On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Arun Venkataswamy <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 11:58 AM, 0 <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> > I do know of a few projects doing the same, but I want an India specific >> > project which can use locally sourcable components. >> > >> >> Can you provide us the links, if any ? It will help in getting a better >> understanding on the project. >> >> > Old project based on LPT port, mostly non existent today: > http://www.mv.com/ipusers/cdwalker/lpt_driver.html > > A mature project: > http://ssl.bulix.org/projects/lcd4linux/wiki/CoolStuff > > Another one: > http://lcdproc.org/
For the hardware, look at CrystalFontz.com. I agree these are expensive. I've integrated these for headless machines in 2001. These used to come at $60-100 then. I work with LCD displays now. We can get displays at a price points of under $10 for 20x2 and 16x2 displays. Most of these controllers come with SPI and UART interfaces. Look up http://www.trulydisplays.com or http:/www.everbouquet.co.tw. In the US, there is a DIY electronics site called Sparkfun http://www.sparkfun.com and in India, we should get some such from EFY site powered by element14. It would be a good thing to take cheap displays, make a USB to SPI convertor board, a bay mountable fixture possibly with buttons. Overall cost budget should be pegged at $12-13 which is achievable. Typical components and prices are LDO $1.5 ( 5V to 3.3V), a microcontroller with a USB device (PIC or MSP $1.5) and board would cost approx $1 with passives. We may need a library to be written to provide high level functions to be able to write formatted text etc or interface this to lcdproc. I've a hardware company that will work on this hardware for a small payment, if someone can sponsor this. If someone can anchor the software on the PC side, define the APIs to be implemented in hardware, we could have a reasonable thing going. -- Mohan Sundaram _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
