These are Displays from ebay are small B/W displays from the nokia 1202 and a few other models. They do not require a tricky to use "membrane" to connect ITO, on-glass, traces of the screen to your PCB's traces. and they do not require expensive or hard to find connectors. They feature a 12 pin 0.6mm pitch solderable tab. Ohh and they have a built in Whiteish blue LED backlight.
Here are some I bought from the link above (Note I'm not associated with the ebay seller) at the time of writing the cost ~$2.80 ea [attachment=1]
The controller is the STE2007 ( link ). The display is interfaced with a 9 bit serial interface, 8 data bits and a Data/Command bit. The display area is 96x68 pixels.
Here is a demo of what the display looks like when on, controlled by a cheap MSP430 IC. [attachment=0]
I'll be doing some measurements and testing soon, for current consumption etc. I imagine these will be similar to other cheap Nokia LCDs like the 5110's. I would like to make a watch with one of these displays hopefully they are low power enough.
So ITeadstudio has got quite abit of publicity around about it's cheap PCB service I mean 0.99c for a 5x5cm PCB in minimal quantities is a fantastic price. Interesting how they state that they e-test 100% of your PCBs. I would assume e-testing means a machine probes each connection according to your gerbers and reports faults/shorts/disconnects etc.
So if all 10 of my boards are e-tested how did this happen. [attachment=0]
The two pins are 8mil thick which is well within the specifications of the service. and they haven't been scratched off during my handling (there is still green solder mask above them).
So I know that for 0.99c I can't complain. Heck even a coffee costs more than that these days. But I just thought these were the kind of things e-testing was supposed to stop. I guess I am lucking in the sense that the other two board that I soldered up without checking thoroughly are working just fine.
So it was awhile ago when I posted about my old 8x8 matrix toy. I've finally got around to creating a new version which incorporated an 8x8 bi-colour 3mm LED matrix module. and a controller board the size of the LED module itself. Here is a sped up soldering video. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MkQzpkjcxQ
Basically using the larger LED display enabled me to fit a coin cell batter on the back. the underside of the PCB houses a MSP430 2kb micro controller, 3x 74hct595's and 16 cathode sinking n-channel mosfets.
I would really like idea as to what to do with this. I've already got it displaying sprites and going into a 0.4µA sleep mode when the button is pressed. I like the idea of creating a variable sided dice (d4,d6,d10,d20), and there are examples of generating random numbers from the uncertainty/difference between the two internal clock sources.
The designs will be open source on my blog eventually.
Well I have taken that one step further creating a 20mm by 26mm version using all the same components.(except a micro USB port was used.) 100% pb-free, 100% hand soldered. (Although I want to get a hotplate soon.) If any of you were wondering exactly how small 20x26mm is, well: it's smaller than a postage stamp. (I made a booboo with the backside silkscreen :{. There should be no PGD,PGC,etc labels there. )
I'm not really into coding so I stuck with the two PIC design, one running a CDC stack and then the other running an unmodified Bus pirate source. I would like to attempt this design again using different parts: dual v-regs, bi-colour LEDs, 4x resistor packs, maybe even 0201 parts :? However I think I'll take a look at the V4 hardware first ;D
It has not physical buttons so it increments the display glyph/sting when you cycle the power. the code is a slightly modified version of http://http://tinkerlog.com/howto/64pixels/
Hi I finally got around to getting the parts to build up my Bus blaster PCB. I accidentally ripped up a trace on the PCB so I had to do a green-wire fix. all seems to be working now though. Also used 0402 100nF caps in place of the 0805 ones because I have a whole reel of the 0402 variety, they look a bit funny on the large pad, but work just fine.
My final design turned out to be about %50 smaller than the sparkfun version. Some alterations were needed, these involved replacing the FTDI IC with a QFN package PIC18F14k50. The Main PIC is also using a QFN version. This could be made smaller by using combined LEDs (RGB / RG /etc), resistor arrays, smaller header, micro usb socket. I'm more than happy to provide the eagle/gerber files if anyone really wants them, but half the fun was making the layout.
If anyone has a smaller design I'd love to see it. -Greeeg
If anyone else out there doesn't like having to refer to a printout/webpage of the Bus Pirate pinouts every time they use it. Just stick some flags on the cables. they can be made out of paper and stuck on with tape. But because I'm lazy I just used a label maker. (Some of my cables have 2 Flags on them, this is because I use the 1 cable for my BusPirate and my USBisp programmer.)
