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Making Use Of Old LCDs?
phorm writes "Not so long ago, higher-definition LCD's used to be quite hard to come by, with laptops and other hardware tending to use old non-TFT-style LCD's which ugly bleeding colors and poor refresh. Nowadays, almost everything has a nice TFT (Thin-film-transistor) display, including laptops, PDA's, digital camera, and often even cellphones. However, not all of these devices are as dependable as they once were, and many of them end up as little more than paperweights. With TFT-LCD's by themselves still being somewhat of a pricey commodity, is there any way to salvage and use these parts for home projects? I personally have an 8" notebook display, and a 1.5" digital camera LCD which are just begging to be recycled as something useful such as a projector component, status display, or something else useful. So far I've had little luck discovering a way to get these components to work outside of the original hardware, so I was wondering if any enterprising hardware-nerds on Slashdot have had better luck than I and could offer a few pointers. Are these components doomed to end up in a landfill, or can somebody offer a way to make them useful again?"
Just hit google up about "DIY Video Projection".
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Laptop LCDS are a pain to work with. They are just the screen themselves and the rest of the controllers and hardware is usually built into the video card or laptop motherboard and is useless outside that.
You can get controllers for many laptop screens, however they only work with specific screens. Say maybe 2-8 out of 300 can work with a particular controller. Most controllers need to have their BIOS programmed and that's usually done out of the factory for specific applications.
On top of that you need to supply your own inverter, any special or propriatory cables or connectors, a power supply, and housing.
This is doable, but expensive.
99% of the time you'd get a better, cheaper, newer LCD display somewere else then trying to build a display out of some random LCD screen.
Better off getting a retail version, or buying a kit from a place like EarthLCD.
Is going to be your biggest problem. I've had some EPSON-made TFT lcds from cellphones that even epson refused to give me datasheets to - most cellphone LCDs are custom jobs for each specific manufacturer, and they will not be telling you any information about them.
You are better off trashing the screens you got and ordering some cheap LCDs from a place like http://www.mp3playerstore.com/stuff_you_need/speci al/index.html and connecting it to your car mp3/dvd/player whatever.
Found this on Google. It looks good, I think.
HD44780 LCD Wiring Guide
LOAD "SIG",8,1
obscure seinfeld reference! Mod this man up!!
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
If you can get them working outside their existing devices, I've had a few projects on my to-do-list...
Front-door camera/surveillance system
Mount a TV screen in the bathroom
LCD Picture frame (search Slashdot for this one)
Mount an LCD in your PC case (front or side)
Check here for some LCD controllers and tips on how to put it together. The problem is that the controllers often cost as much or more than a cheap LCD by itself.
Save the screens for the CCFL lamps that illuminate them. That way when you have to replace such a tube when it wears out or breaks in your working replacement device, you will have a means of repairing it.
CCFL (cold cathod fluorescent lamps) have a life of anywhere between 15,000 and 50,000 hours and most will lose half of their brightness after roughly half of its lifespan. They're also made of thin glass and are easily broken. If you break a CCFL tube you will probably not be able to buy a replacement and even though the tube only costs a few dollars you will have to replace the entire LCD screen at a cost of hundreds of dollars (in a laptop system).
So yeah, keep them for parts... mainly the lamp.
-JemThis site has the answer to connecting a laptop monitor to your pc.s g_-twJ:www.eio.com/lcdconnect.htm+site:eio.com+lcd connect&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.eio.com/lcdconnect.htm
google cache: href=http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:Ily0Q
It's not been updated in a while, but the summary goes: You need to buy a controller, the one that came with the device won't do. They cost more than an lcd screen itself, so unless you're desperate to recycle, you might as well buy.
As for ideas what to do; I always thought i'd be cool to have a little display of system statistics cpu/ram/disk usage, maybe any new emails that have arrived - basically most of the features that superkaramba gives you, except you'd be able to see it when running full screen apps.
Basically, without some rather advanced electronics skills, you're SOL.
Oh, and don't just hook up a display's power without providing the proper clock signals ... the liquid crystals will decompose through electrolysis.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
There's no real standard for LCD modules, even the PC variety. When designing an LCD into a system, one first needs the appropriate data sheet, which is usually hard to come by (requiring a phone call to a MFR rep or such) and ill-written. Then, you need to provide the appropriate voltage rails, many of which fall outside of the range of a normal PC supply (bias, contrast voltages). And that's not to mention the (often) high voltage backlight!
