Macintosh Mini - Maclock conversion project

caver01

Tinkerer
Oct 30, 2021
252
169
43
This new interposer board plugs in between the Pi and Waveshare

OK, this is really making the whole project accessible to anyone. That’s pretty cool. I have had several people I work with suggest stuff like “wow, you should make these“ or “You should sell these” or “I wanna make one. . . was it hard to do that?” to which I have to admit that you can’t just buy one, that there is plenty of tiny soldering work, and suddenly, tasks that I find fun and interesting myself start to come out and I realize this isn’t really a project normal people can take on!

Your boards are definitely making it easier!

My Pi didn’t have headers, so when I added them, I simply skipped the relevant pins. Then, once attached to the display I went in and soldered my wires in the locations needed. No bending, but certainly fiddly, especially as I needed to reconcile GPIO pinouts with diagrams turned upside-down and backwards. Talk about double, triple, quadruple checking. . . that was my biggest challenge when the only way to know if I did it right was the final test. This eliminates the guesswork. Nice!
 
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caver01

Tinkerer
Oct 30, 2021
252
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The previous design is still available on my GitHub, but I ordered the first batch of production samples today. I ordered a bunch, so if anyone is interested in buying one or two (assuming they work), I'd be open to that.

I continue to get comments on the Maclock/MacintoshMini, so although I have a working build, I'm probably not the only one wondering. . . did your updated prototype board work?

I was also thinking about the capacitive switch under the top surface. I unplugged mine and just taped it up out of the way, but a switch is a switch! Has anyone thought of a good use for it? Maybe to instantly black the screen like sleep mode? I know, the rotary does the dimming.

What would be cool is capacitive mouse steering and tap to click. Like the surface of an appleTV remote. Now THAT would be handy.
 

caver01

Tinkerer
Oct 30, 2021
252
169
43
OH! I just had an idea for the Capacitive "switch" on top. . .

What about using it as a mouse click and setup an accelerometer-based mouse input akin to this:

The idea is that you pickup the MacintoshMini and "steer" the cursor by tilting, then click with a tap on top.

I know, just connect your mouse, but this could be pretty cool if it could be constructed out of a tiny microcontroller with accelerometer/gyro. Load up firmware so it behaves like a USB mouse and plug it in, close up the mini. Use your external USB port for a keyboard if you ever need one.