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Inexpensive USB LCD With Linux Drivers For LCDproc
An anonymous reader writes "The Windows Vista SideShow technology shows some promise. But what about Linux devices that can present snippets of information independent of the main display? Here's a review of the picoLCD-4x20, a relatively inexpensive USB device ($50) that supports both SideShow on Vista and LCDproc on Linux."
If you are interested in doing this yourself, look into "character LCDs" using the "HD44780" microcontroller. These are easily attached via the serial port...
Some example character lcd's and pricing
Instructable on doing a character lcd
and for the lazy among you,
Google search for "character lcd hd44780"
Grab your soldering irons and have some homebrew fun! It isn't that hard at all!
What about them? How is this a Linux "device"? It doesn't run Linux, it comes with drivers that make it compatible with LCDproc.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but if we're going to set the bar that low I'm going to go out and tell my friends that my Microsoft mouse is a "Linux device" because there's driver support for it on that platform.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
It may seem a bit "retro" to be using a character LCD for information display, but from a user interface perspective, there's lots of data that is still textual (e-mail subjects, news, etc) that is nice to have outside of the main work area of our primary monitor displays. Even as resolutions have increased particularly for desktop monitors, the idea that there's a separate device dedicated for a separate stream of information can be a useful notion because it's a "zero-click" way of getting to that knowledge, without dedicating primary monitor real estate there or making annoying popups.
There's really just a lot of information streams that don't deserve sexy RGB pixels on one's display, and the mental association of looking at a specific gadget to get a specific stream of information is a strong one. Until we have ultra-cheap projectors everywhere and make better use of display surfaces, this is a step in that direction.
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Electronics kits for the digital generation! Microcontroller, LCD, gcc compiler, and more.
According to the article you posted, support for *nix is patchy:
Furthermore, using an entire monitor defeats the entire purpose of these devices. These are small, compact devices that are meant to show some vital information at all times with minimum power drain. Running a monitorless server? Put the server load onto one of these things. The server's a spam filter? Put the number of rejected emails per hour on it.
It doesn't serve as a substitute for performance alerts, but for $40 it's not bad for real-time monitoring when you don't have a monitor or terminal available
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Does anyone out there actually HAVE one of these?
I wrote them on Friday but they haven't responded yet (which isn't too surprising). I'd love to have one, but the computer I want to use it with uses XP, not Vista or Linux. I've used LCDProc before, but there is no Windows port. I looked at the driver for this thing but it looks like it sends direct USB command (i.e. it doesn't just appear as a serial port). I spend my time in Java (due to my job) so that's what I'd like to program it in, but the main Java->USB API for Windows (jUSB) hasn't updated their page since 2003.
The only other solution I see is called JCommUSB and it's a paid library. If I'm going to spend $50 on an LCD, then add shipping, then $35 for the personal edition of the library, I may as well just buy a USB LCD from CrystalFontz or Matrix Orbital that costs $100 and will be easy to program.
Does anyone have one of these? Have you messed with them? I'd really love one, it's half the price these kind of things usually are.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
$50 for a 4x20 Text LCD is not cheap!
While I'm sure that a very small number of people will buy into this, I find it very disappointing and very limited, and pretty damn expensive for what you get. I compare this to my Logictech G15 LCD graphic display device. I paid $60 for mine a little over a year ago, it runs on USB, has similar input buttons near the display, but it does full graphics, and a number of nice aplets are already written for it (although far too few). Oh yea, it also happens to include a full illuminated keyboard, multimedia volume knob and mute button, and 18 user definable macro keys (expandable to 54 or more using the 3 "bank" buttons - but unfortnately the newer version of the Logitech G15 reduces this to just 6 user definable buttons). And they throw in a few extra USB ports too. While some people might not want to use a keyboard with their computer, I kind of suspect that most do, and that mounting a full graphic capable similar sized LCD on a Luminated keyboard is a far better way to go for the vast majority of users, and that a $50 price for just an alpha-numeric display is a bit expensive. Too bad they didn't make it Logitech G15 compatible and put it out at a lower price, but I don't see a likely broad use for this gimic when the G15 is still available, even with it's reduced number of fumction keys in the new version.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
While I have been looking for such a device for quite some time, I could build one for $50. For $50, the screen needs to have a higher resolution, and be a bit bigger.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
it's easy enough to spy on the USB port and get the protocol
Your definition of easy isn't the same as mine!
Amnesty International
There are tons of DYI's for this stuff out there. But what would be interesting, is taking a dead laptop display, and being able to rig it up to my pc, maybe hanging off the wall near the base, being able to display pictures, or data, not like being a second monitor which I have, but as a display of information like weather from my local station, or remote, or pictures or whatever.
Now that would be interesting...
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I would probably have gone with USBspy because I'm not afraid of commercial software, I just prefer the other kind. I'm sure Sourceforge has something to solve the problem but I'm not actively seeking an answer today so it's better if the grandparent does the rest of this work himself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The solution to this problem is to ignore proprietary codecs. In time they all go away, stranding all the content encoded on them. All the smart people are done converting their data from one proprietary format into another. Once media are encoded in open standards they can remain there forever and you avoid the reencoding work for the rest of forever. If you have the White Album on MP3, you don't ever need to buy it again unless you lose all your backups. If you have it in Plays For Sure and you reencode it into AAC don't expect us to feel bad for you when your new format is deprecated.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So even if you happen to be a Computer Science major and reverse engineer your own drivers, you're advocating using an entire monitor to replace a $50 4x20 LCD that runs entirely off a USB port. Why?
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
...4x20 was the screensize of your LAPTOP!
