Hi again,
Yeah, and also there is a PC board attached to the very back of the LCD display itself
Here is a screen shot of the LCD in action. It lights up nice with the right lighting. In this pic, the cam flash is the only light.
I might take your idea about the sun glasses and modify it slightly and see what happens...
Take a sheet of polarizing film and place it in front of the display, about 1/4 inch out in front away from the front of the LED glass itself. Keep in mounted like that, then shine LED's in from the sides (hopefully, as it is a bit long) or from the top and bottom.
You might recognize this display from the web. It's the Wintek 24 x 1 LCD non backlit which sold in some places for one dollar USD. It's hard wired for 8 bit parallel transfer though, so that is a down side. It has to be interfaced with at least 7 bits plus 2 more unless you dont mind making up your own hardware interface with say the 74xx164 shift register or similar.
A FEW MINUTES LATER:
Ok i could not find my polarizing film because i dont have it cataloged. What i did find though was a high quality polarizing filter. I have now learned that it is not so much the glare (usually present) than the angle that the LED has to be mounted in order to make a difference in the display lighting at all. It has to be at a very large angle from the display front, which means it would have to be like 4 inches in front of the display.
Also, rotating the filter would either allow the display lettering to show or completely blank it out (as we would expect) but unfortunately it did nothing for the glare, when the light is shining on such an angle that there is glare that is. The glare comes mainly from the eye angle and the LED angle, which if not ideal, causes glare. So to get rid of the glare it looks like it only takes mounting the LED at the right angle. The problem is though that the angle to get any light at all is way too large, meaning at least for this display it cant be lit from the two ends nor the top or bottom, at least with LEDs that are very close to the display. They have to be way out in front, similar to regular room lighting. What a shame.
I like these displays because they have a decent font and after all i have quite a few of them not being used yet