If you use LCDSmartie I love the Winamp Spectrum analyser plug in

http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/winampplugin.html

Posted at 2:11 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Ray

Five years later, this is interesting news again? This software is no longer even maintained it is so dusty.

Posted at 2:56 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Patrick

If only I could find software that could do this with my old Pocket PC so that I could get high res full color graphics.

Posted at 2:59 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Dave Tameling

Wow. Some people are just asshats. Patrick, you’re an asshat. Cut it out.

Thanks, hackaday, this was a cool post. I’ve been looking for something like this but must have been using the wrong search criteria.

Posted at 4:29 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by EvolutionKills

Maybe you knew about it before patrick but I (and I’m sure many others) didn’t know about this project.

Thanks for the info jason. I’ll check it out.

Posted at 5:07 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Nacs

You know what I’d love to see? A cool hack for screenless palms!

Posted at 6:42 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by TGk

I’ve been looking for something like this For a while. Ihave 3 palm pilots and want to make them into picture frames.

Posted at 6:52 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Shawn

I too am glad this was posted. This is the first time I’ve seen this. You can never have enough LCD displays and readouts, so I might just go and try to pick up a used palm pda for cheap somewhere.

I wonder what would be the cheapest/oldest model that works… And how come I can’t seem to find a picture of a PDA using this? I mean, a real photo of a PDA, not a emulated screen shot.

Posted at 8:38 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by matrox

matrox, I have an old Palm III (just III) and am trying to get it working myself. Once I do I can get you some photos of the pda performing.

Posted at 9:38 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Seiera

is there a way to use the palm’s touchscreen display as an input on a pc? like those expensive pen/tablet input devices but smaller…that would be sweet!

Posted at 10:07 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Brad

Seiera, awesome :-) Good luck on getting it to work! I’ll check back here every once and a while to see if you had any success.

Are you using Smartie to drive the LCD/Palm? I downloaded it even though I don’t have one, but it looks very impressive. http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/
That is, of course, if you’re running Windows.

And brad, that sounds like a cool idea… someone should really look into that! the only thing I could see being a problem is the size being too small (or resolution), but what do I know. ;-)

Posted at 11:45 pm on Mar 1st, 2005 by Matrox

this is awesome. i’ve been wondering what the hell to do with my old visor.

Posted at 12:29 am on Mar 2nd, 2005 by barb dybwad

nifty. i’ve been wanting to do something with my old IIIxe. is there anything like this that exists for a nintendo gameboy (an original monochrome in my case)? i’ve kept both of those (along with a laptop with a dead mobo) around just in case an interesting hack came along. :o)

Posted at 3:12 am on Mar 2nd, 2005 by aaron

for an awesome use for an old palm as a human interface device, check out http;//www.giantdisc.org – makes a palm the display/input for an itunes-like MP3 server…

Posted at 6:15 am on Mar 2nd, 2005 by guido

great idea, i’ve had my clie sl-10 collecting dust for about a year now.. Now i will try to hook it up on a ac adapter of 3v.. and display my winamp, and incoming emails. Does anybody know if i could connect my palm to a remote homecontrol set. I mean these cheap sets you can get to turn off lights and dim halogen.. Maybe a simple serial port hack? I have no programming experience but it will be cool though if you could control your lightings with a touchscreen, and time control them.. hihi

Posted at 6:47 am on Mar 2nd, 2005 by rob campman

awkward! i’m going to buy a palm m100 only because of this nice “hack” – i love hackaday.

regards,

joch

Posted at 7:43 am on Mar 2nd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

Anyone have any luck getting this to run with OS X?

Posted at 11:43 am on Mar 2nd, 2005 by Aaron

I would still like to know how old of Palm hardware people have gotten this to work on. This would be an awesome display to have. You could have it scroll messages, or do the Winamp output.

RE: giantdisk.org can you imagine using a palm in your car to control your carpc? No need for an expensive dashboard hack, just use a connector from a palm pilot to your pc in the trunk….

Posted at 1:27 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by rueben26

Hell yeah, this is great.

Palm Zire off ebay: $30.
Software to make an LCD out of it: $0

The real Matrix Orbital LK204-25: $82.95 + shipping and 5|<1|_|_5.

