tm36usa.com Technology, Photography, Hacking, Life.

PSOne LCD Photo Frame

06/22/09

A few years ago, I bought a PSOne LCD from a fellow forum member on bit-tech.net with the hope of wiring it up to work as a VGA monitor and place it in the front panel on my case mod. When I got it, I ripped it apart and put it in a box, ready to be used in the mod later. As time went by, I gave up on putting the display in my case for a couple of reasons, one of them being that I decided to put another flashy gadget in its place (more on that later). So the LCD sat in a box, without a case to protect it and I pretty much forgot about it.

A few months ago while in a Target, I found a frame/shadow box thing on clearance for $2.48 and I knew that the LCD would fit. I decided to put the lcd inside the frame to serve as a display for a modded xbox to control the music playing without having to turn on the big TV.

And here’s what it looks like out of its box, which was pretty trashed from being on the clearance shelf.

A quick test fit of the display showed where I should mount it and using a few screws as guides, I now had holes marked to be drilled.

I drilled the holes and then used a dremel to cut out a space large enough to hide the cables and connections behind. The cut didn’t have to look too good, as it will just be covered by the LCD and board.

I cut a composite video cable and wired it up to the external A/V input on the daughter board and hot glued that in place along with the power board and ran the cables out the back. I used hot glue to pretty much secure everything inside.

Once the glue dried, I bolted the board to the frame and added the glass front. I really like how this display turned out and it has a definite “artsy” vibe about it.

Here is an image taken with room lighting of the LCD displaying a picture. It looks pretty good and will definitely serve is purpose of showing song titles and album information from the XBOX, as well as music visualizations.

Here is the display showing the same image in total darkness. The bleed from the display is a bit worse in real life, but I still like how it sort of acts like an accent light for the display.

There were some minor setbacks while creating this, such as figuring out the pin out for the video, but in the end everything worked out ok. I contemplated added the speakers back to the display, but they were very small and pretty crappy so I decided against it. Sound won’t really be needed when used as just a monitor.