This is exactly what I expect from your channel. A way to learn electronics, combined with your experience, not seen in any other channel. A bit of stuff for the beginner, a bit of new stuff for the experiences. Great subject!
5:38 Funny case in fact about LCD's being sluggish when cold, my mom's car has an LCD displaying (among other info) the outside temperature. When it gets near or below freezing, the temperature indication will blink to alert you to that. Except that precisely because it is cold, the blinking will be almost unnoticeable since the indicator hardly fades before it comes back on again.
There is a video about the Gameboy DMG LCD. Strobe light or a fast camera shutter show that it flickers faster than the human eye can see. Do Gameboys fail in winter?
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt They won't fail just from a low temperature. The cold will negatively affect the screen's responsiveness, causing what is called ghosting. You will see an after image when something disappears from the screen, or a fading trail behind something moving across the screen. But this effect disappears when the display is warmed up again.
@@MicraHakkinen good thing that the liquid is not water and can’t break stuff as it freezes. I was just wondering: I know the ghost of the cursor on Ti Z80 based calculators, but there is no ghost on Gameboy.
I still find it absolutely amazing that LCDs are in everything from cheap calculators to 100" 4K Dolby Vision enabled TVs. You don't get that kind of scaling from any other display technology.
I know it's pretty much common sense that we're surrounded by plastic. But I had the same sense of sort of awe (and horror) when I looked around my house and struggled to find anything that didn't have plastic of some sort in it. The only things really were things like seashells I collected, and maybe my dry wall? Oh and I guess my clothes... well except for the buttons and probably tags. It's mind boggling to realize I'm not just surrounded by the stuff, it's in literally EVERYTHING I own. I feel like this is gonna be one of those things we look back on in the future and say "wtf were they thinking?" Like we do with victorian practices. Like using tobacco smoke enemas to cure drowning. Seriously, they actually had rescue kits to do this set up on the Thames. Or using benzene as an aftershave, when we now know it causes leukemia. And the classic opium and cannabis tincture for your baby when they won't sleep. Probably because they're addicted to opium. Not to mention the horrible adulterants that were added to food. There was a book of advice for housewives that suggested adding borax to sour milk to mask the sour taste so you can keep drinking it longer. Wasn't Victorian England so magical? lol
I sometimes used "simple" LCDs directly connected to a micro. You can do that without burning out the display by generating the AC in software. Connect both the common and the segments to GPIOs. Set the common to high and the segment to low and reverse that every 1/100s using an interrupt. To turn off a segment set its GPIO to the same logic level as the common (so no voltage across that segment, even if both the common and the segment change level every 1/100s). With clever programming you can even drive multi common displays this way.
Well, you actually can drive a simple LCD display with common microcontroller GPIO if you need. Just drive the common electrode and inactive segments low while driving active segments high for 100 ms then switch everything by inverting the output: high on common and inactive and low on active segments for another 100 ms. That way you generate AC square waveform with no DC component relative to the common LCD electrode.
@@gauravsingh84for starters, a lot of these don’t have one common electrode, but a matrix of rows and columns. At least logical, even if not laid out as such. Then if you pay enough you get a ton of GPIO . Enough for segment LCDs. Not enough for Gameboy DMG.
This big single digit LCD (or a similar one) was used in a clock circuit published in one of these electronic paper magazines. I think it was elektor. It was 10+ years ago. Point is: Since they are static they just used 74HC595 or 4094 (can't remember exactly) to drive all the segments. The common pins were tied together and driven by something else. The microcontroller had to do the AC switching of course. The display is so big that it was no problem to hide the DIL ICs underneath it.
Yes! I've been waiting for this series. I've been wanting to experiment with LCDs for a while, plus I got a Raspberry Pi Zero (and RPZW) coming in the mail. Can't wait!
Dave, I loved this, thank you. I had to wait for the right day to watch it and pay attention properly, but this looks like being a really good series, thank you.
It's actually possible to drive the through-hole type (the simplest) LCDs using GPIO output pins by reversing the drive polarity in a loop (I used a 4Hz timer). I used a TI MSP430F2272 micro-controller that had all the required GPIOs.
Super useful, always fabulous learning how to do stuff & LCD displays are things I have stayed away from as there are so many possibilities, but this series looks like it will really help me get to be able to confidently use these lovely things. Thank you!