Posted at 2:35 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by sabrebutt

@ rueben26:

well, it works perfectly on my Palm m105. You get them for 15 bucks at ebay.. the only problem is that they don’t have an official power supply – that’s why i and old multi-volts-power-supply i had at home, switched it to 3 volts, and connected the soldered cables to the battery contacts of the m105 – works perfectly. here’s a picture of it:

http://kuerzer.de/m105

I use LCDSmartie to control the PalmOrb emulation – the screen on the jpeg is only one of 13, which i configured with several visualizations, rss feeds and system infos as temperatures etc..

it looks awkward in the dark as well, because LCDSmartie lets you enable/disable the backlight of your device. i leave it on all the time.

regards, jochen

Posted at 4:11 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

rueben26, the car idea is a great one. What is also cool about using it in a car, is that you could permanently leave the PDA powered on. The current draw is so low that it shouldn’t drain your car battery. This way it’ll always be ready and you won’t have to launch the software (I imagine you have to launch it and it doesn’t just start when you power the PDA up).

Not to mention it’d be cool to have a built in organizer into your car!

Posted at 4:16 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by matrox

Finally! A picture! Awesome :-) I was thinking of getting a m105 too! Are you happy with it? I would want to use mine as a display *and* an actual PDA with maybe an ebook or game on it. Do you recommend it? I heard about the failing capacitors on them that causes you to lose your data when changing batteries… Do you like yours?

Also: In the picture, it looks blurred due to it scrolling the text. Is it always blurred or is it just because of the photo? I want to make sure the display is good quality before I buy one.

Thanks!

Posted at 4:23 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by matrox

hi matrox,

well, i _do_ recommend the m105 if you want it to use a local data display in connection with a 3V power supply. actually, two triple-a batteries last about ~12h in the pda, and there’s neither an internal accu nor an official power supply – you have to connect the wires to the battery contacts of the pda. now, if you want to carry your pda around, you’ll always have to disconnect the cables and insert batteries – too much work in my opinion. the alternative is to use batteries all the time, but you can’t recharge accus with the docking station, and the docking station does _not_ power the m105. my pc is running 24/7, that’s why i’m using this standard power supply.

and the blurry picture is mainly because of my digicam, but the refresh rate of the pda display isn’t brilliant either.. it’s always _a bit_ blurry when text scrolls or winamp visualizations run. it’s not too extreme, you’ll put up with it i think.

all in all, the m105 is brilliant for local use next to your pc.

i’ve created two short videos with my digicam to give you an impression (low quality, and remember – it’s still my digicam that adds parts of the blurry pixel movement on the m105’s screen :) ):

http://kuerzer.de/m105.day
http://kuerzer.de/m105.night

just take a look…

regards,

j0ch

Posted at 5:16 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

..and yes – the m105 is not very secure in maintaining your data. i think it looses everything in it’s ram, even customly installed applications, within 30 minutes without power. that sucks, and that’s why you should only use it as a little funky display next to your monitor :).

HTH,

Joch

Posted at 5:39 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

Thanks for the cool videos! The night one looked cool! Yea, what I was thinking of doing was running it off AAA’s, just don’t use backlighting, and be able to take it out of the cradle if I want to bring it with me anywhere. But I realize that idealisticly that won’t work since the batteries still would only last a few days at the most, and would be a waste of money.

…30 minutes without power before data loss? Try less then one minute! The PDA has a tiny capacitor that acts as a battery and discharges when the batteries are removed. The problem is that Palm made some kind of design flaw and the capacitor gets too much voltage and they fail. So, numerous people report that no matter how fast they swap batteries, data loss still occurs…

I might end up getting a different model that is more friendly to being used as a standard PDA and for the LCD display hack. Perhaps a rechargable PDA would be the best since I imagine it charges while in the cradle, and would never die out.

Thanks again for the cool vids :-)

Posted at 6:54 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by matrox

you’re welcome :)

i found out that some PDAs, as e.g. the Palm IIIx, have space left in their FlashROM! With tools like JackFlash (http://www.brayder.com/products/jackflash.html) you can use it to store apps and other data in the FlashROM. The FlashROM does not lose its contents when the batteries are emtpy, so a Palm IIIx might be the right choice – you can use 786KB of the FlashROM for your own apps and data.

Posted at 7:17 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

hmm.. i wonder if i could disassemble one of these and make it a part of a case mod..
like all those new cases with temp/ram readout lcds

Posted at 7:18 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by v01

AWESOME! Works on my Treo 650. Now if only it supported bluetooth.

