Connecting LCD's to Serial or USB

[hansonc]

Hey guys! Im new here and new to all this electronic goodness

I want to figure out LCD's. I have read a little and decided to dive in, go figure im lost. I started out pulling apart a nokia cell phone then came to conclude that everythign is too tiny to start out as a novice with. So I pulled apart my 92 BMW AM/FM Casset Stereo to snag it's LCD. I got it apart got the LCD and the connectors were great cuz it was like a plug'n'play part so I desolderd the male connector from the main board.

So here's what I got:
1x LCD.
1x Circut Board, that the LCD is solderd to w/ a LCD Driver(Sanyo LC7582, it was labled on it ) on the back.
1x LCD Driver sheet.

The board has the connector CN-13. The male piece has 8-connectors in a straight line. The female piece is soldered to the board at 16 pins, labled;

(From Top-Bott, Top being it holding it to read properly)

- LGND *
* CDT *
* GND *
* CCK *
* +B *
* VDD2 * (Last D could be an or an "O" or 'Zero')
* LCE *
* LINH -

the * means the through pin sticks straight up after the solder and the - means that the throuh pin is folded over after the solder.

Ultimately I have point "A" the Diagram which is french to me and point "B" which is german and I can't find out what anything means online :-(

Mainly I can't find anything about the Labels on the board. The diagrams just overwhelmed me.


Can you help me figure out what is what and give me laimans terms as to how it's working?

I do learn better that way, very comparative.


Thank you guys! Hope to hear and pass knowledge.

 

[hansonc]

is there not enough info here?
is this the wrong forum?

 

[3v0]

Right forum.

I suggest you purchase a new or surplus alphanumeric LCD that uses a common driver chip. You can get any number of them for $10 or less. It is not worth your time (or any one's) to understand and write a driver for a single used LCD numeric display.

AllElectronics has a nice selection of surplus displays. Buy one that has a common driver or a datasheet that you can understand well enough to write one. The Customer Comments are useful to see what others have done with the display. In general most displays under $5 are priced low because they are hard to use or perhaps unusable by most people.

The [SIZE=-1]HD44780 controller is quite common.
[/SIZE]

 

[hansonc]

I guess I am confused :S I dont' know much about electronics at all.... So can you help explain why I can't just hook wires up to a USB and then program it to say/display whatever?

Certainly LCD's must be salvagable... I have one from a color screen Nokia Phone... will that work?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Two things!:

1) USB is VERY, VERY complicated - if you're asking questions here you're no where near capable of using it.

2) You can't generally get data on specific LCD's used in phones etc, so you would need to reverse engineer it - which isn't a trivial task. If you're talking Nokia though, you may be able to find something in Google about it?, as they are very popular.

As suggested, use a commercially available LCD, that has data available.

 

[hansonc]

Nigel,

I understand that I probably am no where near capable of using/accomplishing the taks. However, that is why I am here asking questions. In my mind researching and asking questions is the first place to begin.

Thank you for your words of discouragement "...if you're asking questions here you're no where near capable of using it." they have only fueled me to try harder and learn faster.

I thought this place would be eager and excited to help out new people become familiar with electronics, and their interests. Either by descriptive guidance, tutorials and links or just a good helper to bounce stuff off of.

I am sorry I posted :-( with such minimal exp. I will go get better and hope to be back to grab advice about something more pertinent or interesting.

 

[Hero999]

Thank you for your words of discouragement "...if you're asking questions here you're no where near capable of using it.

I cringed when I read that too. I don't think Nigel meant it like that. What he probably meant is that going by the kind of questions you've asked, you don't have enough experience at the moment to consider USB.

I thought this place would be eager and excited to help out new people become familiar with electronics, and their interests. Either by descriptive guidance, tutorials and links or just a good helper to bounce stuff off of.

I am sorry I posted :-( with such minimal exp. I will go get better and hope to be back to grab advice about something more pertinent or interesting.

Please don't be discouraged.

It is important to realise that there's no point in jumping in at the deep end, you need to learn to crawl before you can walk. There would be no point in attempting a really complicated project when you obviously don't have enough experience to get it working, it's best to start with something a bit simpler then work up to it.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

This is like asking for a full five year university education in a reply to a single post!. For a start, as part of your 'encouragement', try reading about the requirements of USB - for a 'simple' example of how to use USB, check the MicroChip application notes for their USB enabled PIC's, bear in mind those are as simple as USB gets!.

Using the serial port is a LOT easier than USB, and it would be trivial to connect a PIC between the serial port and your display. However, you then have the task of reverse engineering the protocol used, which is not an easy task.

As suggested multiple times now, why not use a standard LCD module?, you can freely download code for them, and spend time writing your application, and not reverse engineering obscure interfaces.

 

[yngndrw]

I think you are under-estimating the complexity of a purpose build LCD. You are thinking that all LCDs must be the same. This is your first mistake, a standard LCD with a HD44780 controller (Check out the link a few posts up) is actually a LOT simpler because the HD44780 controller does everything for you. All you need to do is connect the parallel interface to your computer in some way. This will teach you the first thing you need to know: How to get text displayed through a HD44780 controller via the parallel data connection. The method is shown in the datasheet of the LCD module.

The next thing to do would be to use a PIC microcontroller to convert a serial signal to this parallel interface, this will teach you about serial communication and conversion of signals. It will also teach you the programming for the next part.

Then you can either go down the route of learning USB -> HD44780 or learning your Serial PIC -> Generic recycled LCD. In the latter poroject, the LCD will NOT have a controller like the HD44780. This is the hard part, as you must emulate what the HD44780 does on your PIC.

Hope that helps.

 

[hansonc]

Do the accronyms mean anything to anyone?
or
Are there common outputs/input wires that would come off of a board simular to what i have described, in either 8 or 16 wires/pins?

I wana just keep this post going down the avenue i was hoping for. Nothing against all of ya. I really just was hoping to catch someones eyes that might know something about the scenario i was in. My second post was a little bump to make sure, being new and all, i was posting in the right spot and making sure i supplied enough information as to my situation.

Help is still appreciated Would like to keep this up just incase. If people really don't have any clue then thats cool, I am still researching into it more myself

 

[3v0]

Regarding this display you have about all the help you are going to get here.

Even if someone gave you a circuit you would not understand it.

I dont' know much about electronics at all.... S

So take the advice of the people who do and start with a HD44780 equipped display. Many people here will be happy to help you with that as they have for many others in the past. Even better search for the posts of the people who have gone ahead of you on this.

If that proves to be to complicated start by studying basic electronics.

Sorry to not be more helpful. But what you are asking is not realistic.