 mm inside diameter I should be able to suck that out and solder that back in maybe? Um, this pin on the back here might be a bit big, but uh, that's no problem at all. We can trim that down so I should be able to replace that annoying DC jack with one that actually I can use. Beautiful! And we've sucked that connector out by chopping off while it was on the board, chopping off one of the pins on the back there. sorry I forgot to hit uh record I didn't actually get it.

Um, cuz it might be a bit difficult to heat up all three pins at once. so I did, uh, chop off the one pin while it was on the top. then I heated up these two pins here and it just dropped out. Then I was able to pull the third pin out and it's okay if you don't want to, uh, keep the existing.

sorry. If you don't want to keep the existing connector and you don't care about that, then you can, actually, uh, destroy them and uh, ensure you don't damage the board going out. So unfortunately, as I predicted, the back pin, there was a little bit too wide so I've had to uh Chop Chop some of that off. Actually, it turns out I've had to trim all three pins.

they didn't quite uh fit there. but Tada There we go! Finally got it to fit and we now have a beautiful standard DC jack that I should have a power adapter for and of course you got to make sure the polarity is correct. In this case, the center pin goes down to the third one there through a Poly. Swit goes down to the um what's clearly the positive input with the Poly switch down there and the other two are connected down through ground as they should be.

So uh, that should work fine now. I Know you're curious to know which devices are on the board, but uh, unfortunately, finding info on these is, uh, very few and far between. Uh, we've got this BGA device here which is a new core uh s IP 1280 DV and obviously that's um, because that's hooked on directly to the camera. Here that's some sort of uh, video capture uh, chipset and there's the memory surrounding it.

Possibly this one might be tied over to here I don't know, but uh, certainly. uh, that is like a memory for that and maybe a ROM as well. And over here we have an Iips uh IPC 726 now I found uh the company website and I found info on a 762 device which is a high-end video display HD processor um and they make de interlace chips and all sorts of things. but I can't find any info on the 726.

Um, but I found info on the 762 it's definitely 726 there. go figure. Once again, we've got some memory. We got some ROM here.

it's obviously uh, got a uh code on there to indicate um that that device has been that flash device has been programmed and uh, over here, we've got a lattice uh, semiconductor Cpld. Once again, it's been silk screened uh on the Uh top to indicate that um or stamped on the top to indicate that it's been programmed with whatever, that's just some sort of glue logic or something like that. And down here, the uh trying to read the device on here is incredibly difficult. but it got NEC something or other and I think it's in some sort of NC processor or something like that and once again, that's been marked on the top possibly indicate that it's been programmed because it's a programmable uh device no doubt like a microprocessor and/ micro controller.

and um, up here we have a device from Uh Focus it's an FS 401 LF Once again, can't find any info on that at all. It's just uh, you know, these are well, you know, obviously. uh. got something to do with you know, display, uh, drivers and things like that and on on the bottom here and Here we have an analog device.

This is uh, Advv 7123. That's a high-speed uh video triple deck. No surprises there. 10bit video deck and this device here is a TI Tfp 410 and it's a panel bus display driver I See, and uh, we've got, um, some Lvds uh driver devices that's an Lvds uh driver up there.

that's a uh THC 63, um, Lvdf and that's a dead giveaway. that's an Lvds uh driver. So apart from that, uh, this board is, uh, rather. you know it would be interesting if we could actually get the specific Uh data sheets for these devices.

But anyway, it is. really, you know. Essentially a reasonably high-end um HD video uh, capture. Cuz here's our video input video input connector here.

Coming from the camera, it's the multiway connector. It's got the big shielded cable running up to the uh camera on the top arm, so that's obviously some sort of video capture it buffers. It does all sorts of things. We've got a big video display processor with some memory maybe a micro.

While doing some stuff here, we got and then various Uh drivers to uh Drive the various displays and things like that. So yeah, it's um, pretty much what you'd expect. but uh I hate it when you can't find info on devices. It's really annoying.

all right. I Found a plug pack. it says it requires uh 12 volts at 1.9 amps. I've only got 1.25 amps here.

Ah, fingers crossed. Let's give it a try. What's the worst that can happen? It hiccups or just doesn't work here. we go.

Woohoo! Hey we have light we have flashing y it is doing Elmo Beautiful. It works. Hey there's my hand on the LCD Brilliant! And there you go. You can see my hand on the LCD in is it real time? Oh no.

there a bit lag there. I think I Think there is a little bit of lag in that. That's a bit of a bit of a bummer, but uh yeah, it seems to work I wonder how this thing works? Maybe I should read the manual? Well, let's see if we can. Uh, zoom in on a board here.

It's got the zoom control up on the top head of the and you can hear it. If you listen closely, hang on. Listen to this so we can zoom in a long way on these devices. Looks like it's going digital.

now that zoom and that's a like I'm trying to there. they should be surface mount components, but I can't make heads or tails out of that. So obviously the focus system isn't working that great at those massive zooms. I mean it's supposed to have autof Focus This thing.

Um, hang on. No, no, let me zoom in. Oh, push the button. Oh there we go.

There we go. You got to push the button. so you zoom in. that's as far it looks like that's as far as it will go.

but gee I tell you what? that's not there we go. It takes a little bit of settling down, but I tell you what, that's not too shabby I guess um considering that this thing's what a good 50 cm away, the um actual camera itself is about 50 cm away from the board. that's a that's a long distance so that's not. That's not too bad at all.

