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?
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!