Is it possible to remove everything from a ti84 or ti89 but the screen, and use a raspberry pi computer or arduino to control the screen, thus making a calculator that can do practically anything?
chaostriumphs wrote:
Is it possible to remove everything from a ti84 or ti89 but the screen, and use a raspberry pi computer or arduino to control the screen, thus making a calculator that can do practically anything?
Welcome to Cemetech, chaostriumphs! Yes, it is certainly possible. Both the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi would be able to bitbang data to the calculator's LCD at a decent rate, and both would be able to read the keyboard matrix. I'd be concerned that there might not be quite enough GPIO pins on each board, but that's not a terminal problem. Are you interested in actually doing this, or is it more of an academic question?
I'm not sure, actually. I might try it on a smaller calculator first, but I think it would be really neat to do it to an actual full sized graphing calculator, although maybe not a ti89 or ti84, but one thats a little cheaper. How difficult would it be? And would it be possible to put the calculator back together to its original state when i was done, as it came when I bought it, or would it forever be modded?
It depends how good you are at soldering. It could be done with a TI-83+ pretty easily, assuming you can de-solder and re-solder the LCD ribbon cable. I would definitely try it with a cheap calculator, like one of the used ones on eBay, to get a feel for the steps involved. By the way, feel free to Introduce Yourself when you get a chance.
I've never done any soldering, honestly. Would it be just as easy with a ti84 plus?
chaostriumphs wrote:
I've never done any soldering, honestly. Would it be just as easy with a ti84 plus?
Sadly, it would not. The LCD connector is even more fragile and fine-pitched on the TI-84 Plus/Silver Edition than on the TI-83 Plus, which is already pushing it for many people's soldering skills.
Kerm: Would this be possible with a Prizm?
before you try to do this to a calc why don't you experiment with a cheap lcd off ebay like this one? [dead link to monochrome 128x64-pixel LCD]
if you could get this touch screen color lcd working with a raspberry pi inside of the calc while maintaining a working keyboard, it would be sick. [dead link to 3.2" 320x240-pixel LCD]
Concerning this, would you be able to replace the innards of a ti 84 with a raspberry pi? Would the screen not support it? Or would the raspberry pi simply not fit? Not to mention getting power to the pi...
jetlego wrote:
Concerning this, would you be able to replace the innards of a ti 84 with a raspberry pi? Would the screen not support it? Or would the raspberry pi simply not fit? Not to mention getting power to the pi...
While this is a necropost, it's sufficiently on-topic and as a single isolated question not deserving of its own topic that I think you made the right call. Anyway, the answer to your question. Yes, you could make a Raspberry Pi speak the LCD protocol and accept input from the keyboard and even I/O port. Yes, you could interface PindurTI or a similar emulator with the ports. You could power the Pi with a nice big set of rechargeable Li-Po cells fit into roughly where the batteries go, probably. I love that it would potentially give you many different models within one case by dint of being an emulator, but there's a lot of background work that would have to go into it.
And some folks from China are using a Cortex-M3-based microcontroller to replace the innards of the clone of a Casio calculator. Less powerful than a RPi, but much lower power.
Lionel Debroux wrote:
And some folks from China are using a Cortex-M3-based microcontroller to replace the innards of the clone of a Casio calculator. Less powerful than a RPi, but much lower power.
Sounds like an interesting project. Smile If I find myself with a sudden surplus of free time, I might try to find a good Linux-based system to stuff into a calculator along with a 320x240 screen. I almost think a Beaglebone Black would be a better choice than the Pi, given the former's surplus of GPIO pins.
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And some folks from China are using a Cortex-M3-based microcontroller to replace the innards of the clone of a Casio calculator. Less powerful than a RPi, but much lower power.

Sounds like an interesting project. Smile

Yup. On TI-Planet, we've been following that community calculator for a while (in French):
* first mention, with microcontroller model and USB + SD card compatibility: http://ti-pla.net/t14060 ( http://www.cncalc.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=9980 );
* picture of a real calculator in working state: http://ti-pla.net/t14103 ( http://www.cncalc.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=10014 / http://www.cncalc.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=10026 );
* Eigenmath port + early emulator for Android: http://ti-pla.net/t14138 ( http://www.cncalc.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=10076 );
* battery and JTAG: http://ti-pla.net/t14060 ( http://www.cncalc.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=10079 ).

The "ArithMax E301" is quite far in its lifecycle, the furthest (farthest ?) of any community-developed calculator that I've seen since I became part of the community in the spring of 2001.

Quote:
If I find myself with a sudden surplus of free time, I might try to find a good Linux-based system to stuff into a calculator along with a 320x240 screen.

Or you could port Linux to the Prime. Mainline Linux already has good support for the S3C2416 Smile
But before that, someone needs to perform enough reverse-engineering to gather information about GPIO pin assignments. A bit of work in that area occurred in August 2013 (it was posted on the TI-Planet hpwiki), then nothing more Sad

Quote:
I almost think a Beaglebone Black would be a better choice than the Pi, given the former's surplus of GPIO pins.

Agreed, and it's more powerful anyway. But a COM would be more suitable for embedding into a calculator than the BBB SBC, as the 2.54mm GPIO headers, USB A and RJ45 connectors of the BBB are quite tall.
Does anyone know of any good resources for learning how to interface with an lcd like that of the 84?
I really want to actually make a community-developed calculator that doesn't die completely, but i am extremely lacking in hardware knowledge.

EDIT: Or a decent scientific number pad (sin, cos, tan, etc.) that would work with the raspberry pi...
I see everywhere in that topic mentions about "the TI 84", but the TI 84 doesn't exist. There is always something after the "84", either a "Plus" or a "Pocket", sometimes both, sometimes followed with ".fr" or "SE" or both, and now even "CSE".
It was not a big deal before the CSE because they were all compatible but now they aren't, and sentences like "an lcd like that of the 84" don't mean anything anymore since that could apply to two different LCDs. And maybe most people assume that "TI 84" without "CSE" names all 84-calcs except the CSE but I already saw someone (on that website and on others) reporting a problem on a "84", which was a CSE.
Sorry, I was/am referring to the 84 plus (monochrome).
In addition to my past post, how would the raspberry pi read the keyboard matrix? Or at least how would I gain the knowledge necessary to understand how?
Hey guys,

Didn't get a chance to read this thread in detail but I think you may be interested in my Casio case mod for a Raspberry Pi model A:

http://youtu.be/mrvyAr6Z4XQ
piCaso wrote:
Hey guys,

Didn't get a chance to read this thread in detail but I think you may be interested in my Casio case mod for a Raspberry Pi model A:

http://youtu.be/mrvyAr6Z4XQ
That's very cool work! I was going to suggest you post a new topic about this project, but I see that you already created a topic.
Thanks man.

I'm going to reply to you in the other thread if you don't mind, just to get discussion going in the right place.
I have recently come up with the idea of doing this on my own, and got discouraged when I realized that the keyboard matrix was part of the main chip. I started googling to see if anyone else had had this idea before me, and I found this thread. Earlier, you (KermMartian) mentioned that it would be possible to get the RPi to read the matrix. I am confused on how this would work.

Also, sorry for using the necropost.
  
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