60 LCD (color) screens displaying QTY and LED via microcontroller

[StealthRT]

Hey all I am looking into building a project for my company that would better help them lower the errors of workers when choosing parts.

What I need to accomplish is a way to have a small LCD screen (which I would like color so it would show up when on) on each part (60 parts) and depending on what needs to be chosen, only show the number of qty of part(s) needed while the other LCD screens are off. So only LCD screens that are on are the only ones they need to go to and pick up the part.

I know how to go about this the “simple” way. Just hook up an LED light to each of the 60 parts and only turn the LED light on that they need a part to pick up. But problem with that is that they may need more than 1 qty for each part that’s light up.

So as an example let’s say we have all 60 blue LED’s (A blue LED for each part). I would use an Arduino Mega to trigger each LED that needs to be on via the digital pins that the LED’s would be connected to on the Arduino board.

But as I stated above, I cannot tell the user how many QTY there is doing just the LED way (of course I could use RGB LED’s but that’s way too many wires to hook up!!!)

So my question is: What products can I look for that would be similar to what I am looking to do? Is it possible to drive 60 LCD’s with a qty number displayed on them via an Arduino without having a massive amount of wires to hook up?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

David

 

[alec_t]

Couldn't you just use 7-segment displays instead of the LCD screens? Much cheaper. That would enable simple display of QTY (if <10; for > 9 then pairs of displays could be used). If each display had its own shift register the QTY could be set by sending a serial pulse train, hence relatively few wires needed.

 

[StealthRT]

I'm just thinking of getting some LCD TFT's (5 inches or so) with touch screens and hooking them up to some ebox 3300 PC's. That would give me more options on how i go about programming and all.

Saying that does anyone have any good links to any LCD websites with good prices? The lowest i've found (5" with touch screen) is about $120/each.

David

 

[Gobbledok]

Saying that does anyone have any good links to any LCD websites with good prices? The lowest i've found (5" with touch screen) is about $120/each.

Ebay has some great bargains. I can get a 4.3" TFT, with touch screen, touch screen controller and TFT controller chip on a PCB for $49 delivered.

I don't like linking to eBay because the links don't last but have a look at **broken link removed**

 

[StealthRT]

Ebay has some great bargains. I can get a 4.3" TFT, with touch screen, touch screen controller and TFT controller chip on a PCB for $49 delivered.

I don't like linking to eBay because the links don't last but have a look at **broken link removed**

Are there any with VGA output?

 

[Gobbledok]

Do you mean VGA input?

You can get a VGA input/controller board extra for some of these LCD's but you are quickly getting into the unfeasible.

I doubt you will find a 5" touch screen off-the-shelf with VGA for video and USB for touch. You will probably have to 'roll-your-own' but if you didn't like the amount of wires from RGB LED's then you aren't going to like the amount of wires from 60 colour TFT LCD's.

You will be quickly getting into the unfeasible. Probably the best solution yet is 7-seg displays as Alec mentioned.