Repairing iGesture pads

[Minox]

I sent you a PM

[betty]

here's an update for everyone:

1) the company that claimed to have 230 of the chips has, in fact, precisely zero of them. so, that idea fizzled out. too bad.

2) our very own Minox has agreed to attempt to repair an iGesture. i sent it to him via fedex yesterday. let's all burn some joss sticks to wish him good luck. i'll keep the forum up to date with progress reports.

3) i've been hearing from a lot of fingerfans. there is a recurring theme that the touchiest part of the repairs is to separate the sandwiched PC boards (if it turns out that they need to be separated). so... minox: if you think you need to separate the boards, unless you feel very very good about your soldering/desoldering skills..... there is a lower risk way to handle the separation. a friend of mine in silicon valley owns a short-run PCB house, and she said that one of her crew can do the separation for us. so, if the iGesture boards need separation, i'd be more than happy to pay the Fedex to ship it to her, have her separate the boards, and Fedex them back to you to continue the repairs. [you'd still get the same $200 for successful repair -- i'd cover the incremental cost for the separation]

4) and one other recurring theme (which is echoed on this form) is that the "dreaded static discharge zap" is reasonable fatal to the xilinx weak link, and that it is especially prevalent in dry, cold climates. minox, my darling, since you are in new york ---- please carefully ground yourself so your electric personality doesn't zap the igesture while you're repairing it.

i am feeling very optomistic that minox's adventures with this igesture pad are the first step on minox's future with a long and sucessful moonlighting as a Fingerfanciful repair depot.

i hope everyone has a great president's day weekend!

[Minox]

I have a workbench with a grounded table top covered with a grounded mat on it attached to a anti-static wrist strap for me to wear while working on these units. Additionally, I have received a XILINX programmer and should be able to reprogram and replace the XILINX chips should they be bad. I have sourced the chips at $2.50 each should we need to get some.

As stated by pythagoras, "FWSEN16A chips rarely fail in the field [...] if the community can round up a completely dead iGesture pad to sacrifice, [...] could harvest the 40 chips off the dead pad to supply all the spares the community would ever need."

I wish to make you all proud and, once more, feel secure in your Fingerworks Multi-Touch usage.

[betty]

you've already got my vote of confidence! i sent you one of my precious (although dead) babies.

we're all 1000% in support of you, minox!

[ahales]

Hi,

I work in an observatory in the Atacama Desert, at high altitude. Very dry and cold indeed, and everytime I came here my keyboard went crazy.

Thanks to the forum I found out the cause of the death of my second keyboard, and why this one I still have used to go crazy for weeks everytime I came here (even after going back to the green valleys of Santiago de Chile).

I started using a grounded table top, and carefully touching it to discharge before touching the keyboard and it is improved things by a lot !

Some really skilled engineer colleagues here, that take care of biggest, special purporse super-computers ever made (the ALMA Correlator) have agreed upon taking the task of attempting to fix my second, dead unit.

The left side is completely dead. Surfing the forum indicates that it is most likely the Xilinx FPGA. A Programmer is underway to test if this is really the case. If true, one of them is crafty enough to be able to desolder the chip and out a new one, while the other should be able to program it.

Thanks to all your long efforts to maintain this forum, I am cautious, but optimistic.

[betty]

hi, ahales. welcome to the forum. good luck.... i hope that your engineers can make the fix (agreed that the FPGAs are the likely cause). if so, then perhaps they would be interested in repairing the units for other folks? i have a stack and other members probably do, too. If your folks can figure out which chips are good/bad, then they can cannibalize some of the dead units to spread their parts around to repair the dead chips on some of the other dead units.

if you need tips and help with the repairs, please suggest that your engineers post their questions here. perhaps some of the other members of the forum (who are more technical than me) can help.