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You can try any of the ones from the LCDProc hardware page. These include CrystalFontz, Matrix-Orbital, and CwLinux to name a few. The first two of these companies have a pretty good selection of LCDs in different colors and with different viewable areas.

First off, ask yourself - is there really a need for a large, graphical touchscreen for most applications? You probably won't be surfing the web standing in the hallway, and the only reason you would want large graphics would be for artwork or something - and unless you are willing to spend >$1000 per panel, you won't be getting a really large and clear display anyhow.

What to do, what to do...?

Go here - and hook yourself up with some low cost (compared to LCD touch panels, that is) LCD displays and keypads from Matrix Orbital. They are cheap, low power, small, easy to program and communicate with (via a serial cable - which makes the basement server idea an easy possibility - provided you use a multiport board or something), backlit - some have graphics even! You can use everything from a 12 key keypad to a full AT keyboard on select modules.

Some of the smaller ones would easily mount in a 4 way electrical box, making installation a breeze. Run some DC power and a serial cable (using CAT3 or something), and you're set.

Most applications don't need more than the 12 key (heck, many need less) - think temperature control, stereo control, light control - simple apps that could be automated. With the larger text LCDs and mini AT keyboards, your could do simple email terminals, kitchen recipe terminals, perhaps even a funky Lynx web browser!

For anything else (security cams, quick web browsing), run that data to custom entertainment PCs next to the TV.

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

While they may not be the ideal thing you are looking for, maybe they can help: LCD modules. A number of places sell them:

Matrix Orbital and CrystalFontz both sell serial capable LCD modules in a variety of formats. I didn't see any true graphic modules, but they may be able to get them. Most all have the capability to be backlit (and the backlights are BRIGHT) - note to those making custom PCs: They both sell drive bay insert kits for the LCDs, too...

Scott Edward's Electronics sells small serial graphic LCD displays, and also sells text only VFD displays (VFDs are vacuum flourescent displays - extremely bright). He sells one bay enclosure for one of the VFDs. His largest serial LCD graphic display is 128x64 pixels, backlit, and measures 88 x 38.8 mm.

Finally, Micro Electronics (MEC) sells a variety of LCDs - ma ny are HD44780-based, or compatible, so they are easy to wire up. However, they seem to have a line of graphics modules as well - I don't know if they are bare or have controllers, but the largest (SG320240B) has a resolution of 320x240 (viewable area of 120 x 90 mm). Unfortunately their pages seem to be having problems or something - call them up though, and talk to them. They have a very friendly and helpful staff.

Another option you might try looking into would be small TVs, driving them with a VGA->TV converter. A good converter will give nice results (I have an Averkey iMicro that is excellent and cheap - $100), even on a cheesy small TV. For simple status displays, it might work out well.

Hope this helps somewhat...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

• Sound : FrontX, newQ, SoundBlaster Live Platinum (depending on my money), the newQ looks very cool
• Fanbus just to switch on/off internal fans
• LCD : a big matrix orbital graphic LCD screen

Eventullay a numeric keypad sticking on it to do like a house entrance / car alarm (very 'jacky').

Some of this mods are functionnal btw.

I'm also putting my pinball machine on the web. Only difference is, mine is a 1977 Bally Night Rider Electro-Mechanical (anyone remember those?)
I'm using the TINI processor, www.ibutton.com/TINI and a 20x4 lcd screen www.matrix-orbital.com. In case you're not familiar with TINI, it's an embedded java processor on a SIMM. It's got onboard ethernet and serial, as well as its own proprietary "One-Wire" IO.

I will start out by keeping track of the high scores and storing them on the embedded java computer. Once I get that down, there's no end to what I should be able to do. This project has just started, it's not even documented online yet, but if anyone is interested in it, or has any ideas or opinions, please let me know.... beb1964@cs.rit.edu

Beyond the obvious "it's cheap because it's intended to be bundled with a service" similarity, there's another thing that this machine and the I-Opener have in common: they are physically small (they don't take up a lot of space) and a bit underpowered compared to today's mainstream PC, which is one of the reasons that they _can_ be so cheap.

