My serial LCD for displaying directions

[maraxle]

Hi all.  My cabinet is nearing completion, and I just wanted to share with you something a little different that I did on my cabinet.  Basically, I have a little serial port controlled text-mode LCD screen that's mounted just below the monitor.  The bezel will be designed with the artwork set up so that I can just cut out around the LCD and have it look like part of the bezel.  

I made a bunch of little text files, one for each game on the system, that have the directions for each specific game.  Then, when my menu launches MAME, it actually launches a batch file that copies the appropriate text file to the serial port, then launches the game.  The text files are tiny, so it adds only a few milliseconds to the start up time.  When you exit the game, it puts back up the directions for the menu screen.

To simplify creating the text files, I wrote a cheesy little program that looks through the controls.dat file, and the listinfo.xml file, and generates a file that way.  I still have to manually name the buttons on games that aren't in controls.dat, but it's better than nothing.

Anyway, check out the picture below.  Sorry it's a crappy pic, but it's kind of hard taking a picture of an LCD like that, especially since I still have the protective film over it.  For more info, check out my project page.  If you have any specific questions, reply to this thread.

[rampy]

Good job man... pretty cool implementation.

rampy

[mp2526]

Good Job.  I have been contimplating something similar for my Nintendo Vs. cocktail cabinet.  I had planned on using a backlit LCD like these

http://www.seetron.com/slcds.htm

Or maybe a vacuum fluorescent.

[crashwg]

For those who might want to follow in your footsteps, it would be realy nice of you to have the text files available somewhere.

I for one would consider adding an lcd to the cab I plan on building if that seemingly time consuming step were taken out of the process...

[maraxle]

For those who might want to follow in your footsteps, it would be realy nice of you to have the text files available somewhere.

The only catch is that the text files contain commands that are specific to the chip on the LCD that I'm using.  It has a string of characters that tell it to clear the screen, change to a specific font, scroll, or whatever.  I can make the program I wrote to generate the files available, and make it so that you can change those specific commands to suit your particular LCD.

[Stormy151]

Wow.  That is really cool!

Have you thought about maybe doing a tutorial, or offering them for sale?  

[cdbrown]

I have this type of LCD screen and would love to include it in the cab.  Could you provide a sample of the text files and your cheesy program?

Oh - and instead of adding the controls that aren't in controls.dat, how about adding them to the project for all to enjoy  

Cheers
-cdbrown

[Negativecreep0]

How do you guys program those things? can you do it using C++/C? or do you need assembly knowledge? I would love to try a project like this for my Mp3 jukebox im building

[isugoat]

How do you guys program those things? can you do it using C++/C? or do you need assembly knowledge? I would love to try a project like this for my Mp3 jukebox im building

hardforum has a pretty good collection of LCD info:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=0e8136550f65f960647acbf1e56fc132&threadid=248302

[SirPoonga]

Cool project.  Could this be easily done with a parallel lcd too?  I have a 20x2 lcd I'd like to do something with.  THough the biggest one possible would be best for this.

Your project page doesn't come up for me.

I still have to manually name the buttons on games that aren't in controls.dat, but it's better than nothing.

BTW, you do grab the parents control info from controls.dat for a clone, right?  Also if you want to help complete controls.dat you are welcome to add to it

[maraxle]

I'll try to answer a bunch of the questions in this one post:

Have you thought about maybe doing a tutorial, or offering them for sale?  

I'll probably put together a tutorial if I can find the time.  My project page has a lot of the steps on there, and includes links to the exact LCD I bought, the batch file for kicking off the text output, etc.

I have this type of LCD screen and would love to include it in the cab.  Could you provide a sample of the text files and your cheesy program?

Well, how about this?  Here's a link to the cheesy program *REMOVED* (I'm NOT providing tech support on this thing).  It will give you more sample text files than you can shake a stick at.  Beware, though.  It's an ALPHA release, meaning that I have done very little testing on it, so chances are good that it will crash, screw up, etc.  Download at your own risk. It should work on Windows 95 through XP.  1.4 mb download because it was whipped up in VB, so has VB runtime files included.

That said, there's 4 inputs on the screen that you'll have to fill out -
Listinfo XML file - specify the path to your list file generated with the MAME -listxml commandline flag
Controls.dat XML file - specify the path to your controls.dat XML file
Rom folder - specify where you keep your roms
Output folder - the tricky one.  specify an already created, empty folder where you want to put hundreds or thousands of little .lcd text files.

Then click Generate Files, go make yourself some coffee, and in a few minutes you'll have as many .lcd files as you have roms.

