Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Adding an LCD Status Screen to a PC

Posted by timothy on from the you-have-10,203,180-new-messages dept.

blankmange writes: "The Screensavers is running an interesting hack - add an LCD screen to your PC for just information. "The real estate on your screen is precious, and with your PC's vital stats, Winamp info, game stats, stock tickers, news tickers, sports scores, and more, it's easy to run out of space. How about adding a liquid crystal display (LCD) that can show this type of information?" Seems pretty straight-forward ... " Yes, but can you make one as as pretty as this one?

17 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Hardware ? by forged · · Score: 5, Interesting
    How about creating a Computer MODS section ?

    It isn't the first time that this is suggested, and with the increase of case mods posts recently (and others sort of mods), this would make sense.

  2. Two screens by javilon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Personally, I would use two monitors.

    You can use a crappy one just for this sort of stuff. It will have much more real state that an LCD and colors. And it's much simpler! just a second video card or a multihead one.

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
    1. Re:Two screens by boomer_rehfield · · Score: 2, Interesting

      *blows a whistle* Think...think laptop lcd... NOW think dual headed video card... now think VELCRO... velcro that bad boy to your wall, side of your computer, your head, or even your fuzzy cubicle wall... No extra space...just take down some of your penny arcade cartoons off the wall and you're all set. The idea that I had for this was that I used dual monitors at work but I still needed to monitor the help desk and calls, so I thought that maybe I could stick a dual head in an old pc, use old laptop lcd's from laptops we were dumping and just velcro (mount) them up on the walls strickly for monitoring network, the helpdesk server errors, and helpdesk queues. 4 monitors in the space of two. Kinda like your own personal NOC.)

      --
      Carpe Canem - Seize the Dog
    2. Re:Two screens by lightcycler · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What do you mean know "how to make a serial-port driver for LCDs"?

      Rhetorical question really: I know how to do it, just can't be bothered at the moment.

      Serial port: 9-pin connector with 3 wires, connect that to a UART IC which provides the parallel output.

      LCD character display modules (£10 each, 2 lines x 9 characters) each use an 8-way parallel input, with a couple of power lines, a variable-voltage for the contrast adjustment, and an optional power supply for the backlight. Connect that right to the output of the UART.

      For programming, just download the data sheet for the LCD, look up its command-set (about 5-6 instructions), look up the code for each "letter" (generally approximates ASCII), then write a perl-script to take the information you want and send it to the serial port.

      I don't know much about winamp, nor about mobo monitoring (I use a pentium, so no need to!) but there are many freeware programs around which will take such information and send it to the serial port for you.

      Final problem: the display modules are about a centimetre higher than a 5.25" blanking plate, so they won't fit in my PC, so who cares about the electronics if the thing itself won't fit? Besides, I hate to go to sleep with lights on (taped over all my power-socket neons, etc) so I don't want an LCD anyway. Who wants to look under their desk for information?

      /me is about to print one of BlueFlash's images onto the side of his case: much cooler, higher-resolution, and infintely more attractive than an LCD.

  3. Those LED scroller things... by Mwongozi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've always wanted to hook up one of those big LED text scroller things that you sometimes see in shop windows to my PC, to display the time and things like "You have mail!"

    But I don't even if know if it's possible...

  4. linux syslogd? by Ubi_NL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not really into tweaking syslogd but,

    how much difiiculty will it be to route system messages (illegal logins / diskspace low etc) to /dev/lcd?
    that would make the thing pretty usefull as the current software seems to be windows-only

    --

    If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
  5. It can be done by eap · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is possible, and I have seen it done. The brand I saw used was Beta Brite, and I think you could get them at Sam's. That was about 4 years ago, and you had to build a special serial interface cable because I think the signs have a cat 3 jack, or something. Then, you just send commands to the serial port, probably with some control characters to scrolling effects, etc.

