If possible I think it'd be really interesting if you can share what the manufacturer ends up sending you back after they tweak and modify the files you give them. It'd be a neat insight into how at least one real-world manufacturer takes a design and implements it, at least in documentation
I don't intend to design a custom LCD for now, but know how it's done brings relief to my soul. Thank ya! Actually, I'd love to design one, but at first, I need a new job that requires one Lol ...
Thank you very much for this series, Dave. Seriously. As a hobbyist this kind of practical info isn't something that you can find anywhere else unless you have a relative who's an EE. Thanks again once more for taking all the time and effort to share with us, all for free! :) Looking forward for next episodes.
Trap for young players: the holtek 1623 lcd drivers will not not drive static displays. I found that out the hard way after spending hours wirewapping a board with an lcd with about 70 pins
This explains why those LCD handheld games persisted for as long as they did. Tiger still sold them in the late 90s.... I did not realize it was quite that affordable.
That really is surprisingly affordable. Granted, for a hobbyist that's quite a lot, but assuming you're making anything at all, even a niche device, selling a thousand or so of them isn't out of the realms of possibility. (granted, depending on the niche you may be lucky to sell a few hundred, but fair enough...) For a fully custom display, that's not all that imposing...
I had no idea something like this would be so affordable It looks like a better option than a handful of 7segs and might be cheaper, plus looks nicer and you arent limited to 7 segments and a dot
very reasonable, i think the trap for young players would be making a mistake and having to eat it.. any time custom is done in volume it's a different game.
Big thumb-up for choosing Holtek display controller :) - they have even a buzzer generator builtin , and I would like to see how manufacturer routed the glass and how much bigger the display became.
mikeselectricstuff - If there is a cost involved in grouping the segments then maybe not. But it can be easier to work with especially if the product goes open source (no idea if this will). What is more important is that the common *pins* are grouped together as they are with the driver IC. Much easier routing if those 8 lines all go to the same places as a group. They don't need to be pins 1-8 as Dave has but that is likely a good idea too if it doesn't affect the cost. Good manufacture communications is key.
Overall it looks good. Nice to see more progress being made on the micro-current supply. Interesting to see you are using square decimal points rather than round ones. One thing I noticed in the Inkscape drawing is you have the pins numbers counterclockwise with pin 1 in the bottom left. I would have expected a more common pin numbering with pin 1 in the top left and the pins number counterclockwise.
this is very informative, even for those of us that do not intend to do this sort of thing, knowing how it is done and what the cost would be gives great insights. this display seems versatile enough that it could be used for many other purposes, even if not using all the capabilities. i hope you will consider selling them seperately. especially with the dip setup this is easy to use for the less advanced hobbyist. (but maybe include a driver chip that is dip - or a pcb for the driver/display - not all hobbyists are able to design/make pcb's)
It's a shame they don't do some sort of cheap panelized prototype LCDs like they do with PCBs. If you wanted to, would it be possible to use a knife to cut across a single big electrode (like how you can make tracks when breadboarding on a blank PCB) and solder wires to them? Would be really ugly, obviously, but is it possible?
~$1500 is doable but certainly not worth it for any hobbyist project. But maybe you should ask for a quote for 100 units. If it scales linearly (it probably doesn't) it should be in the $250-$400 range. That's still a waste of money, but it's certainly not out of reach at all. For instance that's less than you might spend on addressable LEDs for a project.
Indeed. Though still out of the realms of plausibility for small batches of prototype and one off designs that you may make a dozen or so of... It's amazing that it's plausible for the kind of niche, low volume items a hobbyist might actually sell from time to time... Nothing I'm designing really needs a custom LCD, but it's nice to know what is and is not within reach. Personally my biggest headache for some of the things I try and design has more to do with needing custom connectors and plastic casings. 3d printing can be good for one-off things, but it's quite costly on a per-item basis for any non-trivial volume of items. I've been trying to investigate at what kind of volumes and prices injection moulding starts to be a plausible option, but it doesn't look all that promising. XD The other thing is when you need to match some obscure connector that only a handful of old devices used, or are trying to decide if a standard card edge connector will suit what you're doing or if a custom solution would be better (and whether that's even viable. Clearly there are plenty of custom connectors around, but what kind of budget does THAT involve?) All these things you trip over as a hobbyist more than anything else. Slapping a few standard components onto a breadboard isn't hard. Knowing what's within reach in terms of customised components or low volume manufacturing (say 100-2000 items range) is quite something else... Thanks for the insight Dave. It really does help a lot. XD
Count me in, for may be four of these, as i´m currently building my new bench power supply...and your LCD is exactly what´s missing...have some spare parts left for your tinkerer, please :)
interesting to know, as we can all think of a design that will work better if we just tweaked display. a case in point is having dual timezone clocks or temperature displays side by side on one LCD display.
