The Blinking Light!

Here’s what we wanted in the first place. The way the original Tale-Lights worked, is by putting an LED between the serial TX line and Ground. Programs and hacks that use the Tale device, do so simply by turning the serial port on and off. Although the serial port in the Visor does not work like it did in the Palm Pilots, it is still there, and when the serial port is active, Handspring’s specs say that you can find 2.7 volts. You can ‘test’ for yourself how this works. You need to turn on your serial port first. You can find programs for the Tale-Light, or use the dot-command to activate the serial port. Whatever method you use, once you have the serial port active, place the Visor face-down. Now use a 3-volt LED, and just touch the long lead to pin 8 of the hot-sync port, and the short lead to pin 4. The LED should light. Now, turn off the serial port, and repeat. The LED should be out. (If the LED is not out, you have to go into Prefs / General and set Beam Receive to ON. Otherwise the Visor will never turn off it’s serial port and your batteries will go quickly.)

Mounting the LEDs
I have mounted not one but two blinky lights in my Visor.
One is opposite the stylus silo, facing upwards, so it is visible if the Visor is in it’s leather pouch or a shirt pocket or the sort.

The other is mounted on the top of the button-board, next to the microphone, so that it is visible when the Visor is in it’s cradle or resting on a desk.

So here’s how to do it. I’ll talk about the blue one first, it’s easier to get to, though both of these are somewhat difficult as far as making them. The blue LED is a surface-mount device. This means it is really really tiny, and has no leads. It is so tiny that it just sits on top of the button board, it’s so small that it has no affect on the plastic case or buttons. The LED is held in place by the two tiny bits of wire connecting it to the circuit. You might prefer to use a dab of glue to hold it down. Make sure your glue is non-conducting. Electrically, here goes. Look up at the image above, of the Visor Button Board. In the upper left side, you will note a bit of pink wire near the microphone. This pink wire carries the positive voltage to the LED. It is soldered to the middle resistor out of the three surface-mount components you see there. It is soldered at the end of the resistor facing upwards in that picture. (For those of you who want details, this is the TX-Power signal between the microprocessor and pin 8 of the Hot-sync port.) Now look just to the right of there, and see the silver solder-pad just at the end of the hot-sync connector. This is Ground. A tiny bit of wire goes from there, to the negative end of the LED. In the picture below you will see the top of the button-board, and the LED. 

I have found Surface-mount parts hard to acquire, and they are tricky to work with. But for adding lights to something as small as a PDA, they are great.
This mod puts an LED in parallel with your serial TX line. While I don’t use serial hot-syncing, I did recently use the serial hot-sync cradle to copy the ROM file. It ran at 9600 baud, and took about 7 or 8 minutes of non-stop transmitting, without any trouble. So I don’t think this mod will have any affect on your ability to do serial hot-syncs. As always though, your mileage may vary.

Now for the green LED. This one is sort of easier on the one hand, because you can use a normal LED in a T1 case. However, it is mounted on the motherboard next to the infrared assembly, so you really have to get your Visor completely apart to get to it. Also — I lied, I did have to cut a little bit of plastic. The red IR window, internally, has a bit of plastic that I shaved to make some space. This is inside, and it doesn’t involve cutting or removing the window.
So here’s how we do it. The metal enclosure of the IR assembly is at ground. This is where we solder the negative-line of the LED. I’ve actually cut the negative-lead very very short, and between it and ground, I have soldered a 120 ohm chip resistor to limit current. As you can see below, the LED is positioned over C1, facing away from the IR assembly. The positive-lead of the LED is bent and goes along the back of the IR assembly. See the images below for wiring. The positive lead of the LED goes to the back of the IR assembly, to the 2nd trace from the right. Carefully solder the positive lead of the LED here. I used a tiny piece of tape to cover all the other solder traces to prevent the chance of a short circuit. That’s all there is to it. 


What we have done here is wired a visible LED in parallel with the TX IR LED. I have verified that after doing this mod, I can still send files via IR. I tested it at a range of 30 inches. Your mileage may, as usual, vary.