Sae-chan 1

Sometime ago, when Shizuma was being used as an FTP server and bound to the laptop cooler I made (I didn't want to carry her around because of the heat issues) and after I got rid of the netbook I had (the original Triela, but tbh, Triela didn't really fit as a name for that netbook), but before I got Triela, I was using Sae-chan for when I went over to my best friend's place. I was using the Bluetooth mouse that I was using with Shizuma (Shizuma had a different mouse) for Sae-chan with a bluetooth dongle.

At some point, I was poking around the internet to see if I was able to buy the Bluetooth adapter for Sae-chan, and found a way to solder a Bluetooth dongle to a wire harness and plug it into the jack where the Bluetooth adapter would connect to (turns out the jack is just a USB port). At first I had a bit of extra wire, but that caused some sort of problem, so I soldered the run of wire of the wire harness to the dongle itself.

Dongle soldered to harness, black stuff is liquid electrical "tape".

It worked decently, but I had a very limited range, since the dongle was encased in metal and couldn't really send/receive though it very well. Late last year though, I looked up a way to boost the range and found that soldering a wire to the antenna run on the PCB helps. I pre-ran the wire to the screen bezel to get an idea for the length that I'd need (plus a bit of extra, just in case), soldered the wire to the antenna run on the Bluetooth dongle, then set the dongle in and ran the wire.

I decided to ditch the plastic housing because I didn't want to waste time drilling a small hole and feeding the wire though it, so I just encased the dongle in electrical tape to prevent any short-circuits.

Dongle plugged in and set in place; the black rectangle is the electrical tape-encased dongle, and the yellow wire is the wire that's soldered to the antenna run on the dongle.

The wire follows some of the cords that go into the screen/lid area and tucks to the front/side corner inside it (I don't have a picture of this, unfortunately). Now the range is a lot better and I don't have to use the mouse on top of the keyboard for best reception (sad but true XDD).

While the lid was off, I decided to modify the colour of the apple. I used some cut squares from thick, pink anti-static bags, which gave it a nice light pink colour, and was okay when the light was on and shining though, but it wasn't what I had in mind. The picture with the light on didn't turn out well because the phone used it as the reference for white balancing.... -_-;;

Mod with the light off.

Originally, I wanted to use some red wrapper stuff I saved from Valentine's day long ago, but I couldn't find it (I think I tossed it, thinking I'd never use it), and so that's why I settled with the anti-static stuff... But I recently got more of the red wrapping stuff, and tested it out with my best friend's iBook G4.

It turned out well; the colour is more of a hot pink, which is a lot more noticeable. I then cut out a proper square for Sae-chan and installed it (after taking the old stuff off, obviously). When the light is off, it shows up red, but turns hot pink when the light is on.

Light off and light on. (Again, the phone failed balancing the white correctly, so the pink's actually darker than in this picture)

My best friend was surprised how it turned out.

I don't use Sae-chan much, but I don't have a good reason to retire her XDD