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Last night I just got to thinking, and thought I would run this by the creative minds on in this Forum.

I have a broken down HP8150 Photosmart printer. I was about to throw it away, when I had a thought. I wondered if the little LCD could be salvaged and hooked up to a computer some how. I know that some guys are hooking up little green LCDs to serial ports and using them to display information for a mini-itx mp3 jukebox or the NetBSD toaster. But I was wondering about these full color higher resolution LCDs on the HP Printers. Or what about the multi card readers.

Any body know if this is possible or seen projects on the internet that use these little color LCDs. Anybody understand how those little screens work or know if Linux can send a display to one. When I consider how well they displayed pictures I would think that it should be possible to use them to display text or a song title.

Just wondering if it is worth taking it apart for those parts.

mowestusa

mowestusa wrote:Last night I just got to thinking, and thought I would run this by the creative minds on in this Forum.

I have a broken down HP8150 Photosmart printer. I was about to throw it away, when I had a thought. I wondered if the little LCD could be salvaged and hooked up to a computer some how. I know that some guys are hooking up little green LCDs to serial ports and using them to display information for a mini-itx mp3 jukebox or the NetBSD toaster. But I was wondering about these full color higher resolution LCDs on the HP Printers. Or what about the multi card readers.

Any body know if this is possible or seen projects on the internet that use these little color LCDs. Anybody understand how those little screens work or know if Linux can send a display to one. When I consider how well they displayed pictures I would think that it should be possible to use them to display text or a song title.

Just wondering if it is worth taking it apart for those parts.

mowestusa

I would not mess with it. It's probably too low of a resolution to be useful.

One thing I would do is just for the heck of it, try posting it on Ebay. Advertise what is bad and what is good. You may find someone who will take it off your hands just for the parts.

mowestusa wrote: Any body know if this is possible or seen projects on the internet that use these little color LCDs. Anybody understand how those little screens work or know if Linux can send a display to one. When I consider how well they displayed pictures I would think that it should be possible to use them to display text or a song title.

My experience with these things is it can be done, but it's a lot of work. If you can get the display out intact, you still have to figure out how to get it to work. If you can figure out the pinout (which may be undocumented), you still will probably have to write software for it. Most likely the inputs will be fairly low level so you'll need to come up with software that generates the proper sequence of signals to generate text. You won't be able to just dump ASCII into it and have it display.

I could be absolutely completely wrong, but it's the best I can do with my LCD experience.

I would get the thing out, examine it for a brand and part number and Google what you find. It's possible it's a standard part, and there are spec sheets out on it somewhere.

Let us know what you find out.

Might be easier to pickup a cheapy minature monochrome monitor at a computer show. I see them at the shows all the time for pretty cheap ($20)?

Patrick wrote:Might be easier to pickup a cheapy minature monochrome monitor at a computer show. I see them at the shows all the time for pretty cheap ($20)?

I would love to pick one up, but we don't have any computer shows like that in this area. The closest "big" city that I am near is Toledo, OH, but they don't seem to have something like that. Want to pick one up for me, Pat? Those that you have seen, are they LCDs or CRTs, and do they work well under Linux. I wouldn't need Color that is for sure. Just want something that can have a regular Linux 80 column console.

mowestusa

mowestusa wrote:Want to pick one up for me, Pat? Those that you have seen, are they LCDs or CRTs, and do they work well under Linux. I wouldn't need Color that is for sure. Just want something that can have a regular Linux 80 column console.mowestusa

The ones I saw were really small monochrome CRTs with 4-6 inch screens. You see them sometimes in data centers connected to a bank of servers. If they're standard monitors they should work in Linux. I'd be willing to help you out. If you want I'll go to the next show and see if they have them. You would have to pay for the monitor, shipping and the entrance fee for me to go into the place. You might want to see if someone sells them online first. It might be easier and cheaper. Let me know.