Guide Make your own USB LCD controller!

wow sweet

 

Awesome work acidice333, care to share?

paul, there was a post further up about 64-bit Vista drivers: scorpia found some. I've tried them, and I know other people have, and they seem to work great! Good luck with your project! Are you using CDC or HID?

ch424

 

Awesome all my work will not be for nothing when I make upgrage to Vista.

I using mine connected via the HID interface instead of emulating a serial port.

Also in reply to some of the earlier posts regarding adding an In - Circuit - Serial - Programming connector, it is possible to program these PIC's directly from the PC via the USB cable, saves having to have another header on the board!!

 

Ah, no, this project uses the CDC driver, which works with Vista with a bit of hacking. If you're using the HID driver, it should just work fine!

No, you can't use USB for ICSP, you have to use the dedicated ICSP pins (PGM, PGC, VPP, VDD and GND), sadly.

 

HID emulation with a PIC16F84:

(Free hardware project, but no source available):

http://www.telefonica.net/web2/hidlcd/

 

There is a hack around to enable you to program the PIC via the USB, first you download a Bootloader file onto the PIC, this provides a basic USB interface on the PIC to enable it to talk to your PC, from this it then enables you to send new Hex files onto the PIC whenever you like from a specific bit of software on ur PC, it is also possible to erase the decive, read the hex file, save it and execute the code. The only downside is that you need to program the Bootloader program onto the PIC first via noraml ICSP, but after that you are free to change the code at anytime without ICSP

 

Ahhh yes, obviously you can do that, sorry: what I meant was that it doesn't work by default, which is the case on some ST and Atmel microcontrollers.

 

edit: deleted. double up of information. not needed.

 

Hello!
First of all, I want to say big Thank You to ch424 and all others who made contributions to this project. I am definetely going to try to make it, I still have some old spare LCD 4x20 laying around. In this case, I have a question to One~Zero: are those 4x20 PLED still available for sale?
Other thing, I am already running one USB to LCD solution, it is FT245 based. I thought maybe someone interested: http://lcdtousb.dpz.cz/
It is made for working with software "jaLCDs", and it does it well, unfortunately jaLCDs is kinda dead project, thats why i am going to try this ch424 one

 

Yes, I still have a few left. But, it has been brought to my attentiion that the last character on lines 3 and 4 seem to swap the upper part of the character. It is not a big deal if you don't use those last 2 characters, but wanted to let you know up front.

 

Hi ch424,

I'm very interested in this project. I'm newbie so please sympathize if I have a "noob" question. Can I replace the BC184L by BC548(A,B) which is common in my place?

I've read the datasheets. They have different order of pins (CBE and ECB) but it's not the problem, right? I just wonder the different values of parameters may causes the PCB crashes or not.

Thank you.

Misaki.

 

Guys, please one more small question
I think i have read all thread several times, but maybe i missed this issue: is that HEX file at the beginning still one that needs that dev kit too for correct programming? Or maybe there is HEX file already (for 2550) that has all memory etc settings inside?
Thank You !

 

Misaki, I believe any small NPN transistor will do, just check its pinout.

 

Hi Misaki

Yes, the BC548 will work if you put the pins in the correct order.

Edit: Latvian, thanks for pointing that out! this version includes the config settings needed. I've edited the original post now too.

Good luck! Please post photos when you get it working!

Thanks
ch424

 

Thank you, ch424,
i just programmed PIC here at work, no errors, so maybe I will do quick assembling and testing tonight already. Will post here my experiences then (hopefully good ones )

 

Thank ch424.

I'll try and post the result soon.

 

Make Your Own USB LCD Controller

I just found this thread! I was thinking of doing this, but I didnt have time and bought one from www.mirrorbow.com. I thought £30 was better than spending £15-20 on parts and doing a PCB and all. Interestingly it uses usbser.sys as discussed here and the USB CDC serial emulation.

I noticed when I was researching this that there is a USB HID device category for LCDs. Anyone know if this is intended for doing this kind of thing? Would be great if this does and there could be some kind of standard, so that programs such as LCDSmartie could just support that instead of all those settings for the different displays.

Andy

 

Mission Succesful

Hello again!
I am glad to report, that my attempt to replicate this LCD2USB project went very well. In fact, all was working right "out of the box", i mean - right after i programmed PIC, assembled device and plugged USB in.
I used this new modified HEX file (usblcdconfig.hex) and programmed 18F2550 using so called "Tait programmer" hardware clone and "WinPic" software.
After assembling all schematics on "dot board" (or whatever is correct name) with wires, i plugged USB in, and hardware was found, and i provided path to "mchpcdc.inf" and this gave me new port - COM3. After that i fired up LCDSmartie, set display to COM3 and type to Matrix Orbital and - thats it! Nice scrolling messages and stuff.
Sure, as i said before, its not my first LCD for PC, and not even first USB LCD device, but it is still a lot of fun and joy now.
Will try to make and post some pictures later today...

EDIT: How can I actually upload pictures here? Who would teach me please..?

 

ahh man. i would love to do this project but i'm completely lost in the talk here. I have a spare LCD screen sitting around, don't know what model though. But i also have a broken Creative Zen 20G. Everything in it works perfectly fine except it has a failed hard drive.

i lack any form of circuitry knowledge and what not ;(, even that, i don't even have the tools

 

USB HID and Visual C++ Express

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