Third time's the charm, eh Dave? That really small character LCD is actually used in one product I own, and one I want to own. the TNS-HFC5 Famicom cartridge and OSSC line doubler both use it in its I2C form as the AQM0802 (8 x 2) A or GW (backlight). It's a pretty nice little screen.
You could perhaps get more success from SerpantZA, though I doubt it - he figured out where youtube get their Silver Play Button awards manufactured locally to him in China and tried to get a factory tour even turning up at the factory gate ruclips.net/video/4EL4xBxc5IA/видео.html
very informative. loved it. This video is no less than a blessing for me as i am working on these displays these days. Cant wait for the next videos. Thanks.
Thanks for the video. Ever since I pulled apart things as a kid I've always wondered how LCD's were actually driven. They've been a mystery up until now :).
Good intro to LCDs. I package these displays into our products at work but not being a circuit designer it's nice to pick up the basics here. I hope you are going to cover how to interface these with micro controllers and give some cover to font sets to use. 5*'s Dave!
I was thinking the same when I paused the video to have a closer look at the display. The uSupply has been a long time coming. I'm looking forward to seeing that project becoming available as something we can buy or as a kit we can build.
19:02 isn't the blue one(@ 10:38) transmissive? at least I thought that since the ones like that "blue backlight lcd 16x2 whatever" seem to be unusable unless you use the backlight
Thanks a lot for your video about displays. I am just disappointed that most displays used in DIY projects are simple few segments LCD or up to 640x480 displays. I would however like to use smartphone displays having much higher resolutions for displaying good quality images. those displays are mainly driven by the MIPI standard. I am still looking in ways to interface those displays with simple microcontrollers and by using an intermediate graphic driver having a frame buffer. The microcontroller would just fill the frame buffer (for picture display , low refreshment would be ok) and the graphic driver would control the "smartphone" quality display accordingly. Maybe this could be an interesting subject for a future video.
Those bare LCDs are a pain to drive without a driver chip. I find it much easier to salvage a VFD from something, than to get a random LCD working. I do like using the old 84x48 Nokia LCDs in projects though, they are dirt cheap and simple to drive over SPI.
Great intro! Two questions about defects: 1) Is a black, distinct irregular blob the LC fluid leaking? 2) What is/causes a round-ish fuzzy "burn" spot?
I'm new to electronics so I love watching your videos to gain knowledge. The only thing I don't understand is, if dc voltage will kill lcd's after a while, than how do calculators use lcd's?
You're wellcome. If you are capable of reading a datasheet, you could try the Microchip PIC16F916 microcontroller. In section 9 there is a description of different LCD drive modes.
I am looking forward to future videos. Interfacing the smaller two of 4 line displays with on-board driver chips is easy enough to understand but interfacing say a color display from a laptop, I'm lost. Displays for the Pie are available but you hook them up and run the software but that doesn't help understand how the interface works. Hope in the future you can cover the different interface requirements to these displays.
I have the Display'o'tron Hat for the RasPi, from what I understand this LCD is a COG type, already mounted on a PCB board for convenience. It uses the serial i2c bus on the GPIO but i think it supports other modes too, i'd love to learn how to interface with this directly instead of using the python library.
I would love more information about the diferent Bias and how to design with a FPGA our own driver, some display with not to much segments. Thanks for you videos! :)
Thanks for that video! What would be also very interesting to see a comparision between LCD and TFT. How is the readability between LCD and TFT under daylight conditions? Is an LCD still the best readable display for outdoor products? Lots of motorbikes are switching to TFT-Cockpits but I'm not sure if these are transflective TFTs?
Technically, TFT's *are* LCD's, but unlike LCD's, they *require* a backlight. TFT = Thin Film Transistor, where each pixel (or do they have them with segments too?) has an associated transistor that turns it on or off, thereby blocking the light coming from the backlight, or letting it through.
I doubt. The transistor layer would damp the incomming light so much that it would be practically unusefull. You need to take into account that the transistor layer is located on the inner side of the rear glass plate (where the LC liquid is). The reflector is placed outside. The light must pass the transistor layer twice.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
This is exactly what I expect from your channel. A way to learn electronics, combined with your experience, not seen in any other channel. A bit of stuff for the beginner, a bit of new stuff for the experiences. Great subject!
5:38 Funny case in fact about LCD's being sluggish when cold, my mom's car has an LCD displaying (among other info) the outside temperature. When it gets near or below freezing, the temperature indication will blink to alert you to that. Except that precisely because it is cold, the blinking will be almost unnoticeable since the indicator hardly fades before it comes back on again.
