Six Inches - Big Enough

-
I got around to taking the screen out of one of the LCD units to see what could be done with it. For a start the actual screen is 6.2" (according to the serial number and a ruler) not 7" as on the manufacturer's website, but that's no bad thing. It turns out a 6.2" screen is just the right size to fit in a double-DIN car radio slot, which prompts all sorts of ideas.


It also turned out that there were 2 circuit boards, a big one with an audio amplifier and some power supply circuitry and a small one for the actual screen. Essentially the screen will operate with just a 4-wire connection (9 volt, GND, Video and Video GND). There is another connector for options (screen mode, colour and brightness), but with nothing connected to this the monitor defaults to perfectly use-able settings.



In the photo I have it hooked to a PC via a VGA-to-Video adaptor. The computer is running Tiny Core Linux (my new favourite distro) in 640 x 480 mode (I think). It will go down to 320 x 240 which gives huge icons that would be great with a touch screen.


The wallpaper is Pink Floyd's 'Animals' album cover, recently re-created over Battersea Power Station - "Every Dog needs a home, a shelter from Pigs on the wing."

Comments

  1. Anonymous9 March 2012 at 05:04

    was this a venturer car dvd screen?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glenn9 March 2012 at 05:33

    Yes, it was. The screens aren't too bad (one dead pixel across both) and very easy to re-wire, but the DVD player was absolute junk and went straight in the recycling box!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9 March 2012 at 14:44

    I have 4 of these - players now dead have you any idea of the pinouts? I'm thinking 9V,0v, Audio L and R, video signal(Composite) and ground,IR (back to player) .. seem to recall a standby signal and maybe an audio ground?? Looking at using with a rasperry pi (or 2)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Glenn11 March 2012 at 09:49

    Initially I took the 8-pin mini plugs off and fitted 5-pin DIN plugs instead and yes, there is a standby signal that needs to be grounded, but I did that with a little jumper wire inside the unit. Later on it dawned on me that the swivelling monitors would be much neater removed from the outer case for what I had in mind (car computer). The audio is a con by the way, it may have a stereo connection, but there is only one speaker! With the audio/power board dumped, you have 4 connections, +9v, GND, Video and Video-GND. You lose the colour and brightness controls, but the units default to perfectly usable settings. Once dismantled all I did was carefully cut the 2 lugs off the 'inner' monitor casing with a hacksaw and rigged up the 4 wires. See new post.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Electronics Upcycling

-
Image
ELECTRONICS UPCYCLING FAQ CHECK OUT THE OTHER POSTS ON THIS BLOG FOR DETAILS ON REPAIRS AND UPGRADES GOING BACK OVER 10 YEARS - What's the story? I've been tinkering with circuits for over 40 years and have an MSc in microelectronics, and a few years ago realised I could combine this with saving the planet. Basically I'm Greta Thunberg with a soldering iron. - Saving the planet? Well every electronic item kept out of landfill reduces the amounts of dangerous 'forever chemicals', getting released into the environment. By repairing items or stripping out most of the reusable parts this reduces what ends up in landfill and ensures the components go into the correct recycling bins, such as hard plastic cases. - Don't the council do that? Up to a point, but information has emerged about huge amounts of European electronic waste being shipped to Africa and Asia where it continues to damage the environment and people's health, especially the women paid ...
Read more

Powered USB Hub - £2

-
Image
 I bought a couple of these little USB 2.0 hubs for £1 each in PoundWorld intending to adapt them to be powered hubs for use with RaspberryPi computers.  Alan here ( http://pihub.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/raspberry-pi-power-supply-and-powered.html ) beat me to it, but I wanted to give it a go with a flying power socket.  As usual, heat-shrink sleeve comes in to save the day. I didn't like the original USB lead and plug so I bought a USB-to-Micro USB cable (again for £1) and cut it in half.  One end goes to power the RPi and the other is the input USB. The input USB has only 3 connections made, the red power wire is cut short and ignored.  I did connect the ground (GND) wire though because the purist in me doesn't like the idea of floating grounds (blame my MSc).   The output for power to the RPi via the micro USB plug only has the GND and +5v connections made and the other 2 signal lines were chopped short and ignored. The power input was made ...
Read more

Update on the touch monitor

-
This is tantalising... I found some data on driver chips used on these low-cost monitors and some of them have an I2C connection for sending pixel data directly to the screen. This may be to allow text or graphics overlay. Anyway the chip on my 7" screens is an AR05C-LF and there are millions of these in stock in the far east, but I can't so far find a data sheet for this chip or its sibling the AR05CA-LF. Being able to send digital pixel data via I2C directly to the screen would be, well, brilliant.
Read more