Hi all, Bought a 20x4 lcd the other day. Unfortunatly it's not backlit but since it was less than £20 I thought that it might be worth while playing around with. It's a parallel display with a std HD44780 driver on board. Here's a few of pics : (not great quality) 1 - Fresh out the packet 2 - Wiring some strip board (reason why later on) 3 - Working! 4 - Winamp info - but no spectrum analyser 5 - RAM usage 6 - E-mail notification I'm running LCD Smartie on it at the moment. It seems to run ok, and lets you do a few bits and bobs. It doesn't seem to want to show any temps or fan speeds though, even though ASUS probe shows it. I have this problem when I try to use Crystal display as well. I also can't display a spectum analyser when I tried it with the stand alone winamp plugin anybody got any ideas??? Maybe it won't work on a parallel display, but I'm sure I've seen a pic somewhere of it working Also, all the strip board and wires in the background that you can see were there on purpose. As the display wasn't backlit, I thought that I might try to use a few LED's to light it up. The LED's that I got were flat rectangular ones, but when I tried this out they were not bright enough by far. I've just kept them soldered to the strip board for the time being anyway though. I also put a 10k pot in to allow the contrast to be adjusted, but there was really no need as I turned it all the way up anyway. I also wired the parallel lead to the stripboard, and then some ribbon cable to the LCD. If I wasn't planning on using the LED's and powering them from the stipboard then I would have soldered the lead straight to the LCD. So there you go, a 20x4 LCD wired up for less than £20. Including the stripboard & LED's resitors it was only about £23 all in all. Not bad I thought. It's definatly given me confidance to do another - backlit next time! Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks all!!!
Software will be lcdproc, I'm on linux! it just doesn't have the functionality of windows software. Getting there though!
I have the same sized display. Parrel displays have awful software. The best I have found is JaLCD. LCD Smartie 5 wasn't too bad although the new one 5.1 crashes like there is no tomorrow.
the spectrum analyser is hard to get to work. I would advise using Jalcd's. Its THE best parallel LCD program, and I have tried mostly all of them. It has a built in spectrum analyser.... took me about 30 mins to configure. If you want I will send you my config file.....
Thanks for the help guys. Yeah, please sned me the config file! Ooops - forgot mail address! craig.mulvaney@blueyonder.co.uk
Cruelinios - could you send me the config file and any other screens you've managed. I've been playing around JaLCD but I'm finding it hard to configure. E-mail in sig.
YGM (both of you) but make sure that the hard drives space indicators correspond with the hard drives you have or the program will crash....
oh btw you have to download Winamp VBlink for the spectrum analyser and VU meter to work. PS - for a smarter look to wiring your lcd, get some ribbon cable (i ordered 16 wire ribbon cable from rswww). With this wiring type, all you have is a smart looking ribbon cable running to your lcd from your connection. You can run the power down this too...
I've been trying to get to grips with jaLCD. Looks like it's a bit more comprehensive than Smartie. Can't find VBlink anywhere though. Also can't get it to read my temps or fans - had this problem with every bit of software I've tried though! EDIT: I can find VBlink, but none of them seem to work! EDIT2: Ok, got VB link dll and put in right place. Winamp screen is working,except the only part of it that isn't, is the spectrum analyser!!!
You have to make the VB Link automatically start up with winamp, and then insert the spectrum link in the jal lcd config....
If you attach the 2 positives (or 2 of the grounds) to one bit of wire you can use the round 15 core cable they sell in maplin... that looks smart... well that's what I did at least
i cant get jalcds to run . ive got 3.02 , and it says it cant show the form modally and gives an error 400? im running XP pro so that maybe the problem? H edit: prob solved i had forgotten to put dlportio on cos ive got xp