There is a video about the Gameboy DMG LCD. Strobe light or a fast camera shutter show that it flickers faster than the human eye can see. Do Gameboys fail in winter?
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt They won't fail just from a low temperature. The cold will negatively affect the screen's responsiveness, causing what is called ghosting. You will see an after image when something disappears from the screen, or a fading trail behind something moving across the screen. But this effect disappears when the display is warmed up again.
@@MicraHakkinen good thing that the liquid is not water and can’t break stuff as it freezes. I was just wondering: I know the ghost of the cursor on Ti Z80 based calculators, but there is no ghost on Gameboy.
Another presentation (style and content), many will want to emulate. Dave Jones, the educator!
Cheers.
very useful tutorial, thanks Dave, looking forward to the next part :)
That was an excellent video Dave!
I was looking for the second video, then I realized it was published yesterday! I'm finally caught up. I thought this day would never come.
I still find it absolutely amazing that LCDs are in everything from cheap calculators to 100" 4K Dolby Vision enabled TVs. You don't get that kind of scaling from any other display technology.
I know it's pretty much common sense that we're surrounded by plastic. But I had the same sense of sort of awe (and horror) when I looked around my house and struggled to find anything that didn't have plastic of some sort in it. The only things really were things like seashells I collected, and maybe my dry wall? Oh and I guess my clothes... well except for the buttons and probably tags. It's mind boggling to realize I'm not just surrounded by the stuff, it's in literally EVERYTHING I own. I feel like this is gonna be one of those things we look back on in the future and say "wtf were they thinking?"
Like we do with victorian practices. Like using tobacco smoke enemas to cure drowning. Seriously, they actually had rescue kits to do this set up on the Thames. Or using benzene as an aftershave, when we now know it causes leukemia. And the classic opium and cannabis tincture for your baby when they won't sleep. Probably because they're addicted to opium. Not to mention the horrible adulterants that were added to food. There was a book of advice for housewives that suggested adding borax to sour milk to mask the sour taste so you can keep drinking it longer. Wasn't Victorian England so magical? lol
I sometimes used "simple" LCDs directly connected to a micro. You can do that without burning out the display by generating the AC in software. Connect both the common and the segments to GPIOs. Set the common to high and the segment to low and reverse that every 1/100s using an interrupt. To turn off a segment set its GPIO to the same logic level as the common (so no voltage across that segment, even if both the common and the segment change level every 1/100s). With clever programming you can even drive multi common displays this way.
There is a video which shows flicker on a Gameboy DMG. Can you let a passive LCD flicker faster than the eye can see using software?
Well, you actually can drive a simple LCD display with common microcontroller GPIO if you need. Just drive the common electrode and inactive segments low while driving active segments high for 100 ms then switch everything by inverting the output: high on common and inactive and low on active segments for another 100 ms. That way you generate AC square waveform with no DC component relative to the common LCD electrode.
How can this trick work in case of large number of segments where you run out of GPIOs to drive each segment individually?
@@gauravsingh84for starters, a lot of these don’t have one common electrode, but a matrix of rows and columns. At least logical, even if not laid out as such. Then if you pay enough you get a ton of GPIO . Enough for segment LCDs. Not enough for Gameboy DMG.
I've always wanted to know how to get custom lcd displays made. Looking forward to the other videos!
Thanks Dave. Looking forward to next video in the series. Very interesting topic.
Same. I want an LCD for my multimeter!
@@GRBtutorials hi, if you need an lcd, welcome to contact us at: www.szmaclight.com
Very useful video, it helps a lot. So easy to understand even for non Aussie listeners.
Excellent video, just in-depth enough to explain the differences, looking forward to the rest of the series
Dave, a tutorial on the multiplexing biasing would be great.
💚💚💚💚 bookmark/ notes: 11:14 strip / eraser pressure for the changing lcd …..ect……tbc….-g-b, bot
Dave is full powered today hahaha
This big single digit LCD (or a similar one) was used in a clock circuit published in one of these electronic paper magazines. I think it was elektor. It was 10+ years ago. Point is: Since they are static they just used 74HC595 or 4094 (can't remember exactly) to drive all the segments. The common pins were tied together and driven by something else. The microcontroller had to do the AC switching of course. The display is so big that it was no problem to hide the DIL ICs underneath it.
I love starburst displays too, and share your unabashed expression of glee.
Yes! I've been waiting for this series. I've been wanting to experiment with LCDs for a while, plus I got a Raspberry Pi Zero (and RPZW) coming in the mail. Can't wait!
