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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?"
needs to be high resolution to function well as a video projection, otherwise all you'll get is super-sized pixels.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I think more then just ideas on what to use them *for*, the original poster would like some advice on how to connect the LCDs to a computer or MP3 player etc. I might have extra laptop screens as well - but no clue how to connect their (proprietary?) laptop wire thingamagies to the 15-pin VGA port... or the "other" port on my ATI Radeon :)
- To err is human; but to really screw up, you need a computer
I have bought 3 phillips pronto remotes off ebay over the past 2 months for dirt ($8.00 - $10.00 dirt) because they had smashed lcd's....
fortunately the phillips PDA's we have here at work that were retired and left for dead in the back room had the SAME lcd.
3 worthless PDA's equals 3 TS2000 Pronto remotes for dirt.
the problem lies in finding data on the LCD and or an application.. eio.com has lots of color LCD's for dirt that are pretty un-useable as they are custom and no information will be released on them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I agree with the brother post, from what i've seen, ghetto video projectors from old laptop screens are usually a nice project, but not for extended actual use. The image is blurry, the pixels are pixelated, you need a really dark room, the list of bad things goes on and on. You can eliminate some of these problems by getting better parts for your project, but by the time all your "weak links" are strenthened, you could have bought a used 800x600 projector that gives better results and is a lot smaller.
An alternative plan is to either find a projector that fell off the back of a truck, or make sure one falls off the back of a truck, if you know what I mean.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
mmm mmm mmm. gotta love the good old western union scam. i love seeing those on ebay. ranks right up there with those nice nigerian "rich ppl" that love me so much that they even offered to take some money in exchange for millions of dollars. It is wonderful knowing that this slashdotter is following in their footsteps
I've successfully taken out the backlight panel from a few LCDs to use as lightbox for photograph transparencies. It's a nice, uniformly illuminated white panel that runs off (usually) 5Volts or so, and gives a good light for viewing photograph slides.
"Should Ask Slashdot be replaced with a form that queries Google?"
No.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong in posting this question to a group of geeks like us. Interesting results can develop, and discussion is usually a good thing. Perhaps people who haven't considered recycling LCDs will be inspired, you never know.
Quitcherbitchen.
"Derp de derp."
No no no, he is better off selling them on Ebay since alot of times people need to replace these screens and can't get them from the manufacturer. Then take the money and buy the cheap LCDs.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
L33T H4X0RS know how to use a soldering iron without burning their fingers.
Sounds like you haven't used a soldering iron very much. Anyway, doesn't hurt after several years of
burns and calluses.
(re solder burns: there's the occasional touch hot component - there's also been the "sit on the side of a stage with a part held against my thigh with a foot" kinda emergency work.
Burns from the iron? Never. er, 'warmth' from the thing BEING soldered - yeah.
Engineers get to sit in at a clean bench doing work that's been reviewed in meetings by committees.
Real hackers get to solder in a circuit after cutting open the cable casing to get to the wires we need :)
But the windows users won't know what we're talking about, so I'll quit.