The heck do you want a quote for? You should ask for an offer. Or they should just have some table on their website you can put the numbers in and you get the offer. Saves time and resources.
Might not be able to justify your new DMM(The brymen is more than good enough for my needs!), but if this supply is even close to the original design specs, I look forward to owning one.
You know what would be real cool dave. A custom VFD! What would be the damage pr 1000 for those bad boys? , is it even possible to get them custom made?
of course...futaba will gadly respond, if you gonna ask for 1k or more...they do a real good job on these....but may you are happy getting used 20by2 for next to nothing, as all these old cash desk systems are about to being thrown away these days...i got myself a bunch of epson DM101 and others...when one of our supermarkets changed ther system....i only needed to ask the manager and he said: look over there and take what you want....it was a huge pile of these old "crap" scanners, keyboards, and these customer displays...along with thermal printers and stuff... And the next neat thing about these is: you don´t need to build your own driver..it´s already been done, all you need to do is talk to it via a serial protocol....(parallel for that printer) i used these about three times along with an arduino uno based 328 DIY driverboard, in clocks for me and given also to close friends...
TubiCal hi tubical, I saw your videos about the Epson display on tour Instagram and managed to grab a few of those as well. But mine are USB, so they got an FTDI IC and I couldn't get the darn driver to work. The display itself has way less pins than I expected, so is there some kind of driver chip inside it? I don't want to risk damaging mine until I figure out if it's possible to talk to the display directly or if I'd need a separated driver IC. Thank you very much for the inspiration!
these USB types are a complete other world...but there is a PC/linux driver pac out there with that you may can use these displays along with the computer...(LCDhype or similar when i remember correctly)
VFDs are still used in POS/PointOFSale environments, because of good brightness+contrast. they usually run from 5..24V and can be controlled by simple "echo text" command to (virtual) comports.. (basically nothing different to a 2x16 lcd...) edit => www.ralhk.com/products-list.asp?class1=18
Hi there, loved the video (as usual). Two questions: 1. After the Digikey segment, you mentioned that you found the HT1622 LCD driver IC outside of Digikey entirely, and that it wasn't available there. How did you find it and what did you look for to find it? 2. You mentioned that you explained the Duty: 1/8, Bias 1/4, and Frequency 64Hz in a previous video. However, I watched #1044 and #1045 and I don't believe it was mentioned. Can you please point me to the video in which it was explained? Thanks so much! Connor
Should have covered "Operating Temperature" more, at least what options are around. As 50C is outside air temperature in many parts of Australia at the moment. I'm sure people designing equipment for outside use would be interested in what sort of extremes LCDs can be specified to cope with.
lol. Tell me about it. In fact, my place the indoor temperature at 4-7 pm is probably hotter than the outside temperature, and outside temperature has repeatedly been 35-42 degrees... I'm not cut out for this anymore. Too much time spent in England. XD
Go on Dave jump on a plane to Shenzhen or get Serpentza to try and do some negotiating for you! You get a price then Winston (serpentza) who can speak fluent Manderine. It will be another aspect of your design and build process.
Very informative, Dave. Thanks! I've designed both custom segmented VFD and LCDs before. The process is exactly as you present here, but the price sure has come down. Segmented OLEDs seem to be a thing also. I wonder if you can stack a clear/transparent OLED on top of a traditional reflective LCD and have some kind of cool overlay effect that way.
Can somebody explain how the backplanes look like? For example I was always wondering why the traces (that connect each segment) are not lighting up? Do the backplanes look exactly the same as the segments, with the exception that their interconnect lines are positiond elswhere? (so they don't cover any segment lines) Thanks.
