6.11.2007

Finally some new display related development to show here. This time it's a LCD controller with USB interface using the S1D13700 controller IC. USB LCD controller was something many have been asking.

More information is currently available in the forum.

Some updates about recent projects not that much display related are also available here.

22.8.2004

Interested in open source LCDInfo ?

In case you are interested in seeing open source LCDInfo you can check this.

12.5.2004

Relampago has been busy with the screen designer for LCDInfo and it's now available for download. Go check it here and also let him know what you think about it. Especially if you find any bugs he'd like to know of them.

Below is a screenshot of the designer but you might get better idea from the video that is available in the forum thread.

5.5.2004

Time for a little update. LCDInfo has been slowly progressing and some new things come every now and then. Best way to stay updated of the current progress is to check the forums.

There are also some new drivers and the current list of supported controllers is this:

• Crystalfontz 631
• Crystalfontz 632/634
• Crystalfontz 633
• HD44780
• HD61203
• HD61830
• KS0108
• LC7981
• Noritake GU256x64-372 / GU256x64-352
• Noritake 800 / 800A
• PCD8544 (Nokia phone LCD)
• SED1330 / SED1335
• SED1520
• Siemens BA63/BA66 VFD

There's also another project to make a screen designer for LCDInfo. You can look here for a preview video.

2.1.2004

There is now alpha test version of new LCDInfo I've been working on available in the forum. As this is a software still very much in development stage it's unfortunately lacking in ease of use and documentation. First I recommend reading this thread in the forum for basics. Also in the forum is reference documentation for making your own screens.

18.12.2003

A month has passed by again. More development on 0.6 has been done and bugs have been fixed but also some new bugs have appeared.

At the moment some display drivers could use more testing and if you own a display with HD61830, LC7981, SED1330, SED1335 or Noritake 800 VFD controller and would like to help in testing you can email me.

17.11.2003

It has been a very long time since the last update and it might have looked like LCDInfo development was stopped. But this isn't the case and below I'm making some kind summary of what has been going on.

The last version that has been announced here was 0.3.2. After that I started developing version 0.4 of which some unfinished preview version links were available in the forum. While working on 0.4 I noticed that the code was becoming unmanageable and adding more features and support for new display types would make it even more difficult to manage. I decided to make the whole thing from scratch and also to add support for plugins. This was in January.

This new 0.5 version was developed to alpha stage and there were even some 3rd party plugins written for it. Development on this was stopped though as I came to the conclusion that another redesign would be needed to accomplish easy implementation of many features I wanted to make. Development of the second rewrite called 0.6 started in May. It took some time to figure out how the new plugin interface and other program functionality should be done but finally I had something that I thought should work.

In May I also made some working prototypes of USB graphical lcds. The results were very encouraging with very fast speeds using minimal cpu time but I decided to delay further development until I have a proper LCDInfo version to put them in good use.

During the summer development was very slow for many reasons but after summer I was able to put together first prototype confirming that what I had planned would also work in reality. Since then I've been putting things together and adding new features. First alpha versions with simple feature set have been done but there is still work to do and bugs to fix. To get something out to public the idea is to release a version with limited features first and then continue adding new features.

At the moment following controllers have a driver:

• T6963C
• KS0108 / HD61203
• Noritake 800 VFD
• LC7981 / HD61830
• SED1330 / SED1335

There will be SDK that allows writing plugins so that if you have an LCD that isn't already supported you can write a driver or you can write your own data collecting plugin. Plugins are also able to output graphics so that should give many new possibilities for a plugin writer. The SDK is made with C++ and because of this a C++ compiler is required. Detailed C++ knowledge shouldn't be needed though as it's possible to take the plugin framework code and just fill in the required code to implement your functionality. Also simple documented example plugins will be available. One thing I'm concerned of is binary compatibility between different C++ compilers and it might not be possible to compile working plugins without Visual C++. Some C API wrapper might be possible to allow writing data collecting plugins with other languages like Delphi and Visual Basic.

And finally two videos of new LCDInfo's output

This one with some animations was recorded by SIZ who has helped finding bugs from the alpha versions. (970KB MPEG)
First winamp visualization tests. (160KB Divx 5.02 AVI) (200KB MPG)