Small LCD as a cab accessory

[Boz]

I've been thinking about doing a number of things that I haven't seen done yet, but one of them involves using two small-ish LCD displays mounted just above the WG 27" arcade monitor. In my mind's-eye, I see a pair of equally-sized LCD displays (the small kind like you'd find in a car navigation system). One monitor could display a map of the buttons on the control panel that are used in *this* game. The other monitor could, theoretically, display the history of the game or the original control panel, or some other piece of game information. Mostly, though, I've been looking for a way to have control panel layout displayed for each game. The four person CP I'm designing will have a common 7-button fighter layout like so many of them out there, but I want to make sure that the buttons, which apply to the current game being played, are easy to identify for guests who don't play all the time. Likewise I don't want to get the oft-used question "Hey, where's the button for <insert random game function here>?"

Here's a sample mock-up of what I'm talking about. Aside from price being a concern here, I'm wondering if the ambient glow of these LCD's (which is distinctly different from that of an arcade monitor) will be really noticeable. I suppose they could fall under tinted glass as the arcade monitor would... perhaps a bit darker given the light intensity.

I found a number of sites where I can order 4-10 inch LCD's. Hooking them up would be a job that I'm not familiar with, but they'd have to interface with a standard PC VGA card (second computer controlling the output of these two LCD's using a dual-monitor setup and a custom non-mame frontend)

[Silver]

What you are talking about are proper VGA LCD/tft screens. They will come with a VGA port so "hooking them up" is just like plugging in a normal monitor - use a VGA cable.

I'm glad you're already planning to use a second computer for this as it would probably be necessary. Even if you were using just 1 LCD (and planning on using a 2 ouput gfx card) I've always found that hooking a 2nd monitor, or tv+monitor, effects the performance and timing of a graphics card.

The only thing that isn't plug and play with your plan is using your mame pc to tell lcd pc what to display when. Most FE's have an option to run a file before/after a game I think (or in the case of an FE with text LCD support, they will automatically copy a txt file out to the com port - you may be able to set something up that way.

[stratjakt]

Those little gamecube/ps2/xbox "travel screens" can be had cheap.. Find two more cheap PCI cards that have composite video out, and the rest would be pure software.

A custom lcd marquee which displayed the marquee for the current game would rock in a mame cabinet.

Something a little easier (cheaper) would to make a sort of translucent mock-up of our button layout, then light it from behind with a bunch of LEDs, using buddabings led controller (or just hack up your own to the parallel port - flippng lights on and off that way is easy peasy).  If it was behind tinted glass, and crafted right, it'd be a really slick effect.

[Silver]

Hmm yes I had forgotton about just sticking another PCI card in there. That should work fine....

I like the idea, although for me the appeal would be in showing graphics as you say - the problem with this is that ideally you'd want a large screen to show a marquee on....

Another option would be to use the CP Viewer/Johnny5 utils to generate the correct control layout for each game, and instead of showing it up when paused, simply have it as a reference on the LCD.... In fact thats Very tempting....

[Boz]

The more I think about this idea, the more inclined I am to try to implement it. I was doing some more research and came across a Lillyput 7" touch screen TFT. While the touch screen isn't needed, the monitors themselves are awesome and with a little work can be taken out of their casing for mounting in a cabinet.
Lillyput TFT monitor

The only thing that isn't plug and play with your plan is using your mame pc to tell lcd pc what to display when.

I'd almost certainly have the second computer connected via a crossover network cable and use a peer-to-peer network setup. There's a number of utilities I've used in Windows networking where I can control a number of remote processes.

Those little gamecube/ps2/xbox "travel screens" can be had cheap

I hadn't even thought of using those before you mentioned them. I looked into them, but don't know how complicated they would be to take out of the case. Cheap they are though.

ideally you'd want a large screen to show a marquee on

I had thought about doing something like this before, but as I've researched the cost and availability of LCD screens, something like this would get quite expensive.

Another thing I've found is that any of these little monitors that have VGA capability are generally more expensive (much more) than a monitor equipped to handle a standard video signal. It's probably due to the resolution. But, I was thinking. What if, on the second computer, I got a video card that used standard video out by default as opposed to VGA. Here on my primary workstation I have an old GeForce 4 Ti 4600 with a video out and it gives me the option in the control panel to have a TV monitor as the primary video. Windows is highly compressed on the screen, but using something like this could save me a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geiko on the TFT monitors.

Just a thought.

[Silver]

I have one of those liiliput touchscreens (7"). They are very nice - and the picture quality is much better than I expected. Cheapest I've seen of that type of thing... but not peanuts.

The tv-out option would work fine, most modern graphics cards can do tvout instead of VGA, or both. I know my radeon autodetects what you've got hooked up, and if you power up with only a tv attached it will set that as the ouput and even show you all the bios screens on the tv. Definately use a 2nd pc for this option though - ouputting vga and tv at the same effects gfx performance (in my case it locks the refresh rate you can send to the monitor, limiting my mame resolution options).

[nullb0y]

kind of an expensive idea.....

[OldSchool79]

Are you Mad Mike from Pimp My Ride by any chance?