Very interesting. What would be nice is something like colour LCD like Mike describes in ua-cam.com/video/q1LvleZcJm0/v-deo.html using the same super cheap tech. I have to admit I have never seen this super cheap colour LCD before and I think there is a mass market for it. Without a backlight it reverts to regular LCD.
Now I understand it is all about segment, but what about group of numbers. For example if I want to print 21.6V, what type of commands I send? How are numbers interpreted as group as it LCD controller is agnostic of that looks only a the pattern.
This makes me wonder about color and transmissive/transflective LCDs, been dealing a lot with handhelds and it would be quite amazing to have custom made Game Boy Color backlit transflective displays, or for some other handhelds too, directly compatible replacements. Could be an interesting thing, likely a (hopefully not scammy) kickstarter for who has the knowledge on the control of those displays (like BennVenn)
Hello, I need a specially designed monochrome tn screen, I want to have it produced, but I cannot have it produced because I do not know how to draw or design it. Can you help me?
What about the Backlight? Can you get of-the-shelf backlight in similar sizes? Or is it also done by LCD Manufacturers? You have to be a Zemax wizard to design a light guide for uniform back light!!. Thanks for the video Dave!
I still think the best backlight material, if you can afford the energy, is EL film, because it impedes reflectivity less than anything else. Cut it with scissors, and then glue it right on. Or consider edge-lighting, which is a form of front-lighting rather than back-lighting.
So, I've been following an indi game developer on Twitter and one of the things they've been playing around with is an old school Game and Watch style game. So I had a question, could you make an old LCD print like that with more than 1 layer? Like I seem to recall those old LCD games having color printed backgrounds under the LCD display and I was wondering how much complexity would be added to having a second later on the same screen... assuming it was even possible.
Hey Dave, unrelated to this specific video, but at all your stuff overall, is it possible to make your own viable solar panel? I've seen videos claiming to generate energy from zenner diodes, and LED's etc, and I'm skeptical.
This is a little off topic but how easy (or difficult) would it be to read the output from a devices PCB that would normally go to an LCD screen? So, for a simple and useless example read the output pins from an LCD watch and then convert that into say a serial data stream of which segments are currently active.
Watch Dave's video where he explains how to drive LCDs, and then figure out what circuitry you need to do what you want. I'll give you a hint. You'll likely need diodes and capacitors.
George Of The Jungle It just needs an extra g shaped segment somewhere, the rest can be done with existing segments. Of cause an offset g can be done with a 7-seg digit. So the top line can display a crooked EEvblog, with a flying g and a some odd spacing around the l (or use a well-spaced EEvbLOg). A slight redesign to make the top middle v a capital V could improve the logo but would hurt day-to-day readability of the two numbers.
I'm amused that TN viewing angle continues to be an issue in LCD displays when IPS is pretty much standard order on LCD monitors. Curious why all LCDs aren't IPS at this point. Is it a current consumption issue?
Because IPS electrodes are located in the same plane (In Plane Switching) rather than on opposite glass surfaces, the distance between them must be very small, else you can't build up an electric field! So you can only really use them for high resolution displays. You can't just have a larger area representing one picture element like on TN. And even then you have to go for squiggly elements rather than rectangular ones to get a smaller electrode distance at a decent enough area. Wonder why matte coated IPS TFTs look sparkly and weird? Squiggly subpixels.
Hmm, perhaps the DIL pins are not a good idea after all, too much force to push it into the socket and almost impossible to pull it out (in one piece!)? IDK...
JRPanel.com is a membrane switch manufacturer in China, specializing in the topspeed membrane switch prototype service, with the shortest lead time and the most favorable price. offers 24 hours delivery.
This is probably something you'd need a bitmapped graphics LCD screen for, but has anyone ever gone about implementing an LCD display for use as a BASH terminal? It's something I'd love to try and if someones already done it, i can't seem to find any examples.
Be N S O N Basically any of the original 'laptops' used lcd as their display of choice. Low power and perfect (relatively) for text based interfaces. I think Dave has some videos. Would be the same idea for a bash terminal type device.
Caleb Bell Yeah, seeing those laptops, particularily the Powernote Vwestlife showcased on his channel, were actually what made me imagine an lcd terminal. Unfortunately the ones I'm aware of seem to be few and far between on Ebay, at least where I live, so it'd probably be more productive to buy a big character lcd display and play with that instead of pouring months into waiting for a lucky ebay find.
