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My serial LCD for displaying directions

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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:


--- Quote from: crashwg on April 04, 2004, 10:31:27 pm ---For those who might want to follow in your footsteps, it would be realy nice of you to have the text files available somewhere.

--- End quote ---
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.

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