How do you guys program those things? can you do it using C++/C? or do you need assembly knowledge? I would love to try a project like this for my Mp3 jukebox im building

If I understand your question correctly, the LCD is programmed by the text files that are sent to the serial port.  See, the LCD that I'm using has a little controller board on it that contains logic for accepting commands.  I just make text files that have those commands mixed in with the text.  No knowledge of programming necessary whatsoever.

Could this be easily done with a parallel lcd too?  I have a 20x2 lcd I'd like to do something with.

I don't see why not.  I think you would just change the line in the batch file that says "com1" to "lpt1".  If that didn't work, I would also try changing the "copy" command to a "print" command.

Your project page doesn't come up for me.

Check it now.  Knowing my hosting provider, it probably had a temporary outage.

BTW, you do grab the parents control info from controls.dat for a clone, right?

I probably should, but as I don't have any clones on my system, I didn't think about that.  Maybe version 0.2 alpha will add that.

Oh - and instead of adding the controls that aren't in controls.dat, how about adding them to the project for all to enjoy

Also if you want to help complete controls.dat you are welcome to add to it

My understanding of the controls.dat project is that they're looking for the official button labels, as printed on the original control panel overlays.  Mine definitely aren't official.  I just go through, hit each button a couple of times and try to figure out what they do.  Then I make up a label that matches what I think it's doing, and is 24 characters or less (the width of my lcd screen).

[Aceldamor]

Very cool....

One question though...I am probably going to get flamed for asking, but the link to the actual LCD dosen't say anything about a serial cable, do you have to make one yourself or am I just retarded and don't see it.

[cdbrown]

Which link are you referring to?  Most LCD's will actually come with a serial cable, some have parrallel cable instead, but they will be specific for that type of LCD.  Mine is a flat serial cable which I don't think would work with other serial devices.

[maraxle]

One question though...I am probably going to get flamed for asking, but the link to the actual LCD dosen't say anything about a serial cable, do you have to make one yourself or am I just retarded and don't see it.

I had to make my own cable for my particular LCD.  If I were using Windows XP, I could have used a standard straight-through serial cable, but since I'm using DOS, I had to make my own...

[bioart]

Oh that is so cool.

I think I found my next project...  I'm thinking of getting a 4x40 display and use 2 lines for buttons (up to 6), 1 for control type and 1 for text from controls.dat.  Anyone that uses the 7th button on my cp would be shown next to the control type line.

The title would probably be shown in one of those lines too... I would really preffer a bigger LCD, but can't find one yet (any ideas?)  I'd like a 5x40 or 6x40 if possible...

[Aceldamor]

One question though...I am probably going to get flamed for asking, but the link to the actual LCD dosen't say anything about a serial cable, do you have to make one yourself or am I just retarded and don't see it.

I had to make my own cable for my particular LCD.  If I were using Windows XP, I could have used a standard straight-through serial cable, but since I'm using DOS, I had to make my own...

Can you post some pics of the interface between your pc and the LCD screen? That seems to be a pretty cool LCD screen for the money..

[Howard_Casto]

Very cool.... you are our first third-party developer.

If you wish feel free to mention your project on fe.donkeyfly.com and we'll sticky it.  

[maraxle]

Can you post some pics of the interface between your pc and the LCD screen? That seems to be a pretty cool LCD screen for the money..

Unfortunately, I already enclosed it in a housing, but the cable is a 9 pin serial cable that allows pins 2, 3, and 5 to go straight through, connects pins 1, 4, and 6 together on the PC end, and connects 7 and 8 together on the PC end.  Pin 9 is unused.  The reason for connecting the pins together on the PC end is to ensure that it always has a DSR/DTR signal and a CTS/RTS signal.  This is not necessary on XP, however, as it appears to be more forgiving of the serial communications standards than DOS and Win98 are...

Here's a link to an auction for the exact LCD and controller chip that I bought.  Actually, this is the same guy I bought mine from too.  Excellent price at only $19.99 plus shipping...

[Tiger-Heli]

My understanding of the controls.dat project is that they're looking for the official button labels, as printed on the original control panel overlays.  Mine definitely aren't official.  I just go through, hit each button a couple of times and try to figure out what they do.  Then I make up a label that matches what I think it's doing, and is 24 characters or less (the width of my lcd screen).

Neat project.  Not to be a pain, but is there any chance you could post the text files for the games that were NOT in controls.dat.  The people building the controls.dat file might be able to tell what the actual labels said and this would save repeating your steps of playing the game and guessing what the button does . . .

[maraxle]

Neat project.  Not to be a pain, but is there any chance you could post the text files for the games that were NOT in controls.dat.  The people building the controls.dat file might be able to tell what the actual labels said and this would save repeating your steps of playing the game and guessing what the button does . . .

Unfortunately, in a bunch of games I am remapping the buttons so they "feel" better on my particular control panel.  That would make my text files pretty much useless to anyone else.  The LCD file generator program uses controls.dat as a resource, but isn't much help in adding to the project, at least in its current state.