John Francis Doe Looks like one of those Laser BASIC computers 8 bit guy showcased a while back. Also i believe tandy made a bunch of handheld computers much like that except with bigger screens. I'm more thinking of specifically lcd screens displaying some sort of BASH/DOS prompt specifically, but these are still pretty cool, albeit not all that attainable in australia from what i've seen.
Is there a particular software that we can use for designing an LCD.... May be some Altium add-on? Also what if we want a custom dot matrix made. What is the minimum dot size n all...?
EEVblog That is a shame. I mean if there was something in Altium that could generate Gerber data... or whatever format that these manufacturers use to produce the LCDs... it would be great.... May be Altium should look into standardizing the industry. Hmmmm.... And pay me for the idea ;)
Major manufactures of hardcore equipment use "of the shelf" dot matrix displays, like the series of SEL relays, so I disagree that a custom LCD will give your product a "more professional view"
If you left the watts display out because you can't put any more segments, might let the user choose/switch betwen amps OR watts, this just takes one more segment for the "W" symbol of the units.
If possible I think it'd be really interesting if you can share what the manufacturer ends up sending you back after they tweak and modify the files you give them. It'd be a neat insight into how at least one real-world manufacturer takes a design and implements it, at least in documentation
Will do.
[Having bad mood]
>Dave releases video announced long time ago
[Having good mood]
Is it weird that I don't understand electronics but still have watched EEVblogs for a year now? :')
Nope. It means you need to sign up for some electronics classes!
I don't intend to design a custom LCD for now, but know how it's done brings relief to my soul. Thank ya!
Actually, I'd love to design one, but at first, I need a new job that requires one Lol ...
Thank you very much for this series, Dave. Seriously. As a hobbyist this kind of practical info isn't something that you can find anywhere else unless you have a relative who's an EE.
Thanks again once more for taking all the time and effort to share with us, all for free! :)
Looking forward for next episodes.
Trap for young players: the holtek 1623 lcd drivers will not not drive static displays. I found that out the hard way after spending hours wirewapping a board with an lcd with about 70 pins
This explains why those LCD handheld games persisted for as long as they did. Tiger still sold them in the late 90s....
I did not realize it was quite that affordable.
That doc is top notch! David is one skilled fellow!
Thankyou :)
Whoa, a direct reply?! I'm not worthy! lol
Keep at it! I'm often blown away by the stuff you do
PLEASE!, release a version of your meters that reads "FUTILE" for infinite resistance.
KWatson1984 isn't the firmware open source?
yeah but this is about custom segmented displays not dot matrix so it would have to be designed in
"You will be assimilated."
That really is surprisingly affordable. Granted, for a hobbyist that's quite a lot, but assuming you're making anything at all, even a niche device, selling a thousand or so of them isn't out of the realms of possibility. (granted, depending on the niche you may be lucky to sell a few hundred, but fair enough...)
For a fully custom display, that's not all that imposing...
Even for a few hundred the price is very reasonable. You don't have the buy 1000, but it's probably a similar cost for 100 as it is for 1000.
I had no idea something like this would be so affordable
It looks like a better option than a handful of 7segs and might be cheaper, plus looks nicer and you arent limited to 7 segments and a dot
very reasonable, i think the trap for young players would be making a mistake and having to eat it.. any time custom is done in volume it's a different game.
I misread this as custom LED display. Was not disappointed anyway. Informative video Dave, thanks.
Man, THIS is the stuff I like!!! Thanks, David!
Big thumb-up for choosing Holtek display controller :) - they have even a buzzer generator builtin , and I would like to see how manufacturer routed the glass and how much bigger the display became.
There's not much point specifying common groups as it's trivially easy to use a lookup table for the segment mapping
mikeselectricstuff - If there is a cost involved in grouping the segments then maybe not. But it can be easier to work with especially if the product goes open source (no idea if this will).
What is more important is that the common *pins* are grouped together as they are with the driver IC. Much easier routing if those 8 lines all go to the same places as a group. They don't need to be pins 1-8 as Dave has but that is likely a good idea too if it doesn't affect the cost. Good manufacture communications is key.
Chinese new year, your looking at 5-6 weeks delivery time!