Posted at 7:22 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by Jason

ooops, forgot the pics:
http://jasonhilton.us/v-web/gallery/treo

Posted at 7:29 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by Jason

Personally I love the winamp spectrum analysiser, the weather and email outputs I us a Palm 5 and just leave it run…Im thinkin cool mod (currently have it hooked into my media center.

Posted at 8:00 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by Ray

Wow, this is *awesome!* It’d be great to somehow mod this into the front of my case, rip out a few of those FDD slots maybe.

Anyway, how do you get it fullscreen on the palm? Looks a little lame so small on mine, but I see everone else has it so I must be missing something.

Posted at 11:55 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by crummy

is there anyway to power old palm’s off a molex connector?
jochen goerdts, can you show how you connected yours up?

Posted at 11:59 pm on Mar 2nd, 2005 by ed

I got a M100 just to run this PalmOrb.
The software has been updated and modified quite a bit recently. I believe he has added USB palm support to the software also (m100 doesn’t use usb so can’t test that out).

To get it fullscreen, poke at that top thing, screen, then you can set the font. I like the “Bold, Scaled 7×24″ option. Fills most of the screen and I can read the text.

In terms of power I need help with that. My plan to use a Gameboy AC adapter (have a bunch) works most of the time, but the backlight often causes it to abruptly turn off. I dont know if its the increase use in power or what because it has been on with backlight for about 3 hours and hasnt shut off… weird..
Anyways, in terms of power, you can use the 5volts with ground but you will probably need a bunch of resistors or a voltage regulator since palms are designed to run on 3volts or so.
I had hoped for a circuit that would have 2 power sources, 2xAA @ 3volts and the PC powersupply at 3.3volts. So it would switch to the PC powersupply when the computer is on, then go to the batteries when the pc is off. I gave up on that idea and used a cheapo ac adapter instead.

You can have it take some user input. It wont be like a scribble pad, but you can use the grafitti pad to input commands to your computer to say.. start winamp, next track, etc… fun stuff.

I hate my M100 for not having flash space >_<.

Posted at 1:04 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by awdark

has anyone actually installed this into a case yet? this is what i’d be interested in. also, i dont quite understand. is any hacking/moddification of hardware involved in this, or is it just “connect palm running this software to computer and watch the little bars”?

Posted at 2:12 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by jordan

@ crummy:

there’s no “real” fullscreen mode – but you can change the font set PalmOrb uses to emulate the LCD. Just enter PalmOrbs menu by clicking on the upper left corner of your pda screen, choose “screen”, and then choose the font you’d like to use.

Posted at 4:42 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

hi ed,

i just soldered the cables of a H&H SN650GS power supply (http://kuerzer.de/m105.power.supply) and stitched the two cable ends behind the battery contacts of the palm, fixed with some duct tape and over that the battery clip, which gives additional hold for the cable. of course the clip doesn’t fit too good, but it presses on the cable and that’s why it gives additional hold.

the cable with the white line on it goes to the plus pole, the black one to the minus pole.

Posted at 4:51 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by jochen goerdts

Is there a way to replace the palm OS on a Clie UX-50 and replace it with a Pocket PC OS?

Posted at 8:26 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by David Canton

I looked at using PalmOrb a while back – as a fellow mentioned above, it’s an old app, and not very robust. THe biggest fault is the LK204 emulation, which is only a 4 line by 20 character display. That’s okay for some simple graphics and a little bit of text, but not really helpful for real apps.

What I’m working on is simply installing a Vt100 emulator on the Palm device, which hooks right up to the serial port. Most emulators have large screen diusplay mechanisms (80×24 in various arrangements), and you can dump entire displays to it. Use Vt100 control codes to clear, bold, underline, etc text on the palm.

For my registration system I use at conventions (www.stonekeep.com), we’re going to use old palms the same way as you’d use a display screen on a cash register – showing what folks are purchasing / registering / everything. All we do is squirt the text through the serial port, with the Vt100 control codes.

Posted at 9:49 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by dbs

FYI, you need the latest alpha, not 1.0 to go fullscreen. Thanks for the tip, jochen.

There’s another version on the PalmOrb site that lets you specify width/height, dbs. However you can only use LCDC (which allows custom width/height specification.) Havn’t tried the linux ones though.

How technical would this be to mount inside your case and hook up to one of the power connectors and a serial port? I have zero experience in this sort of thing. Is there something I could get to make this easier? I’m using a Palm Vx, by the way.

Posted at 11:44 am on Mar 3rd, 2005 by crummy

is any hacking/moddification of hardware involved in this, or is it just “connect palm running this software to computer and watch the little bars”?

