Inexpensive universal backlight inverter for LCD monitor?

warmachine

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Inexpensive universal backlight inverter for LCD monitor?

Does such a thing exist?
The backlight in my megatouch is dead. I'm pretty sure the ccfl's are still good.
I can replace the ccfl's with some 12V flexable LED light strips and bypass the
inverter altogether, but would rather not have to remove the touch panel unless
I need to.
I've read that the inverter supplied with the cold cathode tubes
used for pc modding would work and seem to be small enough to fit
in the megatouch evo, but I just wanted to get some opinions from the
experts first.
 
Kinda. You need to figure out how many CCFL's the screen has and you can buy a generic inverter that supports that many. You also need to know the input voltage. Most inverters that I've seen run off either 5 volts or 12 volts. Brightness still might be off as some output higher that others.

Personally I'd pull the older inverter and try to find an exact replacement.
 
I think that there are 4 lamps in the monitor, since there are 4 connectors on
the inverter. Each accepts a pair of wires with a female connector on the end.

I'm pretty sure that the inverter requires 12V DC.
The power input for the monitor is on the inverter itself, from there, power
is dristributed to both the lamps and the monitor control board.
The monitor is powered by a cable connected to a 12V DC output
from the ATX power supply in the megatouch.

There is an inverter on ebay, but it's $150.00.
I'm not quite ready to throw that kind of money on something that
isn't garanteed to be working, especially if there is a cheaper solution
available.

I'd like to try to repair the existing inverter, but I'm not quite sure how to
determine which portion of the circuit may have failed yet.
For now, this is a project that I'll have to dig into later.

I've seen the LED backlight kit on the lcdparts.net.
It seems to be the perfect solution, but dissasembly of the monitor requires
removal of the touch panel. I'm not sure if I can remove it without breaking it,
so I want to exhaust my other options before hand.

I've ordered a couple of cold cathode kits designed for pc case modding
that include inverters that will power 2 lamps each.
They were about $4.00 each, the inverters accept 12VDC, and accept
the same type of connector as the lamps in the monitor.
My only concern at this point is the size of the inverters, since I don't have much
space to work with.
http://www.xoxide.com/colcatgreen.html

Hopefully, I haven't bored anyone with my rambling.
 
I posted in your other thread if you want to check that out.
But about the inverter you bought, you may get lucky but you need to find out what brand/model the lcd is and get an inverter that is compatiable with that brand/model. The biggest problem is that the OSD needs to control the lamps brightness and needs to connect to the inverter to do this, otherwise it will either be too bright or not bright enough and you wont beable to adjust it. If this inverter you bought even has a connector to connect to a OSD, the connector may not match and the pinouts may be different. You could potentially blow out the inverter, lamps, or worse the display controller and lcd itself.
 
Try eBay. I have found stuff like that, exactly what I needed, from people who scrap stuff out.
 
The stock inverter still supplies power to the driver board,
so I plan on keeping it connected while using the other to
power the lamps.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to control the brightness
of the backlight, but I never considered the possibillity
that it may end up being too bright. That could be a
problem.

I'm not really picky about being able to control the brightness
so long as it works well enough for the time being.
I'll have a lot of time on my hands next month, so I plan on
learning how to repair the stock inverter, or replacing the
lamps with the LED strips.
 
There is a few types of inverters merit used depending on what brand LCD. It sounds like you have the Kortek model. Since the inverter in that model supplies power to the lamps and the display controller, theres a possibility that even if you figure out a way to power the backlight, you may not get power to the display controller. This complicates things even more.

Also you shouldnt have to remove the touchscreen panel to access the lamps. There is a metal housing that clips onto the lcd panel. If your careful, you can unclip it and lift the entire housing and touchscreen panel off the lcd panel. You will have to remove that to get to the lamps anyway if you decide to go that route. This is very delicate work and you can break those lamps very easy trying to remove/insert them.

If you decide to have it repaired or replaced let me know.
 
I got it working last weekend.
The inverters included with the pc case lighting kits I
ordered work well for this application. I installed one
of the inverters and used some extention cables to
connect the top and right side lamps to it,
then tested it. With only 2 of the lamps connected,
the screen was illuminated at half normal brightness.
I figured this was good enough and that the screen
brightness would be acceptable once the other
inverter was installed and the remaining lamps were
connected to it.

About a half hour into the test. the bottom and left
lamps that were still connected to the original inverter
powered on. I guess that my problem with the original
inverter is a bad solder joint.

I've still got 2 lamps powered by the stock inverter
and 2 lamps powered by the new one and they will
likely remain that way until I get the time to check out
the stock inverter and hopefully repair it.
 
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