Had a lot of SPARE time in hand so thought why not rig up a little character based LCD as system monitor and keep my Monitor switched off..
The LCD is a 16x2 character ..so had to cramp in a lot of info in those little spaces. It's got a Greenish-Yellow backlight which i keep off at night..
As for the pics .. they are taken with a Nokia 7610 and then edited for contrast and brightness.. so sorry for the shoddy image quality..
The Base Unit :
The first boot (without backlight):
The first boot (with backlight):
In action:
The analog clock:
The Network Monitor:
The CPU monitor (did not add the temperature support):
The GPU monitor : (All the 3 data keep scrolling on the same line)
1.Core Frequency:
2.Memory Frequency:
3.GPU Temperature:
System Uptime:
And finally ..Winamp in action
If you see clearly you can see the Winamp logo on the right side of the display. And the Spectrum Analyser sure looks cool..
I had to keep the backlight switched off to take the pics..
Well need your feedbacks..
Also will mount the entire thing by the side of the case or in a pexi-glass piece..
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Last edited by rb_kaustuv; 11-12-2007 at 08:03 PM.
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Parts Needed: 1. A character LCD with HD44780 or compatible controllers.(Most character LCDs of 16x2,16x4,20x2,20x4,40x2,40x4 comes with the above mentioned controllers)
2. A parallel port extension cord with 25 pin wiring. One having 18 pin wiring is also available. Do not use the 18 pin connection cord.
3. A DB-25 male or female connector depending upon the extension cord cable's free end.
4. A 100 ohm 1/2 watt resistor.
5. A male molex connector. If one is not available then use a Y-splitter cable.
6. A switch to controll the backlight LED.
7. Wire, preferably 20 core ribbon cable.
8. A bread board or a Verro board. There are 2 kinds of verro boards. One having the horizontal rows connected. The other having no horizontal or vertical rows connected. I prefer the 2nd type.
Connection:
1. Connect pins 6 to 14of the LCD to pins 1 to 9of the DB-25 connector.
2. Connect pins 18 to 25 of the DB-25 connector to the ground.
3. Connect pins 2 and 15 of the LCD to +5v power supply.
4. Connect pins 1 and 3 of the LCD to ground.
5. Connect pin 4 of the LCD to pin 16 of the DB-25 connector.
6. Connect pin 5 of the LCD to pin 14 of the DB-25 connector.
7. Connect pin 16 of the LCD to a 100 ohmresistor and then connect the resistor to ground.
Things to note :
1. This schematic does not work for a 40x4 controller.
2. The +5V supply is the RED wire on the MOLEX connector.
3. The Ground is the BLACK wire on the MOLEX connector.
4. Put the switch between pin 15 and +5V connector to switch on/off the backlight LED.
5. If your LCD unit has only 14 pins and no 15 and 16 pin then it has got no Backlight LED. Also in some cases the 15 and 16 pins are replaced by pins marked Anode and Cathode or A and C or K.
CAUTION: When checking for the first time DO NOT plug the DB-25 connector to the parallel port extension cord. First plug in the male MOLEX to a spare MOLEX connector on the PSU and start the PC. If everything goes fine then line 1 of the display (for a 2 line display) or lines 1 and 3 of the display(for a 4 line display) should display up with black boxes covering all the columns.
Now shutdown the PC and then connect the DB-25 connector and then restart again.
I made this kinda stuff for my Robotics Competition last year(in class XI) .
We had a wireless car with a wireless camera and mic mounted atop it .
It was controllable through a PC and over the net , you could recieve the streaming video on the net and control it remotely too over the net .
It could track it's own movement and could go back where it came from .
I also made a small scripting engine for it wherein you could program the movement of the car using a bsic like language for example fd10, rt 90,fd 10 .
The judges were impressed and i won first prize
Ah well almost forgot , you could even control it from a Bluetooth enabled mobile .
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There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who do not.
Nah , a good soldering iron costs Atleast Rs 150 .
Although u can get Cheap Rs 50 ones too but they don't last even a week and have very bad precision .
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There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who do not.
Nah , a good soldering iron costs Atleast Rs 150 .
Although u can get Cheap Rs 50 ones too but they don't last even a week and have very bad precision .
Who needs a Rs. 150 soldering iron??
I used a cheapoo 10 Watt iron which cost me 30 bucks..beat that..and to top it all it's lasted me 3 years ... whooo hooo...
Just one thing the cheapoo ones also last long if you take some care..
