you can buy them on ebay, with backlights!! you need to wire up your own parallel port cable though, and yes, you also need a parallel port :(

These displays are really not that expensive, I paid EUR 20,- (appr. $25) for a blue one with backlight, 20×4 characters… (and 4 rows is so much better than 2). I modded it in my media center (which is the only windows-machine I have btw) and there’s lots and lots of software out there to display just about anything on that display… I’m sure it’s possible to get a HAD-rss-feed on there? anyone? :-)

my display:
http://geektechnique.org/projects/img/playstation-blue-2.jpg

and some examples of what it can display:
http://geektechnique.org/projects/img/LCD-examples.jpg

They destroyed a credit card reader to get a 12 buck LCD?!

Oy Vey.

I would have traded them one of my *serial* matrix orbitals (HD4478 + piggy back board that does the serial communication conversion) for the reader.

also i’d like to see several cell phone old cellphone displays lined up.

This is not “hacking an LCD”. This is taking an LCD, and using it for it’s intended purpose, which is displaying data. “hacking an LCD” would be taking the LCD itself apart and making it do something it wasn’t originally intended to do. I wish people would learn what the heck “hacking” means.

And #6: Calculators and VCRs generalyl don’t have LCDs. They have VFDs (Vacuum Flourecent Displays). They’re a pain to drive without using an driver chip built for them. But it can be done.

You can also drive a HD44780 with the GPIO pins on a Soekris box – used this for a final year project. Needs a pot to control the contrast, and thats about it. Googling for HD44780 Soekris will give you the necessary circuit diagram / device driver code.

How on earth is this a hack? The display is designed to be used in precisely this way, all they did was basically plug it in to the parallel port.

This is awful. Bad show, hackaday.

And offtopic; what’s with the convert to lowercase lame thing going on?

UPPERCASE (should be all caps)
lowercase

Wow this is jsut such old news I can’t believe it made it up here at all :P Its a mod project certainly not a hack. And I dunno how old that article was, but I think they should google for some wiring diagrams before spending so much time trying to “figure out” how to wire it up. Ah well, I have one of these it is a fun mod :)

I’m going to be a total jerk here.

This is simply using an LCD, not hacking it.

These projects have been around for ~years~.

The only hacking I see here is the hacking that was done on that poor innocent 5-1/4 inch drive bay cover that the LCD was mounted in.
Next time use some tools instead of hiring mice to gnaw a hole in the plastic.

This stuff should be in a ‘best of’ post or something.

Here is my lcd hack. Original thing about it is that it’s used in my mythtv box. When turned off it displays the next recording show. It draws power from the PS/2 port so it stays on when the mythbox has had a software shutdown.

http://nerdhero.org/index.php/Howtos/LcdDisplay

cheer up! say, anyone out there lookikng for alternative heating sources this winter? I’d really like to see some home heating hacks. right now i’m planing to build a system that would have a wood buring device loacated outside and will circulate heated water into the house. Anyone done this type of thing?

paul wilson:

Thats not an unusal thing at all, at least in my area where wood is abundant and free.

and just as I was wondering what to do with the 8 of them that are sitting in my bedroom