Once you've sorted all of that out and your LCD powers up, you will need to interface your video signal. There are not only many different physical connector schemes used in panels, but many pinouts and electrical / timing methods. Not to mention that the panel takes a serial or framed digital signal, while your PC probably emits an analog one (except DVI-D)
Once your panel is lashed up to a host, you would need to convince your OS to drive the panel with a VERY specific set of timings. Remember, this panel is a purely digital device and isn't tolerant of sloppy video or sync signals like the average glass boob is. And of course forget about baseband TV video unless you're prepared to do some scan conversion.
You could make it work. I occasionally have to spec and implement LCDs for projects at work. It's not easy to do even when you have a device designed to drive an LCD. Hell, some of the VIA Mini-ITX boards come with a LVD video output port for driving some panels. But still, you can see that there is more value in that flat panel monitor than just the LCD.
This site http://www.eio.com/datashet.htm has a bunch of datasheets for various LCD screens. From what I can gather it's terribly difficult to make use of an old LCD screen. They're not directly compatible with standard vga. You must have a controller.
Linky linky
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Whenever I see someone go "Is there any way to take an LCD screen..." I instantly wince, because there it is again, the question that just won't DIE. It's a question that's been in existence since the first laptop computer died. If you've been anywhere on the internet, especially in the electronics Usenet groups, you've seen n00bs ask this question hundreds, if not thousands, of times. I think that every laptop should come with a label stating "No, without large investments of time, money, and unobtainable specifications, you cannot use this display apart from the laptop."
I wish there was a Snopes for Engineers, where people could ask their questions that have already been answered a hundred times, and not waste everyone's time because they couldn't do a few simple searches and find the answer (which is NO) on their own.
...
It's called a DVI port (that other thingy) and you can't directly connect any LCD matrix to either of those things, unfortunetaly. Their totally the wrong meal deal. Those are just for sending a signal to the LCD's image processors.
A dutch forum post constructing VGA to old TFT They use an old vesa connector of an old isa-card, a floppy cable a tft screen. Only 16 bits, but looks pretty cool.
Beware! WebShots may hose your TCP/IP stack (if it doesn't make backups -- it replaces it) and allows remote code execution! It also may be uninstallable.
WebShots installs the NewDotNet program...
The new.net software downloads and silently executes arbitrary code from its controlling server, as an update feature.
Stay the hell away from anything that includes NewDotNet. It's a HORRID little piece of software and at my former job 50% of the service calls were related to WebShots downloads (against policy, but *you* try to make Win95 usable and locked tight without DeepFreeze or similar products) and malfunctioning network stacks (in that case it seemed to hose Novell Netware Client pretty good, which made no sense, but hey, this *is* Win95 here). NewDotNet was, of course, the real reason why. Not to mention that it hogs resources even worse than Internet Explorer.
In other words, use it at your own risk!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The LCD on my laptop had the controller on the motherboard. Not in the laptop itself. So it was not a case of figuring out the leads on the ribbon cable but rather of building my own controller for the LCD.
Safe to say that was a little bit more complicated then I could handle. From the posts so far this seems to be the general conclusion. LCD screens are not cost effective to salvage.
Then again a small screen ain't all that expensive anymore and we have come an awfull long way in resolution, speed and viewing angle.
For those with a working laptop, what could work is modding your laptop. break its back so that the base is behind the LCD and you have a thick screen you can mount. or maybe you can lenghten the ribbon cable. But basically you need the PC it came with to control the LCD.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Look, the only reason I'm saying this is because I know. I do this kind of stuff every day. Curiosity, interest, and skill will do nothing to solve this problem: what you need instead is hard information, hard cash, and hard work.
I've been working on a small LCD interface project of my own, when I find the time, but it's a relatively simple LCD with full datasheets and timing diagrams available, low bit depth and low resolution so the pincount and bandwidth is not off the charts. It is an achievable goal.
The fact is this: the person who would actually ask "Can I hook up this laptop LCD to..." is a person who does not have the technical knowledge to figure it out anytime soon. From this point, you need a few good years of in-depth investigation into and experience with LCD timing constraints, firmware and software development, high speed digital design, video controller architectures, multilayer circuit board design, and general computer and electrical engineering concepts. And you will still need the datasheets.
If you DO have the datasheets, and you can GET a controller that will work with a certain panel, and you HAVE the firmware already, and you can MOSTLY COPY an existing application circuit, then you have a fighting chance of making it work. It will still cost more than buying an equivalent ready-made solution. However all of the above is going to be pretty unlikely for a display scrounged out of a dead laptop.