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Your call , but i need precision when soldering on PCB's and also godd iron's come with a Soldering stand and a flux holder which make the job even easier and doen't mess up your table or stuff .
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There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who do not.
Yeah always buy a good solder iron,for a clean and beautiful job...Solderon brand is a good one.
Well to be frank ..if a 50 buck solder iron does the same perfect job as a 150 buck solder iron and i feel confident with the 50 buck iron i will go ahead and make a perfect mess of the circuit..
No offence but since i have given the schematic, you are free to go ahead and try it out with the good quality 150 buck solder and not mess up the table/workspace/circuit and be equally happy as i am...
BTW my 50 buck iron produces squeaking shiny solder joints and am satisfied..PERIOD.
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Well to be frank ..if a 50 buck solder iron does the same perfect job as a 150 buck solder iron and i feel confident with the 50 buck iron i will go ahead and make a perfect mess of the circuit..
No offence but since i have given the schematic, you are free to go ahead and try it out with the good quality 150 buck solder and not mess up the table/workspace/circuit and be equally happy as i am...
BTW my 50 buck iron produces squeaking shiny solder joints and am satisfied..PERIOD.
way to go bro...end of the day one of the main ideas behind DIY is to keep the costs low...
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Well to be frank ..if a 50 buck solder iron does the same perfect job as a 150 buck solder iron and i feel confident with the 50 buck iron i will go ahead and make a perfect mess of the circuit..
No offence but since i have given the schematic, you are free to go ahead and try it out with the good quality 150 buck solder and not mess up the table/workspace/circuit and be equally happy as i am...
BTW my 50 buck iron produces squeaking shiny solder joints and am satisfied..PERIOD.
Nah....for long term use its better to get a better iron...coz cheap irons may sumtimes act weird ...temp overshoots occur,which are kinda not good for cmos Ics and other electronics stuff.and a good iron is useful for the same to maintain the temperature constant...for safety of the components..but in the end its one's choice
Also in your schematic there are none sensitive components so any iron will do.Also the person who uses the iron decides whether the solder is gonna be clean or not ..since the iron is just the tool..its the person whos mastering it matters.
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hehe....I hv worked with HD44780 for bout 4 yrs now...initially i used to be careful with it...but with experience..its a bit robust...and here in mumbai we get it for around 70bucks a bit cheap....and yeah 5~7 seconds is insane......and yeah if u check out the pinout points of the module..they are not of copper...theres a reason for that
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Seems you can help me a lot..
Can you explain to me the difference between the power supply and signal pins between a 20x4 display and a 40x4 display..
Since a LCD can at the most display 80 characters so i need to know in what respect do these two displays viz a 20x4 and a 40x4 differ ?
Hope you can shed some light on it..
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a 20x4 has 4 rows of 20 characters each and 40x4 is 2 of em both has i think 5*8 dot matrix kinda display...
and datalines start from 1 in case of 40x4 and there are 2 enables rest signals are same rs r/w etc and in case of 20x4 its much of same like 16x2 databits from 14 i suppose..
and i suppose u will be using 8 bit addressing since ur using a pc to interface...for me with microcontrollers i use 4 bit addressing.btw in which field u r..
and yeah do you mean you want to create custom characters
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"Microsoft: You've got questions. We've got a dancing paperclip."
a 20x4 has 4 rows of 20 characters each and 40x4 has i think 5*8 dot matrix kinda display...
and datalines start from 1 in case of 40x4 and there are 2 enables rest signals are same rs r/w etc and in case of 20x4 its much of same like 16x2 databits from 14 i suppose..
and i suppose u will be using 8 bit addressing since ur using a pc to interface...for me with microcontrollers i use 4 bit addressing.btw in which field u r..
Dosen't a 20x4 also have a 5*8 dot matrix kind of display??
AFAIK a 40x4 is nothing but two 20x4 seamlessly integrated together..
Can you give me some schematics using a microcontroller with 4 bit addressing mode for a 40x4 LCD and also for a 20x4 LCD??
Help would be highly appriciated..
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Heres a pic of 8 bit addressing.
u can see tat 2 ports are wasted...tat is the reason why i don't use 8 bit addressing...I use 4 bit addressing...for that,suppose if i use portb
the i use the following connections
BTW I use codevision AVR for compiling...I have also attached the code for my project i made this semester...I got 2nd price for it...Its "temperature monitoring and control system with PC based fontend"
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My character LCD based System Monitor
Re: My LCD System Monitor
Linear Mode