Cool. Here comes some homebrew game and watch!
Best series on the channel hahaha I would love to see more videos related to manufacturing electronics
Overall it looks good. Nice to see more progress being made on the micro-current supply. Interesting to see you are using square decimal points rather than round ones. One thing I noticed in the Inkscape drawing is you have the pins numbers counterclockwise with pin 1 in the bottom left. I would have expected a more common pin numbering with pin 1 in the top left and the pins number counterclockwise.
+1
Thanks Dave, this is the kind of video that makes you unique.
Very interesting and informative, looking forward to seeing the finished display!
When you receive the samples check with the driver and see if it's got good contrast
Nice one, looking forward to the comparison between what you specified and what you got from the manufacturer
this is very informative, even for those of us that do not intend to do this sort of thing, knowing how it is done and what the cost would be gives great insights. this display seems versatile enough that it could be used for many other purposes, even if not using all the capabilities. i hope you will consider selling them seperately. especially with the dip setup this is easy to use for the less advanced hobbyist. (but maybe include a driver chip that is dip - or a pcb for the driver/display - not all hobbyists are able to design/make pcb's)
Wonderful series and looking forward to learning new things.
Not gonna mention the manufacturer, but I only see one purple link in that search. Makes ya wonder! :P
Awesome. Was looking forward to this. Thanks !
Real work problems for manufacturing is interesting, even though I'm only a hobbyist.
Custom LCD is almost cheap enough for the serious hobbyist
It's a shame they don't do some sort of cheap panelized prototype LCDs like they do with PCBs.
If you wanted to, would it be possible to use a knife to cut across a single big electrode (like how you can make tracks when breadboarding on a blank PCB) and solder wires to them? Would be really ugly, obviously, but is it possible?
~$1500 is doable but certainly not worth it for any hobbyist project.
But maybe you should ask for a quote for 100 units. If it scales linearly (it probably doesn't) it should be in the $250-$400 range. That's still a waste of money, but it's certainly not out of reach at all. For instance that's less than you might spend on addressable LEDs for a project.
Indeed. Though still out of the realms of plausibility for small batches of prototype and one off designs that you may make a dozen or so of...
It's amazing that it's plausible for the kind of niche, low volume items a hobbyist might actually sell from time to time...
Nothing I'm designing really needs a custom LCD, but it's nice to know what is and is not within reach.
Personally my biggest headache for some of the things I try and design has more to do with needing custom connectors and plastic casings. 3d printing can be good for one-off things, but it's quite costly on a per-item basis for any non-trivial volume of items. I've been trying to investigate at what kind of volumes and prices injection moulding starts to be a plausible option, but it doesn't look all that promising. XD
The other thing is when you need to match some obscure connector that only a handful of old devices used, or are trying to decide if a standard card edge connector will suit what you're doing or if a custom solution would be better (and whether that's even viable. Clearly there are plenty of custom connectors around, but what kind of budget does THAT involve?)
All these things you trip over as a hobbyist more than anything else.
Slapping a few standard components onto a breadboard isn't hard. Knowing what's within reach in terms of customised components or low volume manufacturing (say 100-2000 items range) is quite something else...
Thanks for the insight Dave. It really does help a lot. XD
Yes, WRT pin/segment routing, it's like a *single sided* pcb and sorry but: *no jumpers allowed* :-)
Love that "remote" icon :-)
Thanks!
Count me in, for may be four of these, as i´m currently building my new bench power supply...and your LCD is exactly what´s missing...have some spare parts left for your tinkerer, please :)
Amazing tutorial, thanks Dave!
Super Vídeo.
Font normally not is described because the design is converted to curves before to be send to the printer.
Very inspiring, thanks Dave.
interesting to know, as we can all think of a design that will work better if we just tweaked display. a case in point is having dual timezone clocks or temperature displays side by side on one LCD display.
This is very interesting, this is the first time I ever see something like this
Liquid Crystal Display Display.
I knew this would be the top comment the second he said this...
RAS Syndrome :D
I need a custom 8001x8002.5 Liquid Crystal Display Display
Very useful when putting in your PIN number in the ATM Machine.
DVD disk, CD disk, VFD display..."comes also in DIP-package"...and i cound go on forever...;)
Current bargraph for PSU, you have my attention!