  6. This is what we made by brejc8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My flatmate has been working on this system which shows any image you want. All you need to do is write a script which picks an image and then run a program to transmit it over the network to the display every few seconds. Things like weather, news or mail.
    I wanted to link it with my camera robot and have a few buttons on the side to control it.

    --
    Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
  7. Remote LCD by wowbagger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My computer lives inside the desk, where its fans are muffled by the enclosure (with a large, low speed high volume QUIET fan ventilating the desk). I couldn't see an LCD on the computer.

    How about an LCD panel on a USB, so that I could mount the LCD up where I could see it?

    Or better still, how about just running more than one monitor - and having screen real estate I can use for ANYTHING?

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
  8. You can use VFDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    VFDs are the displays on cash registers etc. You can program one quite easily via the serial port. You can see one implementation here.

  9. Dumb terminals by LinuxHam · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I went dumpster diving for over 20 portable dumb terminals. 9" screens with a carrying handle molded into the case. The keyboards fold up and clip on in front of the screen. I had one hooked up to the serial port on my firewall and would also tail -f /var/log/messages. Once you get live ipchains and snort reports, you tend not to want to go back.

    But now I'm more interested in finding a good 9-10" X term suitable for keeping Big Brother up 24x7.

    --
    Intelligent Life on Earth
  10. Synaptics cPad by morcheeba · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Synaptics has a new touchpad for notebooks called the cPad. It has a B&W LCD under a (mostly) clear touchpad that can be used as a secondary display. It has it's own API, and looks pretty neat - it saves valuable screen space and I hope I could move the task bar down there. I've only seen it on the Toshiba Satellite 5100 series, but I'm sure Synaptics is agressively marketing it to other laptop manufacturers.

    --
    HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
  11. Spectrum analyser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What I'd like is a TCP port spectrum analyser - just plug it in to your server, and see the traffic going in and out of each port.

    If a virus or a worm starts "calling home" on a high port, it'd be immediately obvious :-)

  12. LCD is damn cool by foobrain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am using an LCD since past month. It's a 16x2 one, controlled by a Hitachi HD7780. Since I'm not in USA, importing a CristalFontz or Matrix Orbital one were impo$$ible.

    I've found this on a electronics junkyard for US$5, got an old printer cable and soldered everything as found on LCDProc's (search freshmeat for it) man page.

    A picture of it can be found here:
    lcd_no_painel.png

    LCDProc runs on *nix, is damn easy to configure and to write a "plugin". Since it's networked, just a few lines of Perl code and you can write something that flashes the backlight and display some important syslog line... :)

    There are some modifications you can do it, such as inverting (removing a plastic thing inside it and putting it back there, flipp'd 180 degrees) the colors, so the back'll be black and the letters'll be green. I'm about to do this next week (when I get time).

    Some guys also changed the backlight LEDs (blue ones everyone?), but it's difficult to find SMD things here :(

  13. Re:Radical mods are silly. by skotte · · Score: 2, Interesting

    well, heck, given that argument, doing anything is silly because of moore's law. buying a keyboard, a mouse, even a mousepad becomes a silly thing to do. i know a guy who refuses to buy a computer because he's waiting fFor The Big One. which makes sense, until you realize i used to know another who refused to buy a commodore because he was waiting fFor PCs to have a whole Megabyte of memory. i dunno if that guy ever bought one, but his reluctance seems silly now. his waiting was over, and history in a week. the Two Meg machines were hot on the way.

    sure, moore's law makes this seem silly. but moore's law makes everything seem silly.

  14. Re:Connecting an LCD to your PC... by Ed+Avis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IBM's PS/2 Model 95 (one of the last PS/2 MCA-bus machines, mainly for use as a server) came with a built-in LCD display... there's now a Linux driver for it.

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  15. Build your own LCD display instead by wolvie_ · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Overclockers Australia have a guide to building a parallel port connected LCD screen for under A$25 (US$14ish). Doesn't look too hard (though some soldering required obviously). Unfortunately they only have info on controlling it from Win32.

    http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_diy_lcd