[Tiger-Heli]

Neat project.  Not to be a pain, but is there any chance you could post the text files for the games that were NOT in controls.dat.  The people building the controls.dat file might be able to tell what the actual labels said and this would save repeating your steps of playing the game and guessing what the button does . . .

Unfortunately, in a bunch of games I am remapping the buttons so they "feel" better on my particular control panel.  That would make my text files pretty much useless to anyone else.  The LCD file generator program uses controls.dat as a resource, but isn't much help in adding to the project, at least in its current state.

Ok then, thanks for sharing the project with us.  It looks pretty cool.

[Edgedamage]

Very cool project. Also someone could make a little circuit board that lights up the buttons that each different game uses. But still very cool project keeps you from hearing "Ugh how's this game work?"

[Tiger-Heli]

Very cool project. Also someone could make a little circuit board that lights up the buttons that each different game uses. But still very cool project keeps you from hearing "Ugh how's this game work?"

DinoRoger was working on the circuit board idea.

[SirPoonga]

Neat project.  Not to be a pain, but is there any chance you could post the text files for the games that were NOT in controls.dat.  The people building the controls.dat file might be able to tell what the actual labels said and this would save repeating your steps of playing the game and guessing what the button does . . .

Unfortunately, in a bunch of games I am remapping the buttons so they "feel" better on my particular control panel.  That would make my text files pretty much useless to anyone else.  The LCD file generator program uses controls.dat as a resource, but isn't much help in adding to the project, at least in its current state.

What he said.  Controls.dat, like mame, is about accuracy.  Accurately displaying the labels used on the arcade cabinet and what controls the game used.

[JoeB]

I wanted to do something similar to.. so congrats!

Couple of questions:

- How does the screen look like when the light is just coming from the arcade monitor? Have you considered getting the LCD backlit ?  What would such an LCD run?

- The install process should be the most difficult thing to do.  Most people have 3/4" MDF as their control pannel + something on top of that.  How would you integrate it to the point where it doesn't look wierd?  Any ideas from anyone?

Maybe since the CP from the top, put the LCD in, and make a nicer cover for it?  What about the inivisble look? That should be even more difficult to do.

Hmmm.. install in ontop with the marquee?

[maraxle]

- How does the screen look like when the light is just coming from the arcade monitor? Have you considered getting the LCD backlit ?  What would such an LCD run?

A backlight would definitely help.  I've seen a kit out there for adding a backlight to this particular LCD.  It's $38, if I remember correctly.  The LCD itself cost me $20.  If they made a red backlight, I'd get one in a second, but so far they only have blue.

- The install process should be the most difficult thing to do.  Most people have 3/4" MDF as their control pannel + something on top of that.  How would you integrate it to the point where it doesn't look wierd?  Any ideas from anyone?

I'm actually mounting mine behind the bezel.  I will leave a cutout in the artwork for the screen.  When I was going to mount the LCD in the control panel, I was thinking of cutting a hole the size of the screen, and routing out around the hole underneath.  The other alternative would have been making/buying a metal mounting plate, similar to the ones commonly used for trackballs.

[screaming]

When I was going to mount the LCD in the control panel, I was thinking of cutting a hole the size of the screen, and routing out around the hole underneath.

  That's exactly what I was going to do, but my LCD screen ended up being too big. If I could get a cheap color screen, I think it would be an awesome addition to an all-purpose cab.

/Steve

[micro571]

That's a great implimentation of the screen in the cab.

Just a word to anyone interested in obtaining one.

There are 2 main types.  The serial (mostly Matrix Orbital) and the parallel port types based on the HD44780 controller chip.

A couple years ago I bought a 4x20 screen, and wired it up to the parallel port.  A little DIY project is the cheapest way to go.  The best source of these LCD screens on the net is http://www.eio.com/lcdprodt.htm - where you can get em starting at $6.00 .

My screen is now in a project box and I use a program called LCD Smartie to control it.  You can see my screen at www.jbprojects.net/projects/lcd .

It's a great project to do.  Not too expensive and can be a great additional to a mame cab.

[chrisindfw]

What about the idea of getting small one line LCD's and place them each under a button and changing them instead of one big screen?

I would try that but not sure how to control all of them at once.

[maraxle]

What about the idea of getting small one line LCD's and place them each under a button and changing them instead of one big screen?

I would try that but not sure how to control all of them at once.

I considered that, but got such a good deal on this LCD that I passed on it.  Basically, you'd just need as many COM ports as you have buttons.  I can't remember if it's possible to go over 4 COM ports or not, but you could at least do a 4 button setup.  Your batch file would have 4 lines in it instead of 1, and you would have 4 separate text files.