Nicely done Dave another interesting and informative video as always. Top dollar!
I'd love an Inkscape tutorial for electronics design!
It would be a cool offtopic video if David showed how he made the LCD schematic in InkScape.
My dream of making my own craptacular LCD GAME is within my grubby little hands!! Kickstarter Millionair here I COME
The heck do you want a quote for? You should ask for an offer. Or they should just have some table on their website you can put the numbers in and you get the offer. Saves time and resources.
awesome vlog! thumbs up! thanks for this video
Might not be able to justify your new DMM(The brymen is more than good enough for my needs!), but if this supply is even close to the original design specs, I look forward to owning one.
You know what would be real cool dave. A custom VFD! What would be the damage pr 1000 for those bad boys? , is it even possible to get them custom made?
Willy Nebula Amazing Idea. It would be a flash from the past! Would really enjoy it. Driving VFD's is really easy with ULN2803 and a 10k resistor pack
of course...futaba will gadly respond, if you gonna ask for 1k or more...they do a real good job on these....but may you are happy getting used 20by2 for next to nothing, as all these old cash desk systems are about to being thrown away these days...i got myself a bunch of epson DM101 and others...when one of our supermarkets changed ther system....i only needed to ask the manager and he said: look over there and take what you want....it was a huge pile of these old "crap" scanners, keyboards, and these customer displays...along with thermal printers and stuff...
And the next neat thing about these is: you don´t need to build your own driver..it´s already been done, all you need to do is talk to it via a serial protocol....(parallel for that printer) i used these about three times along with an arduino uno based 328 DIY driverboard, in clocks for me and given also to close friends...
TubiCal hi tubical, I saw your videos about the Epson display on tour Instagram and managed to grab a few of those as well. But mine are USB, so they got an FTDI IC and I couldn't get the darn driver to work. The display itself has way less pins than I expected, so is there some kind of driver chip inside it? I don't want to risk damaging mine until I figure out if it's possible to talk to the display directly or if I'd need a separated driver IC. Thank you very much for the inspiration!
these USB types are a complete other world...but there is a PC/linux driver pac out there with that you may can use these displays along with the computer...(LCDhype or similar when i remember correctly)
VFDs are still used in POS/PointOFSale environments, because of good brightness+contrast.
they usually run from 5..24V and can be controlled by simple "echo text" command to (virtual) comports..
(basically nothing different to a 2x16 lcd...)
edit => www.ralhk.com/products-list.asp?class1=18
This project is cool, this video too, a big thumbs up!
Thanks.
Thanks for the interesting insight.
I may need to do this for my old Chrysler
Hi there, loved the video (as usual). Two questions:
1. After the Digikey segment, you mentioned that you found the HT1622 LCD driver IC outside of Digikey entirely, and that it wasn't available there. How did you find it and what did you look for to find it?
2. You mentioned that you explained the Duty: 1/8, Bias 1/4, and Frequency 64Hz in a previous video. However, I watched #1044 and #1045 and I don't believe it was mentioned. Can you please point me to the video in which it was explained? Thanks so much!
Connor
0:06 - Your EEVblog *video* logo doesn't work on a white background... oops! Trap for young players, Dave! ;-P
The key to mastering Inkscape is to keep your tongue at the right angle!
Should have covered "Operating Temperature" more, at least what options are around. As 50C is outside air temperature in many parts of Australia at the moment.
I'm sure people designing equipment for outside use would be interested in what sort of extremes LCDs can be specified to cope with.
lol. Tell me about it. In fact, my place the indoor temperature at 4-7 pm is probably hotter than the outside temperature, and outside temperature has repeatedly been 35-42 degrees...
I'm not cut out for this anymore. Too much time spent in England. XD
Please finish this project Dave...
Any signs on the DC driven LCD test ?
Nothing! Still going strong.
EEVblog nice ! So, for low usage applications .. mmm, I’m afraid to even go there
Go on Dave jump on a plane to Shenzhen or get Serpentza to try and do some negotiating for you! You get a price then Winston (serpentza) who can speak fluent Manderine. It will be another aspect of your design and build process.
Very interesting.
wow, that's awesome !!
