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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."
Car mp3 Player Display
/. reader, but because you decided to make the front page, I hereby revoke your /. UID.
Attach to side of monitor for a small second monitor
Write a linux driver to interface directly with the lcd, and GPL it, along with specs.
I *would* imagine you could come up with a variety of uses, since you are a
It'd be cool to wire up a front door peep hole up with an old CCD and LCD screen. Better yet, make it a reverse peep hole. Then you've got something.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
8" porn viewer in your bathroom.
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.
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
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
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.
-JemPlease reply most immediately so the shipping details can be worked out, I can accept western union payments at this time, but not paypal as the bankrupcy people will find out! I await your reply so these sad little orphaned LCD monitors can be given new life.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
bingo.
Your old LCD makes a great surface to cut coke into lines with a credit card. Much better than a mirror, since you don't have to stare at your own face as you snort.
This 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?
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.
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
Lovely screens...
And I *know* /. is just rife with old tyme hackers - folks with C in the heart and solder burns on their fingers (it's just those rogue 3 or 4 who actually use *windows* (spit, cough, hork)).
So who here HASN'T etched a circuit board (analog, digital, no matter)? Anyone? - see. Nobody. All l33t h@x0rs.
So fess up, how do I take apart my Powerbook 180 and get it to work with a Radeon card so I can stuff it into my Kaypro "Portable" case and bring it to Usenix with a dual Athlon64 mobo inside (the power supply in that box is HUGE).
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.
Honestly, I swear the following is an exact parallel to this LCD question that no one ever bother to research on their own:
Dear Ask Slashdot:
A few days ago, my uncle gave me an old John Deere tractor, which is pretty much shot except for the engine. It seems a shame to waste a perfectly good engine, so I was wondering if I could take it out and hook it into my VW Jetta somehow. I know that the engine turns when you put liquid stuff into it and run the starter, so it should be able to work in my Jetta too. I did a Google search for "engine" but didn't find what I was looking for in the first ten results. Could you tell me how to accomplish this task? I only want to spend $20 or less, and only want to use a flat-point screwdriver and a cigar box full of old rusty bolts. Thanks!
...
Seriously! I once bought a busted laptop from someone for $200 (I needed spare parts). But I didn't need the LCD. So I sold it on E-bay and got $320 for the screen alone!
Yes, those LCDs are quite profitable if you know were to look.
Life is not for the lazy.
"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."
Similarly, if you've got a laptop that's too lame for that, you might still be able to run Windows 3.1 and hyperterm on it, so you've got a scrolling ASCII display for data you feed it on the RS232 port, or maybe VNC running at 112 kbps. It's not your hot-stuff gamez box, but it's enough to display status information, and the great thing about a 386/25 is that you can be Entirely Fearless about performaing dangerous operations on it because there's really no downside risk :-)
PDAs can often run communications programs as well, so you can use the RS232 port to feed them ASCII streams to display. That Palm3 stand can sit neatly on top of your main PC, showing you whatever information you think is interesting in whatever font size you can read. Maybe it's just a clock and weather forecast and network intrusion detection display ("It's 3:32pm, 37 degrees outside, pollen count high, Virus of the Day is Netsky.U".)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
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..."
In other words, Slashdot IS your AI interface to google!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
I did this once and it works great as long as you don't mind a huge cloud of noxious fumes emanating from your Jetta. It only cost me $10 too. YMMV.
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.
I wasn't asking for ideas with which to re-use the parts... as you might guess I've got lots of those. I'm asking for assistance in making them useful. As in, there's a perfectly good TFT LCD on that dead laptop... I'd love to use it for something else ... but I'll be damned if I have any idea how to make it function outside of the (dead) laptop, or if that is even possible.
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.
Sure. No problem.
(1) Take the engine out of the Jetta. You
probably want to remove the hood since the Deere
engine won't fit very well with the hood on.
(2) Put the deere engine into the engine compartment
of the Jetta. Points to observe here include (a)
make sure to align the PTO of the Deere with the
transmission connector. (b) If they don't match
as is likely, you can wedge a bolt or two into the
gap, so that they interlock. No hammer? I bet you
can find a rock. Just whack on it with a rock until
the bolt(s) are truly wedged. If the Deere PTO is
too big, rather than too small, rub it with a rock
until it is too small.
(3) Strap the engine firmly into place. Hook up
the fuel line and ignition electronics. Fuel line
is trivial, with some rubber tubing, but for
ignition electronics you have to match the wires.
I suggest just connecting all the red outputs to
the red input, black to black, etc. Or else read
a book. As for strapping, some old belts or a dog
chain you aren't using can do wonders.
(4) Be prepared for some mild vibration when you
start the engine. Some rubber to use for shims
can be helpful here. The upside is that if the
vibration is strong enough, even without a good
connection to the transmission, the Jetta is
light enough so that it will move around just due
to brownian motion.
(5) You're ready to do some travelin'!
I replaced the pedal assembly on my BMX bike with
a pulse-jet in about 2 hours. linky linky.
But I want to try a DK8
when I can find a cigar box full of rusty bolts.
Anyhow, I'm sure you can do the Deere in half
that time, as long as no rock-rubbing is required.
Good luck!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Well, I did something similar to this with my old Hoyt Clagwell tractor engine and AMC Pacer last year. I couldn't exactly figure out how to mount the HC engine into the Pacer frame, so I decided to hook the tractor engine up to a generator and charge up some old aircraft batteries that I got out of a DC-3 that was parked out at the old aircraft graveyard.
Of course, I had to retrofit the Pacer with electric motors and a beefed up suspension to support all those batteries, but it was well worth the US$100K that I put into the project. Now I just have to park the car and run the tractor all night to charge the batteries. The noise is kind of annoying to the neighbors, but I figure that I saved a cool US$2K on the Pacer engine rebuild that I would have had to do.
Only real drawback is that the HC engine is pretty inefficient. I figure that I am getting an equivilent of 5 MPG, but I'm sure gas prices will be going down real soon now.