If we zoom out on that, maybe it will keep Focus as we zoom out. but yeah, it's rather interesting I don't I don't mind that at all. I wonder if we can, uh, get closer and um, maybe even get a soldering iron under this thing. And here it is connected to my 22in PC monitor and it does look really, really good when it's uh, displayed on a large screen like this.

much better than the piss Po resolution uh 3 and 1/2 in screen on the unit itself and it does seem to work really well. And if if I uh, zoom in here and oh, zoom in, let Zoom in on the board. you need to press the autofocus button once it's zoomed in. if I press it.

there we go and it hunts around a bit. but uh, it does zoom in rather nicely and after that I think that might be a digital Zoom after that. So but it it really is quite nice considering that the distance that's a oh, that's probably an 0603 uh, compon there on the screen, but that is really quite nice. I'm very, very impressed with this thing given the uh, half a meter distance that it's away from.

and uh, it does work really quite nicely. And if I give that a little poke under there that is in real time. unlike the I thought there was lag on the LCD before, but there's not. that's ah, if there is lag, it's very difficult to uh to see it.

So I'm you could really use this thing as a uh, quite a nice, uh, real time soldering Aid I think and there it is zoomed into its absolute best. and uh, you can see as I pull the light over it you can. You can really see the uh, the compression artifacts on there. It's not that great, but uh, it's certainly good enough for uh, soldering work.

even at this distance. I mean you know it's not as good as a nice stereo microscope perhaps? but uh, well, certainly it's not as good as that. But jeez, it's not bad at all. And I really like the display produced when I move the head down like that, it really is really is quite nice.

Um I Don't think it's going to autofocus properly at these particular angles or not. But oh yeah, there it goes. Yeah, it did. That's it.

Really is quite neat. You can have a quite a bit of fun with this. I Like it. Imagine if it was on a big, uh, proper, um, you know, movable boom arm.

That' be rather neat. Now let's see what happens if I have the distance here. I've really bent it down and uh, put it in place like that. Obviously it's off the uh platform.

You know, it's sort of. It's just on the platform, but uh, let's see if we can zoom in on that. No. hang on.

No, it's not going to let us zoom in on. it's not going to let us zoom in on that at all at that sort of distance. So unfortunately, there is a limit to how close you can get this head and these Optics to your board, so that's probably a bit too distan is a bit close for that. sort of.

That's about the limit. Not sure what zoom level that is, but uh yeah, it's not. It's not huge, so you can't obviously get uho too close with this thing. The Optics are um, optimized for that sort of half distance.

uh, half half meter working distance with the x 10 zoom and I Just tried it with an SD card and it does save HD images or semih HD 1280 by 720. very uh, nice sa them as jpegs but unfortunately it doesn't seem to uh uh have any video recording capability to SD card so that's a tad disappointing. Uh, not too happy with that. I was actually wrong on the optical zoom on this thing.

It is actually a 16 time optical zoom with a four times uh, digital. but it's a shame. it just can't get uh closer like that. but it does allow you.

um part of the feature of this, it does allow you to get 3D views of objects so you can tilt this thing all the way over. well you this slice this angle of it anyway. it doesn't allow you to go this direction, but you could rotate your objects like that and uh, you could zoom in and uh, get video now I've um, tried the SD card in here and you can actually save uh HD images and well HD being a th000 um being 1280 by uh 720. um you know, sort of the low end HD but it's got, uh, the camera is 30 frame per second.

update in so it really is. You know, quite a powerful little beasty, but unfortunately, um, it saves really good quality uh images. Now unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any video recording capability with this, so if I wanted to do that, I'd have to plug video um, there some sort of video recorder into my RGB or S video output. one of those um, sampling uh capture video capture uh cards or dongles for your uh PC So that's a bit un fortunate.

but and because I know there will be people who are curious to see what's inside the video, head here and I won't take it apart any further than that because the it's basically um, just contains an optical uh lens system in there which is the 16 time optical zoom. There'll be a motor in there to drive the optical zoom. There's a PCB up on top there and uh, another PCB down here for the autofocus and the uh, um Zoom control as well. and uh, that's about it.

So yeah, sorry. I'm not going to dwell into the inner details of this I Want to keep it in one piece until I decide what to do with it? Now the main board had the and these are these little um, they call them test points but they're actually grounding clips and they're spring loaded, ground in clips. and if you lift that board up, there's a little spring mechanism in there that sort of lifts a lever up like that. It's rather quite nice.

I haven't uh seen anything like that before. It's rather, uh, complex just for the operation of uh, grounding something through to a back panel and they've got like uh, four of those on this board. It's crazy and you can see the cable down in there at the bottom, that huge multi-way shielded cable which goes all the way down the arm back to the main processor board. and they've got, uh, some ribbon cables and other stuff in there.

You can probably just see the motor down in there which has that flat Flex cable that's probably the Zoom motor perhaps and uh, bottom side of the presumably custom PCB this would be a whole custom assembly specifically designed for uh bu or for Elmo I'm sure I'm not I doubt they've used just used an off-the-shelf uh, webcam type thing and just adapted some Optics to it I think it would actually be custom manufactured I don't know, it's it's just rather neat I like it. There's got to be a real good use for this. It's a shame that, um, the uh, the working distance on this thing needs to be uh, rather large because it's got that 16 time optical zoom in there. so I don't know.

maybe you can put a secondary objective uh lens on there to uh Harve that? perhaps I don't know I like actually Harve the working distance or something like that. but yeah, it's I don't know if you can figure out what I can do with this thing, maybe a way to hack it and uh, you know, rip off the camera, put on a movable arm and rip out the processor board and embedded on the back of a SC green or something and I don't know I reckon it's got to be usable for something neat perhaps our PCB soldering cuz the update rate is uh, near instant so it works really quite well I Like it h I don't know if you get got any good ideas for it, let me know. and uh, if you like the video, give it a thumbs up. if you like a tear down Tuesday It's not quite a uh, it's a bit more than a tear down.

It's sort of a you know, investigation into perhaps what this thing is capable of. Tickle Me Elmo Catch you next time.