Very informative, Dave. Thanks! I've designed both custom segmented VFD and LCDs before. The process is exactly as you present here, but the price sure has come down. Segmented OLEDs seem to be a thing also. I wonder if you can stack a clear/transparent OLED on top of a traditional reflective LCD and have some kind of cool overlay effect that way.
That sounds very interesting, how much do custom VFDs cost to make?
I loved this video. 👍
Can somebody explain how the backplanes look like? For example I was always wondering why the traces (that connect each segment) are not lighting up? Do the backplanes look exactly the same as the segments, with the exception that their interconnect lines are positiond elswhere? (so they don't cover any segment lines)
Thanks.
Nice! That bass line is slick! Is that a Studio 66 set up there?
Very interesting. What would be nice is something like colour LCD like Mike describes in ua-cam.com/video/q1LvleZcJm0/v-deo.html using the same super cheap tech. I have to admit I have never seen this super cheap colour LCD before and I think there is a mass market for it. Without a backlight it reverts to regular LCD.
Wow, it have to be in uSupply!
I was thinking of that the whole way through this video : )
When I saw the colours in the inkscape file I thought he was doing that, sadly not though.
Now I understand it is all about segment, but what about group of numbers. For example if I want to print 21.6V, what type of commands I send? How are numbers interpreted as group as it LCD controller is agnostic of that looks only a the pattern.
can you upload check list "to be completed by manufacture"?
This makes me wonder about color and transmissive/transflective LCDs, been dealing a lot with handhelds and it would be quite amazing to have custom made Game Boy Color backlit transflective displays, or for some other handhelds too, directly compatible replacements.
Could be an interesting thing, likely a (hopefully not scammy) kickstarter for who has the knowledge on the control of those displays (like BennVenn)
I've probably missed that, but why go through a whole process and make custom LCD? Couldn't we just use somewhat standard sized TFT display?
Hello, I need a specially designed monochrome tn screen, I want to have it produced, but I cannot have it produced because I do not know how to draw or design it. Can you help me?
What about the Backlight? Can you get of-the-shelf backlight in similar sizes? Or is it also done by LCD Manufacturers? You have to be a Zemax wizard to design a light guide for uniform back light!!. Thanks for the video Dave!
I still think the best backlight material, if you can afford the energy, is EL film, because it impedes reflectivity less than anything else. Cut it with scissors, and then glue it right on.
Or consider edge-lighting, which is a form of front-lighting rather than back-lighting.
My dream computer is a z80 thing that looks like a calculator. This will be important
Does it sometimes work out to use multiple driver chips, or do the PCB routing usually end up a nightmare if one does that?
I wonder if it would be possible to create your own liquid crystal glass.
So, I've been following an indi game developer on Twitter and one of the things they've been playing around with is an old school Game and Watch style game. So I had a question, could you make an old LCD print like that with more than 1 layer? Like I seem to recall those old LCD games having color printed backgrounds under the LCD display and I was wondering how much complexity would be added to having a second later on the same screen... assuming it was even possible.
thanks 👍👍
Hey Dave, unrelated to this specific video, but at all your stuff overall, is it possible to make your own viable solar panel? I've seen videos claiming to generate energy from zenner diodes, and LED's etc, and I'm skeptical.
Whats the benefit of using LCD over something like a small OLED?
This is a little off topic but how easy (or difficult) would it be to read the output from a devices PCB that would normally go to an LCD screen? So, for a simple and useless example read the output pins from an LCD watch and then convert that into say a serial data stream of which segments are currently active.
Watch Dave's video where he explains how to drive LCDs, and then figure out what circuitry you need to do what you want. I'll give you a hint. You'll likely need diodes and capacitors.
No EEVblog logo?
+1 !!!
Flashing, preferably :-)
George Of The Jungle It just needs an extra g shaped segment somewhere, the rest can be done with existing segments. Of cause an offset g can be done with a 7-seg digit. So the top line can display a crooked EEvblog, with a flying g and a some odd spacing around the l (or use a well-spaced EEvbLOg). A slight redesign to make the top middle v a capital V could improve the logo but would hurt day-to-day readability of the two numbers.
Looks sweet
I'm amused that TN viewing angle continues to be an issue in LCD displays when IPS is pretty much standard order on LCD monitors. Curious why all LCDs aren't IPS at this point. Is it a current consumption issue?
