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Best Way To Put a Monitor On a Robot?
I'm part of my schools IGVC team, and we're upgrading our bot's computer to an onboard mini-itx. Most of the access to the box is gonna be through ssh, but I want a terminal I can just mount on the bot for convenience. Bidding on a psOne LCD already, but what are some good options if that doesn't pan out? I want to keep it as cheap as possible and small (in the 5-7 inch range). I haven't found any good guides to modding a digital photo frame or portable DVD player, but I'm probably just not looking in the right places.
Duct tape.
Remember to disconnect the laser before it gets hit by lightning and wanders off by itself.
Why not use something from these people?
I've done similar work before for mounting monitors on ships. Get some thin aluminum bars, and then bend and braze them so that they form an end to a cage with the monitor screen unobstructed (bend four bars along their long axis and then cut and braze them together so that the monitor fits into the cage end). Depending on how you mount it, you may want to add other bars. You will probably also want to put impact padding inside the cage-end and strap-down cables or some other capture method to prevent the monitor from falling out backwards. If you know what you are doing, it will take you half an hour and it will be steady as a rock.
There are a number of 7" VGA LCD displays with touchscreens in use in the car computer hobbyist community. The low-end ones are around USD $250-$300.
http://store.mp3car.com/category_s/27.htm
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/lcd_displays
http://digitalww.com/store/products.asp?cat=8
Take a look around there and I'm sure you'll find something that will work quite well.
How about an old Palm LCD?
You can probably find some used ones real cheap.
Any other questions?
Maybe a 4x20 or a small graphic display with 8 bit interface. A lot easier to program (minimal graphics driver needed) and a whole heck of a lot cheaper than a color panel.
I had good luck at www.crystalfontz.com, but Digikey and Mouser have stuff as well.
We have used the TFT panels here at work, and they require a lot to get them up and running. Even if your mini-itx has a built in panel controller, the graphics driver is a not inconsiderable programming job (unless you are fortunate enough to have one included with your OS). You might well decide that the time spent trying to get a graphics display working would be better spent on bot functionality.
1. Nuts and bolts.
2. Duct tape would probably work just as well.
3. I doubt that elmer's glue would be able to hold the monitor onto the robot very well.
4. Magic is not quite feasible with today's technology.
5. Wishful thinking won't get you very far. 6. You could go for the steampunk look with gears and welding (be careful not to weld the screen itself)
7. Double stick tape.
8.Rub it on your head and stick it with static electricity.
Hey, I'm into the car-PC scene (where we replace our stock radio's with computers & touchscreens, in order to have all the features of the best touch-screen navigation/head units, in addition to things such as internet (wifi/edge/etc), engine management, etc..) [/carputer plug]
We frequently use LCD's in the 6-8" size, but they're usually touch-screen and that may be overkill for your application. If it's not, though, a good bang-for-the-buck 7" touchscreen is the Lilliput 7" touchscreen - ~$250. If you want something a little better, try the Xenarc 7" - ~$350 (I personally use the Xenarc 7" 700TSV and have tested the Lilliput 7".. I have only great things to say about Xenarcs)
The touchscreens connect to your computer via USB and the video source can be either VGA or a single RCA coaxial.
If you're on a budget, my best advice would be to search for a cheap Lilliput non-touchscreen in the size you want. A quick google search came up with this 7" Lilliput for $120
If you want touchscreens, a good place to start is www.mp3car.com. Non-touchscreens are less popular in the carputing world, so you will probably have better luck with google for those.
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
The bigger question here is:
What is the best kind of monitor to get and where is the best place to get it from.
Words to live by - Macguyver would have had this stuff done faster than you could have typed out the submission.
What I used on the robot for my EE senior project was a serial LCD from seetron.com
It took the serial port data form a 16bit microcontroller and displayed it on screen. We used it mostly for text feedback but also used the low end graphics to display a graph of what our analog sensors saw in real time.
Probably low end for what you want but still a good option for embedded hardware hackers out there, as they could run it off of a pic or Basic Stamp. Will except TTL or RS232 voltage levels.
Go hit up your state surplus auctions. Sometimes you can find a very old laptop that it too outdated for anything but its tiny display.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
that there was no XOR choice between mounting a monitor and mounting a friggin' laser cannon.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
You can often find decomissioned HMI panels for next to nothing. That's how I change the temperature on my hot tub.
They are usually touch screens and their power suppliers can be pretty versatile (combo 120vAC/24v DC is common).
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Why not ditch the Mini-ITX and use a laptop instead? This is the brain, as well as being a full-fledged console with flip-up display and full integrated keyboard.
The nokia tablets run maemo linux and have a nice hi-res display as well as USB/wifi/bluetooth as well as a camera.
The older models can be obtained for little money and run very well indeed.
liqbase
Illustration here.
Go get a second-hand Psion 3 or Psion 5 off ebay.
They're tiny, they have usable keyboards and a decent screens, they run for about a week on a few AA batteries, they have enough CPU to run proper diagnostic tools using the built-in scripting language, and they have built-in serial ports (although, alas, they're non standard). The Psion 5 will run Linux, but they've both got lots of useful built-in software on ROM. They're also pathetically cheap; 10 dollars for a Psion 3...
Whatever you put on it, I'd place it on a flat top surface with another piece of glass atop it so that when someone inevitably puts a beverage on it, it won't damage the actual display.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Have Chuck Norris Duck Tape an HDTV on it.
Carefully.
If you're going to write radio's, why didn't you also write computer's and touchscreen's and feature's and unit's and thing's??
Serial terminal with a nokia screen. Check out sparkfun electronics, hackaday et al.
You can often find decomissioned HMI panels for next to nothing. That's how I change the temperature on my hot tub.
Sounds like those HMI panels run pretty hot, if they can change the temperature of such a large mass of water.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
1. Use a laser to weld the monitor's case to the robot
2. Use a mirror to weld the laser itself onto the robot
3. ???
4. Profit!
i currently own a mindstorms NXT Robot, his name is Albert and he's currently embeeding an asus eeePC 900 (/w GNU/linux debian etch). The laptop enables bidirectional communication with the NXT brick through the perl NXT API, and will also soon take take of the speech2text/voice and shapes recognition / life-mimetic behaviours. To be clear, i think that laptops embeeding can be a cheap and quite efficient solution for DIY robots. BTW i'm very satisfacted with it. here are a few pictures: http://repos.digi-nation.com/
What about having a regular monitor-keyboard-mouse on a cart? Wheel it up to the robot and plug in to the relevant connections on the mini-ITX board. That's how I would go if you want to do development on the robot platform itself.
If what you're really looking for is a way for the robot to display debug/state information while it's running I think the serial LCD character displays are probably the cheapest text displays you'll find. If you just need some basic error information consider throwing on some green and red LEDs.
Seriously, I'm surprised no one has posted a link to http://xkcd.com/413/ yet.
And seriously, $300 for the 2GB surf model will give you a 7" screen and a keyboard/trackpad. Can't beat that for convenience.
OK, maybe the $200 Nokia N800 would work well too, if you don't mind using the onscreen keyboard.
Has some interesting stuff. Check out the "LCD Bargains" page...SK-3021 5.8" LCD Kit for $92, et cetera of their kits.
Specifically he asks "how can I" when he means "what can I use".
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
ALL the LCD picture frames I've owned/bought as gifts had a "video in" port of some sort or other on them. No modding necessary. And they're all clear about what sort of power to feed them to make 'em work. Smaller ones can be found for cheap, too.