People want these cheezy/cheap PCs. This WebSurfer machine, especially with its TV-out, reminds me of Commodore's ahead-of-it's-time CDTV. CDTV was really an Amiga 500 packaged in what looked like a regular audio CD player -- something that would look at home on your stereo rack. But it was really a general-purpose computer in disguise, and you could do just about anything you could imagine with it.

There's demand for this stuff, but it seems like the manufacturers are missing something. They seem to think that if a device is targeted as having a specific embedded purpose, then it doesn't need to be programmable. (Do any of these guys remember the personal computer market of the early 80s?!?) That's one of the reasons people are trying to rip out the embedded QNX (or whatever) and stick Linux on them. Some users want to really customize these machines to do whatever THEY want.

And that gives me an idea. When I was picking out components for my firewall/music box, I didn't really _want_ a conventional PeeCee case. I wanted something that would fade into the background and look inconspicuous, like a stereo component. I checked out a few Micro-ATX cases, but for various reasons, nothing was quite right for me. So I gave up on the idea and got a minitower (but at least it was a cool one ;-).

I think the world wants more variety in computer cases. And no, I don't mean another iMac clone. Start with the old pizza box or generic audio component size, make sure it has room on the front for

• a DVD/CD drive
• maybe a Matrix Orbital display
• an IR port

Alas, I think the computer industry doesn't recognize the existence of hobbyists anymore.

I'll take the higher bitrate almost always. its closer to what the original source was - good and bad sound all included.

What about CAT5 and a 386 laptop

you still have the sound of the local drive starting and stopping. unless you run from ram[disk] only - which is an option; but then again, 386 laptops usually don't have much ram to run from!

my idea is to use some kind of remote 'console' in my "quiet playing room" and keep the bulky storage system somewhere else. the lp3 device helps with playback; we need only a remote display and controller. for that, you can sneak by with a matrix orbital style LCD display http://matrix-orbital.com . this is connected via a simple rs232 serial cable. and if you get the one with a keypad interface, you have both input and output ability. define some buttons to be pause, play, ff, etc, etc and write some code to display current song/status and you're all set. a very quiet remote controller (no noise at all) and a very quiet and clean audio output driver.

--

Matrix-Orbital, that is.

Check out the LCD Proc site, as it has lots of fun pictures and information.

I just bought one of these for my new dual Celeron box. I just finished the wood cage for the metal components last night - the hard drive comes tonight - and I full well intend to at least boot it into linux this weekend before I have to disassemble it to make the rest of the case!

Matrix-Orbital makes some little displays (which mount in an empty drive bay) to display some simple alpha-numeric stuff. Lm-sensors has I2C drivers for them for Linux. Pictures at their web site.


--Phil

LEDs are 'Light Emitting Diodes', the most common choice for any little blinking light on your computer (they tend to be just a little colored light.)

LCD is 'Liquid Crystal Display' which has this liquid crystal that's polarized and changes polarization when some electricity is run through it. This is what's used on digital watches, calculators, laptop displays and the little linux based MP3 player thingy that I've seen before.

If you're interested in the former, look on metalab (ex-sunsite) under Linux/system/status you'll find that there is a led-stat.txt describing a short program and cable with LEDs, etc. (there's also a ledstatus tarball and lsm) You can modify this LED status program in a number of ways, at one place I worked we had it set up with a colored "load meter" (gets higher when more load) combined with a heartbeat (goes back and forth to give you a 'feel' of how much CPU is available) and with two of the parallel port pins hooked up to a relay hooked up to the reset switch of the NT machine next to it, so we could send a specific signal to lcdmeter and reboot the NT machine when it froze.

If you're interested in an LCD display panel, as I suspect you really are, Matrix Orbital Corporation makes a series of LCD display panels (also VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) modules that appear to be completely compatible and brighter than the LCD panels) that are sold through a few different channels, including Linux Central. These appear to use RS-232, (or I2C, whatever that is) so you'll need a spare serial port.

The software to drive these is LCDproc which works on a fairly configurable client/server interface, so it should be possible to display anything you want with LCDproc as long as you can write a client that can speak the protocol.