Posted at 6:07 pm on Mar 3rd, 2005 by jordan

jordan: no hardware hacking required, unless you decide to add some kind of permanent power source.

I got this working on my old m125. It drains batteries like crazy because I had it in my pocket during Hurricane Charley last year, so I replaced it with a Zire 31. Everything else about the m125 is fine, it just goes through batteries really quickly.

Someone asked about molex connectors for power. I wouldn’t risk it, molex has 12v and 5v. There are 3.3V leads on an ATX power supply if you want to tap that, that may be a little more reasonable. I wouldn’t guarentee it. While running, my palm seems to pull about 2.85V.

specs: running LCDproc under linux 2.6, with clients lcdproc, trafficpl and the weather one.

What other good clients have people found for this?

Posted at 11:04 pm on Mar 3rd, 2005 by acidrain

it’s only running and configuring PalmOrb and a LCD control software as LCDSmartie – if you can afford the draining batteries.

Posted at 3:39 pm on Mar 4th, 2005 by jochen goerdts

thanks for the help. i finally got my palm running attached to an old atx power supply. if this program was any good i would do more work and make it all nice lookings, but i’ll stick to my parallel port lcd screen. it’s only 2 lines, but it’s better than this in my mind.

Posted at 4:29 am on Mar 5th, 2005 by ed

@jochen goerdts, how did you get the palmorb to display the winamp visualization (bars)?

Posted at 10:20 am on Mar 5th, 2005 by snigma

snigma, there’s a winamp plug-in for LCDSmartie.
http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/winampplugin.html

follow the instruction steps – it works fine. and don’t forget to setup the visualization plug-in to auto-execute mode in winamp prefs (in general plug-ins tab).

regardz,

j0xXx3n

Posted at 4:43 pm on Mar 5th, 2005 by jochen goerdts

PalmOrb is known not to work with the visor series… especially the deluxe models.

I’ve been trying all afternoon and found a ton of other people saying the same thing in the palmorb forums.

Palmorb is no longer supported… so who knows if this will be an option to us in the future.

So I was so excited about this… :(

Posted at 5:59 pm on Mar 5th, 2005 by tech-recipes

I have a mac, a palm pda, and a usb cradle. Has anybody been able to get this configuration to work?

The palmorb software runs on the pda. But I can’t get my mac to send data to it over the usb wire to the pda.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I even tried to just do “echo ‘test’ > /dev/tty0″ but I don’t know which tty to use for the usb.

Posted at 9:45 am on Mar 7th, 2005 by Jim

@ed
How did you connect your palm to the power supply? I’m assuming you used the leads to the motherboard, but what wires? This is an EXCELLENT program and I plan on finding a way to power led’s for the backlight b/c my m100 backlight sucks.

Posted at 4:45 pm on Mar 7th, 2005 by icdwa688

Any ideas for what to do w/ an old palm that has a broken screen? :)

Posted at 9:23 am on Mar 8th, 2005 by tom

would you be able to do this with your ipod

Posted at 4:06 pm on Mar 8th, 2005 by sid

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v222/shakeys/Image32.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v222/shakeys/Image36.jpg
heres the mod i maade the 1st time i learned about this program from bit-tech!
it just wasnt on yet coz i havent made the circuit board for the palm to be self charging. it was about a month ago so its ok now!

Posted at 8:54 am on Mar 12th, 2005 by hac

If you want to use your atx power supply for your palm and you have a car adapter for your palm, then you can just connect molex 12v to the terminals on the car adapter and get the exact ammount of voltage you need for your palm.

Posted at 11:55 am on Mar 28th, 2005 by Ethan Zonca

Do you have any support for this peogram i am having trouble getting it to detect my palm m100

Posted at 5:35 pm on Mar 28th, 2005 by dave

Got it working with the Palm Zire…

http://vinterstille.dk/palm-zire-as-an-extra-screen

I bought the Zire because it was cheaper than buying a new remote control for my TV… And now I can use it as an extra screen – Sweet.

Posted at 3:16 pm on Apr 3rd, 2005 by Klaus Nielsen

has anyone figured out how to open a m105 or any palm? My palm has these wierd screws that look like they are riveted or something.

Posted at 7:35 pm on Apr 3rd, 2005 by kasemodz

My palm IIIxe just has regular small watch screws, but I can see what you mean on my old Zire 21, they’re the 5-point star type screws. If you look hard enough you can find them. Try using a small phillips head, or even a flathead might work. Don’t be afraid to destroy the case, it’s not like your going to need it.