Because IPS electrodes are located in the same plane (In Plane Switching) rather than on opposite glass surfaces, the distance between them must be very small, else you can't build up an electric field! So you can only really use them for high resolution displays. You can't just have a larger area representing one picture element like on TN. And even then you have to go for squiggly elements rather than rectangular ones to get a smaller electrode distance at a decent enough area. Wonder why matte coated IPS TFTs look sparkly and weird? Squiggly subpixels.
Counterfeit Nintendo Game & Watch units... inbound!
If you let a chinese choose he'll put a serif font :-)
Comic Sans all the way.
Okurka many UA-cam commenters display sheep-like behaviours for likes.
And monospaced :P
Whats the starting point for learning ARM?
Nice..video
Hmm, perhaps the DIL pins are not a good idea after all, too much force to push it into the socket and almost impossible to pull it out (in one piece!)? IDK...
Should I ever again design an LCD I will really have a look into these pseudo RGB LCD displays which are multiplexed together with RGB backlight
JRPanel.com is a membrane switch manufacturer in China, specializing in the topspeed membrane switch prototype service, with the shortest lead time and the most favorable price. offers 24 hours delivery.
Will this be nearly competetive to the RuiDeng Power Supply modules in price and specs ?
+Maurice Bauer entirely different markets
This is probably something you'd need a bitmapped graphics LCD screen for, but has anyone ever gone about implementing an LCD display for use as a BASH terminal? It's something I'd love to try and if someones already done it, i can't seem to find any examples.
Be N S O N Basically any of the original 'laptops' used lcd as their display of choice. Low power and perfect (relatively) for text based interfaces. I think Dave has some videos. Would be the same idea for a bash terminal type device.
Caleb Bell Yeah, seeing those laptops, particularily the Powernote Vwestlife showcased on his channel, were actually what made me imagine an lcd terminal. Unfortunately the ones I'm aware of seem to be few and far between on Ebay, at least where I live, so it'd probably be more productive to buy a big character lcd display and play with that instead of pouring months into waiting for a lucky ebay find.
Probably best/cheapest to buy a Hitachi based character display that can be interfaced via a parallel or serial interface from a variety of devices.
Be N S O N Look up the NewBrain computer, though it was LED with a somewhat weak CPU.
John Francis Doe Looks like one of those Laser BASIC computers 8 bit guy showcased a while back. Also i believe tandy made a bunch of handheld computers much like that except with bigger screens. I'm more thinking of specifically lcd screens displaying some sort of BASH/DOS prompt specifically, but these are still pretty cool, albeit not all that attainable in australia from what i've seen.
Maybe that would be a better to make displays than Fluorescent displays.
yo whassup, watched nearly all of your videos, first time to comment
Whassup? Oh, you know, I'm just hanging out on the comments section like a nerd
We're all nerds here...
"Amatize"... Huh. That's a new one for me. Should have been the 121BD multi meter. The 121 Bobby Dazzler.
I think the word is "amortize".
Is the COG unit price already with the tooling cost amortized? That would change the maths a bit :D
No. tooling is on top
well that's a killer right there. If you want a single unit or maybe 2 or 3, you won't want to pay those 200 bucks NRE
I'm still searching SSD #9
Is there a particular software that we can use for designing an LCD.... May be some Altium add-on?
Also what if we want a custom dot matrix made. What is the minimum dot size n all...?
Shakaib Safvi Pre-OLED phones showcased some tiny dot sizes.
+Shakaib Safvi I'm not aware of one
+Shakaib Safvi the manufacturer's would have their own custom stuff no doubt
EEVblog
That is a shame. I mean if there was something in Altium that could generate Gerber data... or whatever format that these manufacturers use to produce the LCDs... it would be great.... May be Altium should look into standardizing the industry. Hmmmm....
And pay me for the idea ;)
Major manufactures of hardcore equipment use "of the shelf" dot matrix displays, like the series of SEL relays, so I disagree that a custom LCD will give your product a "more professional view"
Custom is much better in my view
oh, cool :)
How about OLED display? Can I do my own custom display?
You didn't explain how to draw the dispatch 😢
If you left the watts display out because you can't put any more segments, might let the user choose/switch betwen amps OR watts, this just takes one more segment for the "W" symbol of the units.
George Of The Jungle W display on bottom row already.