I got a working one of those kicking about in my shed, any ideas what I could do with it? besides trying to find replacement rechargable batteries.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
For that price, just buy a Logitech G15. I have one and there are drivers and a variety of software.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Of reading /. eighty characters at a time intriguing...
Sig this!
Why doesn't every USB device come with its drivers embedded in the device itself, accessible out of the box over the basic USB driver that any OS should come with, which just retrieves the real device driver across the USB, installs it, and then uses it to access the real device? A good device would indeed install to the desktop a URL for updated drivers, and a really good one would even allow storing the updated drivers in the device's storage for installation at a later host, too. Drivers for each platform, whether Windows, Mac, Linux, or any other for which a driver is available.
Why do I have to ever see a driver, or install any SW, for these peripherals at all?
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make install -not war
According to the article you posted, support for *nix is patchy:
According to the link for the product included in the article specs include:
* Linux drivers and OpenSource SDK
I'm no expert, but it sounds like at least Linux is supported (though for all I know, the drivers could be next to useless - I've never used them) - the article does a poor job of mentioning this
The thing that really confuses me about this device is this: USB 2.0 full speed device - if you send USB 2.0 full speed data (at full rate) at a display that only has 80 characters to display, it will be every bit as completely unreadable as a USB 1.0 display also being sent at full rate.
I think you're right that this is great for headerless servers as you wander around the server room - but some of non 1U servers (especially compaqs) used to have something similar built in (I don't know if they still do).
This would be great for a normal desktop computer so you can check for new emails, or have admin reports of how many of the servers are down, etc - that you can see without having to turn your monitor on, or to avoid having to remote / kvm to a management machine. That way, you don't have to interrupt your lunchtime WolfET!
Am I the only one that feels like $50 for a 4x20 character USB LCD is too expensive? I mean, I understand how it would be useful in situations where you don't want/need a full monitor, but the Samsung USB monitor runs from $225-$300 depending on where you get it and runs at 1280x1024. I'd feel better about it if the 4x20 display would come down to $25-30.
Because you could do the same job with a 320x200 USB photo frame for $50, and do it with color images?
Was that not the answer you were looking for?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Requires Windows XP" Is a good way to say "is insufficently examined." Especially if it's a USB device.
The USB port can be spied. There is no USB device that can withstand thorough inspection. If there is a USB device you would like to use that is not available now, it will soon be because there exists someone somewhere who also needs it who is also good with code and who does not mind to share in hope that you too might have some good ideas.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
In USB parlance, "full speed" means that the device supports 12Mbps transactions. It has no bearing on the throughput the device must sustain. And the 2.0 part is just marketing fluff: any full speed device is compatible with the 2.0 spec by way of legacy support for 1.1. For the record, "high speed" is the official term for 480Mbps USB, not 2.0.
Standards organizations are weird.
I've no personal experience in the field, but I have heard good things about USB Snoop which is open source.
There are already such devices and have been for years...
I have several servers with LCD panels on the front of them, and they display various things like hostname, IP, kernel version, loadavg etc... I think most of the old cobalt raq servers had such panels built in and a few buttons to cycle through different information.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Or you could hack a digital picture frame :
http://picframe.spritesserver.nl/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Now *that* could be nice. Full color, tiny screen on the front of the device. Now make a touchscreen out of it and ...
I think you are missing the point here though. It can display stock quotes. So when you enter that server room and want to see the hostname, IP, kernel version, etc, now you can see stock quotes along with the other important info. Not only that, but you can check the weather. Damn that's sweet.
I know what you're thinking, "but I can easily do those things through Vista Gadgets, OSX Gadgets, iGoogle Gadgets, and so on and so on". Well my response to that sir is, can you do those things while spending $50 to do so?
Can I bum a sig?
Right,
I could use this my OpenWrt Access Point that have USB but no VGA/DVI.
E.g. for new emails, missed calls on my SIP-phoneø,
I'm well aware it probably don't contain any sort of controller, but still $50 is really expensive, I have no idea what the components may cost but probably not much in the amount of 1000+.
Sure, first LCD project I did was with an hd44780. But my god, you know how many CHEAP graphic displays are out there? Easy 2-3 wire interfaces. Heck even most still have the hd44780 data buss interface. How about those bulk rate cell phone LCD's that you can get under 10 bucks a pop? Takes a bit to find the pdf for them but much more satisfying putting a picture instead of "hello world":P
That being said, I would still consider this device. While its still just 2 lines, people seem to ignore the buttons around it. I could put in a USB aware micro-controler and instead of having to cut a place for the LCD all the time, I just use a usb port to plug this thing in. Hummm.
In fact, it's a serious warning sign about a product to have the words 'USB 2.0 Full Speed' in the specifications, as it basically means the marketing for that product is dishonest.
Either they are out to deceive or are incompetent. Either is bad news if you want support.
My VFD displays my RAID5 status (ok vs degraded). Learned that the hard way back when I was doing a piss-poor job of paying attention to such things. Apparently it had been degraded for a few months -- before the second failure made the situation more obvious. ;-)
Now if something goes wrong, I just can't miss it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The USB GadgetDisplay while not sideshow compliant is a full color LCD Display which comes with many CPU meters, Clocks and a photoshow. It can be found at www.Gadgetdisplay.com/buy.
Thousands of old cellphones end up in landfills every year. At this point, most cellphones have USB sync/charge cords and/or Bluetooth. There is no reason why these devices couldn't be given a second life as a display widget. All they'd have to do is open up the protocols for flashing the firmware and drawing the display. All the rest of the stuff like the cell radio can stay closed.
I'd love to see the Go Green crowd get behind "tech rescue" schemes like this.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the