[SirPoonga]

However, you could put a larger LCD for player 1 and player 2.  Have the lcd show button labels for that player's buttons.

[chrisindfw]

I tried and download that application however when I run it, I cant get it to create any files. I have all the vb runtime files.

Any ideas?

ALso, I understand the batch file when running a game, How do you get it to return when a game has ended?

[Aceldamor]

I actually have another question...

would it be possible to format the screen so that it shows the contol relevant to the position of the button?

for example the LCD Screen would show for my panel using Mortal Kombat:

Mortal Kombat

                    Not Used
High Punch                    High Kick
                      Block
Low Punch                    Low Kick

8 Way Joystick

However, you could put a larger LCD for player 1 and player 2.  Have the lcd show button labels for that player's buttons.

I actually considered doing what Poonga suggested, it would be a diffinative option if the LCD's could be programmed to do what I asked above

[crashwg]

I have absolutly no knowledge of lcds and how they work, which will soon be evident with the following question...

What are the chances of rippin' the lcd out of an old gameboy and hooking that up to a computer in some way that might be useful?

I may be wrong on this, but LCDs need some kind of processor, right?  I'd imagine that this would be the biggest step in the whole process but doable I would suppose.  There are programable chips out there that would be capable of this aren't there?

Eh, I don't know.  Just thought I'd throw out my crazy idea in the hopes that maybe someone with more electrical/software skills would maybe persue this asinine thought that poped into my head...  

[maraxle]

I tried and download that application however when I run it, I cant get it to create any files. I have all the vb runtime files.

Any ideas?

ALso, I understand the batch file when running a game, How do you get it to return when a game has ended?

Are your ROMs in ZIP files?  Did you verify that your xmlinfo file has stuff in it?  If so, it should work.

As for the batch file, it does its job with the LCD, and then runs MAME.  It automatically returns to the menu just like MAME does.

[maraxle]

I actually have another question...

would it be possible to format the screen so that it shows the contol relevant to the position of the button?

for example the LCD Screen would show for my panel using Mortal Kombat:

Mortal Kombat

                    Not Used
High Punch                    High Kick
                      Block
Low Punch                    Low Kick

8 Way Joystick

My LCD could definitely do that.  I suppose it depends on the controller chip on the LCD.  I know it works on mine because I have tried indenting things.

[maraxle]

I have absolutly no knowledge of lcds and how they work, which will soon be evident with the following question...

What are the chances of rippin' the lcd out of an old gameboy and hooking that up to a computer in some way that might be useful?

I may be wrong on this, but LCDs need some kind of processor, right?  I'd imagine that this would be the biggest step in the whole process but doable I would suppose.  There are programable chips out there that would be capable of this aren't there?

Eh, I don't know.  Just thought I'd throw out my crazy idea in the hopes that maybe someone with more electrical/software skills would maybe persue this asinine thought that poped into my head...  

If you have assembly programming skills, specs on the screen, and a way to make a custom chip (EEPROM programmer?), you could do it.  Otherwise, I would just pick up a prefabricated one.

[eli curtz]

What are the chances of rippin' the lcd out of an old gameboy and hooking that up to a computer in some way that might be useful?

I may be wrong on this, but LCDs need some kind of processor, right?  I'd imagine that this would be the biggest step in the whole process but doable I would suppose.  There are programable chips out there that would be capable of this aren't there?

The lcds these guys are using have a built in chip to decode serial data, so you don't need to program the chip for them, just send it formatted data.

There is a huge GBA hobbyist programming scene (see http://www.gbadev.org for example) and that is what I would use for this. More expensive, but you get color and backlighting, and there are a number of USB cables you can buy or build for hooking it up.

[crashwg]

There is a huge GBA hobbyist programming scene (see http://www.gbadev.org

I've posted on the site you suggested and I'll keep anyone updated if they would like to be.  I for one am very hopeful now that I've seen some of the things that have been done by these GBA hobbyists.  Also, the price of gba, even sp, isn't much more than some of the larger lcds available, so it seems like if this is plausable it will also be something worth persuing.

If someone acctually does this, before I do of course, make sure you give me credit...  

[Aceldamor]

I actually have another question...

would it be possible to format the screen so that it shows the contol relevant to the position of the button?

for example the LCD Screen would show for my panel using Mortal Kombat:

Mortal Kombat

                    Not Used
High Punch                    High Kick
                      Block
Low Punch                    Low Kick

8 Way Joystick

My LCD could definitely do that.  I suppose it depends on the controller chip on the LCD.  I know it works on mine because I have tried indenting things.

Well, I'm buying 2 of the same ones you have...so mabye we can colaborate on getting that to work...though I really don't have any programming skills.