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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.
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.
I just wish we'd go back to a bios-based LCD, for when the screen won't work, the ram won't load in, or something similar. A way to indicate a crash without using beeps... Some environments are so noisy it's just not possible to distiguish some combinations.
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.
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
Add a USB cable, a few buttons and a plastic shell. With the display and the controller, that's a total of maybe $10 in parts, retail, one-of prices. $50 for the final product is an acceptable price, if you must have the small form factor or the low power consumption, but it is not "inexpensive" or "cheap". You can buy 1024x768 TFTs for $50...