Dave, I loved this, thank you. I had to wait for the right day to watch it and pay attention properly, but this looks like being a really good series, thank you.
Thanks much. It was great to learn about the different types. Looking forward to following the series and learning more.
It's actually possible to drive the through-hole type (the simplest) LCDs using GPIO output pins by reversing the drive polarity in a loop (I used a 4Hz timer). I used a TI MSP430F2272 micro-controller that had all the required GPIOs.
You tease! You get me excited for designing a LCD and now I have to wait.
:(
Great video, thanks Dave! We want more content from the junior Dave as well please.
Wonderful description!
Awesome tutorial Dave.... looking forward to the next episode.....
Super useful, always fabulous learning how to do stuff & LCD displays are things I have stayed away from as there are so many possibilities, but this series looks like it will really help me get to be able to confidently use these lovely things. Thank you!
I love his enthusiasm! It's so adorable and makes me want to learn more
Oh man this is great, can't wait for the part about designing a custom one, I've always wanted to do that!
Love your instructional videos. Always learn something.
Thanks Dave! Looking forward for the next parts of the series!
Good things come to those who patiently wait. :) Thank you for an awesome video!
Third time's the charm, eh Dave?
That really small character LCD is actually used in one product I own, and one I want to own. the TNS-HFC5 Famicom cartridge and OSSC line doubler both use it in its I2C form as the AQM0802 (8 x 2) A or GW (backlight). It's a pretty nice little screen.
do a tour of an lcd factory. i really liked that interview with those Aussie calibration engineers.
+TheAstronomyDude I would if there was one in Australia?
You could perhaps get more success from SerpantZA, though I doubt it - he figured out where youtube get their Silver Play Button awards manufactured locally to him in China and tried to get a factory tour even turning up at the factory gate ruclips.net/video/4EL4xBxc5IA/видео.html
very informative. loved it.
This video is no less than a blessing for me as i am working on these displays these days.
Cant wait for the next videos.
Thanks.
My mom had a 16 segment display on a Hifi and I always sat in front of it watching the text scroll. Amazed.
G'day mate, love it when I click on a random RUclips video and it's another Aussie
More tutorials like this please !
Great tutorial! Looking forward to the future videos in the series!
Super video, thanks, Dave! Some overview and then making an actual device is the best type of video for hobbyist like me :)
love this kind of video, good topic, very informative, so worth the watch.
Excellent explanation!
Great video, very interesting. Looking forward to the rest in the series.
Thanks for the video. Ever since I pulled apart things as a kid I've always wondered how LCD's were actually driven. They've been a mystery up until now :).
Good vid, Dave. Keep up the good work.
Great video, looking forward to the rest of the series. I wonder why a channel like this would have it's videos demonetized though.
Good intro to LCDs. I package these displays into our products at work but not being a circuit designer it's nice to pick up the basics here. I hope you are going to cover how to interface these with micro controllers and give some cover to font sets to use. 5*'s Dave!
An interesting topic Dave well done.
Amazing video Dave! Can't wait for the next ones :)
Great video Dave!!! Very informative and interesting!!!
good tutorial please keep going on with LCDs
Loved this video, thanks Dave!
This just took a lot of mystique out of the world, but it is very cool to see that simplicity was always there.
Hi, Dave , great video, very informative, I will recommend it for reference.
That was a great tutorial on LCD display types. Spot on and makes understanding of these items so much easier
+Bruce Woods glad you liked it
fantastic video. I really appreciate this type of tutorial.
Awesome video, looking forward to more.
uSupply LCD at 22:10! :)
I noticed that too. Is this the LCD you're going to show how to design?
I was thinking the same when I paused the video to have a closer look at the display. The uSupply has been a long time coming. I'm looking forward to seeing that project becoming available as something we can buy or as a kit we can build.
This is a great video, love to see this type of content dave!
Off topic, I dig the chart behing you in the around 1:00 into the video. Please provide a bit of info on it.
Njoyed these!
Nice video! Looking forward to see the next one 😊
19:02 isn't the blue one(@ 10:38) transmissive?
at least I thought that since the ones like that "blue backlight lcd 16x2 whatever" seem to be unusable unless you use the backlight
I really like where this is going! :)
Great video, I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you!
Very clear video tutorial!
