I don’t think I can realistically use the LCD directly, but the other circuit board has only 7 pins as input, so 5 data pins at most. This seems like it could be done, though I doubt any documentation exists for the board.

What can a total newb like me do with this?

https://i.imgur.com/CTF40Z1.jpg

  • Beefy-Tootz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    I googled the name listed on the PCB and found This. Seems doable, the spec sheet goes into a lot of detail on how the serial interface works

    • bela@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      That would be working with the LCD directly, and ditching the rest. I ruled this out because the sheer amount of connections between the board and the display looked unmanageable. That documentation does look plenty detailed, of course. What would it take to get it running? Would an arduino/raspberry suffice?

      Sorry for the stupid questions btw. I really know very little, but it would be great if I could learn enough to get this worlking!

      • Beefy-Tootz@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Sorry for the late reply, sync doesn’t seem to be handling reply notifications very well at the moment. In theory, you could power this display through something like an Arduino. For something like this, you’ll want to use the driver board to control the display. The data sheet goes into a lot of detail about how the display works using the serial input and explains a good bit how the signal would be interpreted. The hard part is going to be handling the translation between what you want displayed and what the display needs to receive to show it. That’s where your homeworks going to be. I’m more of an old school hobbyist who never graduated to microcontrollers. The Arduino is going to handle the translation for you, but I don’t know enough arduino-fu to be helpful there. I’d recommend looking into using an Arduino with similar displays to see how other people do it, and then ruthlessly cannibalizing their code to fit with your needs.

        If you have any other questions along the way, feel free to send a message my way. I can’t guarantee I’ll have the answer, but I’m happy to lend my experience where applicable. Best of luck to you bud!

  • mvirts@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I would not be surprised if those 7 wires are 3 power (blk gry wht) and 4 USB. Maybe it’s actually 2 serial data lines, control and text? Maybe try to trace out the PCB and get any identifying marks from the ICs? If one is a microcontroller or ram or rom or a USB controller that would go a long way in getting it reverse engineered. For real though, they probably are using standards like i2c or USB or rs232, no sense reinventing what works