...
so those might not be so hot unless you've got TV/NTSC out on your video card. LCDs with VGA controllers can be
found but are much more expensive. many vendors prefer to deal in volume only, so don't expect
too much help, or fast email replies.
i'd have to agree with some of the other posters; you might want to get an old thinkpad and butcher it a bit if you need
to get more resolution than TV(less than 640x480 IIRC, maybe 425?)
anyway, here are some other novel uses:
1 - get a bunch and make a shutter for a window in a car, sunroom, etc.
2 - get a bunch and make Art, i.e. a large random color/shape thingy to hang on a wall
3 - use it as a shutter in your front door for inspecting IDs
4 - use one as a digital shutter for a darkroom enlarger(for those still using film, that is.)
5 - make your own car/truck rear-view screen(needs a vid-cam)
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"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
Yes, it would take some time. Yes, it would be a challenge. But it's a long way from impossible, and all it takes is a handfull of off the shelf parts - AD even has application notes. Combine one of their evalkits with the specs for, say, an IBM TFT display (13.3" 1024x768 units are like 80 bucks on ebay and 14" 1280x1024 units are only slightly more) and I''ll wager you could not only make your own display circuit, you could probably offer the pcboards after you design it and make enough money to buy a proper projection hdtv.
Let us know when you have the circuit - I want about four of'em.
The parent post suggests buying from mp3playerstore.com. I would suggest reading about them first at http://www.resellerratings.com/seller2132.html. I ordered a LCD TV from them and had to send it back to Canada because it was defective -twice! And it tooks months and many phone calls and ignored emails. YMMV.
Dunno, I think it was Popular Mechanics or Poptronics that put it out but there was an article about how to make opaque/see-through on-command windows. Step by step and even had instructions for an automatic switch...It's no more than a year or so old....
Thanks for setting him straight, I was looking at his post wondering what planet he was from.
You should have also included the fact that interlacing is an accepted (evil?) on the analog world and is still a big thorn in the digital community. That little "i" or "p" in those resolution numbers is a big trade off. Computer monitors use progressive scanning almost always, and that is the way it should be.
Television has fought so many format wars that the battle lines are still being drawn. For example this week they are holding NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas.
Every single inch of convention space is taken up by the broadcast divisions of the big companys and the 'mom and pop' vendors all competing for your attention for five solid days.
Now I am rambling but I will leave you with this: The Las Vegas hotels hate this convention with a passion. Because the entire thing is populated by people that are so smart that they know the odds inside and out.
Check out the Lilliput range. They do a fantastic 8" 4:3 LCD (with VGA/RCA/S-Video inputs) which includes a touchscreen. Bit pricey - was 220 for me, but incredibly easy to use. 640x480 native res, interpolates up to 1024x768, built in speaker.
I'm working as PC tech at a clothes retail company. We are using standard PC's with custom software for our POS-systems. They are equiped with booth a 10.4" TFT, Custom keyboards and aswell there is a 2 row VFD-display for them. :)
:)
:)
I've hooked up the 10.4" displays and used them as extra monitors for my PC. the VFD-display demands 12volt output from the serial which a normal PC dont supply. So you need a custom Serial card for that, but since it's a standard VT100 compatible display, it's easy to send information to. I've used it as a Network information display. And why not hook up 4 to display Stock ratings, virus info, RSS-feed from slash?
So WHAT IM A TRYING TO SAY?
POS-systems are often replaced. Its easiest to replace THE whole thing. This means that there is a huge market with used POS-systems that you can buy DIRT CHEAP. You can probably figure the rest
You might want to check out EarthLCD. They carry a good number of parts for making LCD panels usable outside their original housings and configurations.
As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest sonova bitch in the valley!
You're going to need MUCH more than 'Radio Shack Equipment.' You're going to need equipment you can't even get out of the Newark catalog or from Digi-Key. You're going to need equipment that usually comes attached to a sales rep in a necktie. Perhaps you'll be lucky and be able to piece together what you need from some surplus dealer.
Just because the originals were small doesn't mean that the replacements have to be as small.
So you're planning on mounting each SO-8 package on an octal tube socket header? What are you going to do with the parts that have higher than an 8-pin count? And bear in mind that sometimes the tight spacing of SMD is inherent in the signal timing and path requirements. You can't just 'make it bigger' and expect things to work properly.
I'm asking because I have considerable experience prototyping and breadboarding surface mount circuits. There are solutions for discrete layout and small pincount parts. For medium and large pincount boards you HAVE to lay out a board and get a low quantity fabricated. Better budget a few thousand to the project, to get your first feasibility breadboard up and running. And that's for out-of-pocket, not the time involved.
resigned