Great video thanks for posting
Thank you for a cool educational video, Dave!
thanks for posting
How come that single-digit LCD has so many pins? It should only have 8 segments + common, but it seems to have 20. Is it just multiple connections?
Thanks a lot for your video about displays. I am just disappointed that most displays used in DIY projects are simple few segments LCD or up to 640x480 displays. I would however like to use smartphone displays having much higher resolutions for displaying good quality images. those displays are mainly driven by the MIPI standard. I am still looking in ways to interface those displays with simple microcontrollers and by using an intermediate graphic driver having a frame buffer. The microcontroller would just fill the frame buffer (for picture display , low refreshment would be ok) and the graphic driver would control the "smartphone" quality display accordingly. Maybe this could be an interesting subject for a future video.
You can buy microprocessors that do all of that in a tiny package for about two bucks.
Ben Eaters worst video card shows how to read out a frame buffer and send serial data without blocking a CPU.
Wonderful video! This is what I personally like ^_^
Those bare LCDs are a pain to drive without a driver chip. I find it much easier to salvage a VFD from something, than to get a random LCD working.
I do like using the old 84x48 Nokia LCDs in projects though, they are dirt cheap and simple to drive over SPI.
That. Was. Awesome!
Great intro! Two questions about defects: 1) Is a black, distinct irregular blob the LC fluid leaking? 2) What is/causes a round-ish fuzzy "burn" spot?
That that would be leakage. No fixing that.
Dave, it would be great if you can do a video on the operating hours and life of these LCDs.
Yess!
This is the kind of videos I want :)
OMG yeeeeeeaaaas I've been wanting this for ages!!!!!!
Awesome video!
_Dave trims his right index fingernail at_ *13:50**.* ✂👆🏻
reflective with a led or two on the outside is the best
Depends on the application!
Very useful .. Thanks !
I'm new to electronics so I love watching your videos to gain knowledge. The only thing I don't understand is, if dc voltage will kill lcd's after a while, than how do calculators use lcd's?
The same way as any other app. having a LCD. The calculators control IC holds an AC driver circuit.
MrJetra thank you for responding!
You're wellcome. If you are capable of reading a datasheet, you could try the Microchip PIC16F916 microcontroller. In section 9 there is a description of different LCD drive modes.
Good video!
you make my day
ps.from croatia with love
interesting as always
today you are a rocket star.
please do a series on camera devices or camera sensors also
awesome video btw waiting for next one
6:00 temp and electric field
Awesome! Will you do one on OLED displays too? Maybe do a teardown of one also?
Thanks!
This is wonderfull
The LCD you removed from the zebra strips was a transmissive unit....
I am looking forward to future videos. Interfacing the smaller two of 4 line displays with on-board driver chips is easy enough to understand but interfacing say a color display from a laptop, I'm lost. Displays for the Pie are available but you hook them up and run the software but that doesn't help understand how the interface works. Hope in the future you can cover the different interface requirements to these displays.
I have the Display'o'tron Hat for the RasPi, from what I understand this LCD is a COG type, already mounted on a PCB board for convenience. It uses the serial i2c bus on the GPIO but i think it supports other modes too, i'd love to learn how to interface with this directly instead of using the python library.
Yay new video
@ 23:48 Another Dave geeking out highlight clip for the next compilation ;)
I would love more information about the diferent Bias and how to design with a FPGA our own driver, some display with not to much segments.
Thanks for you videos! :)
3 commenters here drive LCD using GPIO on a uController. So it should be easy with FPGA. Just buy a model with lots of pins .
Very nice!
Cool! I have a raw glass LCD. Have no idea where I got it, had no idea how I would use it, and still wouldn't use it since I have to drive it!
Thanks for that video! What would be also very interesting to see a comparision between LCD and TFT.
How is the readability between LCD and TFT under daylight conditions?
Is an LCD still the best readable display for outdoor products?
Lots of motorbikes are switching to TFT-Cockpits but I'm not sure if these are transflective TFTs?
Technically, TFT's *are* LCD's, but unlike LCD's, they *require* a backlight. TFT = Thin Film Transistor, where each pixel (or do they have them with segments too?) has an associated transistor that turns it on or off, thereby blocking the light coming from the backlight, or letting it through.
so its not possible to make a transflective TFT?
I doubt. The transistor layer would damp the incomming light so much that it would be practically unusefull. You need to take into account that the transistor layer is located on the inner side of the rear glass plate (where the LC liquid is). The reflector is placed outside. The light must pass the transistor layer twice.
thank you very much for the explanation!