Serial LCD panels - this is awsome!

[mattv]

Has anyone seen those LCD panels that seem to be all the rage with the case modding folks at the moment?

http://www.icehardware.net/guides/parallel_lcd/and
http://www.icehardware.net/articles/lcd_faq/

Have some good info and pics

They use 'em to display case temps, fan speeds, system resource use etc. Also good for MP's etc (artist and album etc).

Anyway, I was thinking is how cool it would be to use one of these in a cab or control panel. You could display the game name, manufactuer, year or even instructions and special moves

The problem would be getting software to drive all of this, I imagine the info would have to come from mame for name, manufacturer etc (or be written for each game in the case of special moves / instructions). But I have no idea how this info would make its way down the wire to the LCD display. All of the programs I have seen for driving these things have been for a pretty specific purpose (MP3 info, system monitoring and counterstrike stats seem to be the big three)

Anyone seen this sort of thing in action and have any thoughts on the above? If you haven't, you really should check out the links above, this is the coolest $hit I've seen since ghosts and goblins was emulated

Mattv

[mattv]

Oops.

The link I posted was for a paralell port version of the same thing - they are far cheaper for some reason.

But you get the idea.

Than this is still incredable

[aramis]

I have seen this on someone's mame cabinet before...I just can't remember where.  

I believe they used ArcadeOS (dos) and then set-up corresponding .lcd files...

[lakkdainen]

I llove it!  I looked at the documentation, and the programming seems pretty simple too.  Looks like all you'd have to do is modifiy Mame to have support, and maybe display the contents of a file upon loading each game.  Cool....

The only thing that would be a little tricky is if you'd want the text to change during the game.  I dunno how you'd go about the timing.  I think it would be awesome to have it display the moves for fighting games, and maybe show a different character every 5 seconds or so.  

[Lilwolf]

I love the idea of showing moves in game.

the person to talk to on this might be Howard.  His middle wear pieces capture keypresses before the emulators do.  so he could create a simple text editor that allowed you to scroll through them in game using the controls from the control panel.  Or just set to random.

[Elkor]

I believe that ArcadeOS already has support for serial-LCD panels (and has for quite some time)

-C

[SirPoonga]

Yeah, I have a 20x2 LCD that I'm not using right now.

[drabbit]

Here you go...

http://www.gameroom.com/merlintopgun/lcd.html
http://www.gameroom.com/merlintopgun/software.html

This is a MAME project that uses an LCD display, here is a quote from that page...

----
Not only does the Zhed display show song info, but I use it to display system stas like cpu usage, time, date, uptime, available diskspace , etc.
----


I remember seeing another one but can't find it anywhere. The other would display controller usage, like what buttons and controllers to use for each game it would start up.  He probably used ArcadeOS because it does support LCD displays, here is a quote from the doc file...

----
.LCD screen support
 AOS now supports use of an LCD screen attached to a COM port.
 This can be used to display instructions/logos/bitmaps etc.
   Submitted by Danny Rego
----

Hope this helps, would be great to add LCD support to EmuLoader or any other Windows Front End for people that use Windows.

[Howard_Casto]

I love the idea of showing moves in game.

the person to talk to on this might be Howard.

[pyrobrit]

Hi.  

Below is a small piece of text from one of my LCD projects that can be found at www.smoothlcd.co.uk
There are many projects that use LCDs for all types of applications.  It is great fun to build one just to show off to your mates.

Regards

Nick.W


<begin snippet>

Where can I buy the LCD displays?

In the USA, have a look at www.seetron.com Scot Electronics. You can buy just the serial board or the LCD with fitted serial here. International delivery is available.

In the UK, have a look at www.milinst.com. They are a distributor of Scot Electronics and have the modules in stock that we require for this project.

It works out cheaper for UK citizens to buy here than from overseas.

RS also sell LCDs and their own serial modules. I have not looked at this serial module so cannot tell you how difficult it will be to integrate into the current code.rswww.com

Farnell electronics is another international company that sell LCD modules. Similar to RS but the online catalogue is hard to navigate. www.farnell.com

CPC is another in the UK. Their online catalogue has been down for the last 3 years. I wonder if they know how much business they are losing. www.cpc.co.uk.

I wish they would hurry up and get it back online as they have a great selection of high current rotary switches and I want one.

<end snippet>

[mattv]

Thank you all for the pointers guys!

I think I'll go with the brute force and stupidity route whereby I do no further research - buy one and THEN try and figure out how it can be made to work.

/me contemplates cutting a gaping hole in my control panel. In my normal fasion I will do this before the LCD arrives and discover the hole is 1/2 an inch to big.