As for using molex connectors, what about making a small resistor board to take those 3.3’s down to 3? Radio Shack ftw.

For those who have got it working, is the display landscape or normal? I mean, if you were to mount the palm in your case, would it be sideways or upright? If sideways, which side up?

Posted at 4:29 pm on Apr 11th, 2005 by ryan

i have those same scrwes on mine i smashed it open make sure you smash at the part with no buttons and dont smash hard :)

Posted at 7:21 am on Apr 18th, 2005 by dave

i have those same scrwes on mine i smashed it open make sure you smash at the part with no buttons and dont smash hard :)

Posted at 7:23 am on Apr 18th, 2005 by dave

i have an old treo300 (sprint’s old pda phone). i’m looking to go a step up on it. i broke the usb connector off the board (whoops!) so i dismantled it and pulled the screen out.

i want to figure out how to soldier leads on to the connector on it to turn it into a screen *without* having to use the rest of the pda. is this possible? any hints/clues?

Posted at 1:19 pm on Apr 22nd, 2005 by Hadak

How about the *reverse*? Anyone know if there is an adaptor that will let you hook up your palm to an LCD monitor without use of a computer?

Posted at 10:52 am on May 11th, 2005 by Hotoru

I’m running on a palmIIIc using LCD smartie and and the other palmorb version which gives you a 8X20 display and pretends it’s a 4X40. There is also a plugin from someone called limbo which allows you to scroll part of a line instead of the whole thing which is needed so the because LCD smartie will scroll a two lines instead of one. I can’t remember what the site was but i found it while browsing around on the LCD smartie website.

Posted at 8:59 am on Oct 24th, 2005 by John

hey, if you want to do this on a pocket pc use this app to emulate the palmorb :)

Posted at 2:27 pm on Feb 4th, 2006 by Ian

http://www.styletap.com/
sorry forgot link

Posted at 2:28 pm on Feb 4th, 2006 by Ian

my palm burned out, but the screen is in perfect condition (320×320 w/16-bit color).. I wonder if its possible to wire directly to the screen somehow?

Posted at 11:22 am on Feb 8th, 2006 by steve diraddo

i have a sony clie peg-sj22 and i cant get this to work..but, i’ve been trying to find a way to use my sony clie as another monitor.

Theres a mod out there but its for pc pilots with windows mobile running on them..
if anyone can think of any cool hack/mods to get my palm pilot in use as another monitor, it would be highly appriciated

Posted at 12:16 am on Feb 20th, 2006 by Cory

iv.got.a.palm.III.with.a.broken.touchscreen.will.it.still.work?soz.bout.the.dots.my.spcebars.broke. :(
HIT.ME.BACK at odindutton[at]gmail[dot]com
thanks in advance!

Posted at 7:56 pm on Apr 23rd, 2006 by bumsk

We are a seller of PDA accessories,also includes LCD screen,if some one needs to buy this product at large quantity,please contact me!http://qinyieproduct.diytrade.com/

Posted at 2:24 am on Jul 19th, 2006 by frank Hu

need palm spare parts, pls contact me.

Posted at 1:27 am on Dec 12th, 2007 by Eric

and my email/msn zhangyunyi429@gmail.com,thx

Posted at 2:07 am on Dec 12th, 2007 by Eric

Hello, wanted to ask if anyone has information on the display (connection and communication) of the Palm Zire 21

Posted at 11:24 am on Jul 1st, 2008 by Rcardo Berretta

I need data from the LCD Palm Zire, let me reuse the LCD in a draft ECG
Would need the connector and data communication protocol or some data as minimum to start a crawl.
Atte
Ricardo

Posted at 1:01 pm on Jul 21st, 2008 by Ricardo Berretta

Try using Pebbles PC for palm OS, this allows you to control an almost unlimited amount of PC apps, and you could set it up with interface software to control lights and stuff like that. it doesnt have a display, really just has buttons, but the graffiti pad can be used as a keyboard. has an option for total control, using screen as touchpad mouse and graffiti pad as keyboard. you’ll have to google it as i cant remeber URL

Posted at 10:27 pm on Sep 27th, 2008 by Walrus23

I’d like to connect my palm zire 31 motherboard to a 12″ touchscreen. Can anyone advise how this can be done?

Posted at 9:17 am on Jan 27th, 2009 by Sean