I'm looking for a display that will be easy to connect to my PC and will work with LCD Smartie without any problems. My main goal is going to be piping RSS feeds to the display with LCD Smartie.
I found: http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/634xe/index.html and it looks exactly like what im looking for.
Can anyone let me know if this is going to work out of the box? If not can you recommend an alternative? I don't mind buying a separate cable, screen and enclosure and just screwing/plugging everything together, but would like to avoid soldering if at all possible.
Links to exact products would be very helpful! Thanks!
Our new official repo is on github
LCD Smartie version 5.6 is released!
Download it now: https://github.com/LCD-Smartie/LCDSmartie/releases
LCD Smartie version 5.6 is released!
Download it now: https://github.com/LCD-Smartie/LCDSmartie/releases
Looking for something easy to connect...
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mattcro
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Looks like it will work out of the box with Smartie, but I haven't used this (or any Crystalfontz) product so better get an informed opinion from others. Looks pretty smart though!
I think pretty much any Crystalfontz or Matrix Orbital display will be suitable, provided it connects via serial port, or USB with virtual COM port driver.
I think pretty much any Crystalfontz or Matrix Orbital display will be suitable, provided it connects via serial port, or USB with virtual COM port driver.
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mattcro
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LCD Smartie doesn't have any autodetection, because it's a lot of effort to program. It also doesn't have an automatic installer - we haven't got around to that yet... but it's not all that complicated. Should work fine in XP.
You install Smartie by extracting the downloaded ZIP file to a folder of your choice (eg C:\Program Files\LCDSmartie) and just run the executable. Smartie has an option in its setup to autostart with Windows, which is usually what you want.
You just plug in your Crystalfontz display, install the driver if it's a USB model (which will create a new virtual serial port for Smartie to use), then configure Smartie to use the LCD - you need to set port, baud rate and display size.
Then you start discovering all the interesting stats and other stuff you can show on the display
You install Smartie by extracting the downloaded ZIP file to a folder of your choice (eg C:\Program Files\LCDSmartie) and just run the executable. Smartie has an option in its setup to autostart with Windows, which is usually what you want.
You just plug in your Crystalfontz display, install the driver if it's a USB model (which will create a new virtual serial port for Smartie to use), then configure Smartie to use the LCD - you need to set port, baud rate and display size.
Then you start discovering all the interesting stats and other stuff you can show on the display
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mattcro
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Smartie natively supports the Crystalfontz LCD protocol, so it should work fine. I can't absolutely guarantee that it will work because I've never used one, but it's very unlikely you'll have a problem. I'm sure others can vouch for these displays!
You can set the LCD to whatever baud rate and port you want, and you just set Smartie to match. Typically it will appear as something like COM3, depending on what other ports you already have. You should set the baud rate to something fairly fast like 19200. There's instructions on the Crystalfontz drivers pages.
You can set the LCD to whatever baud rate and port you want, and you just set Smartie to match. Typically it will appear as something like COM3, depending on what other ports you already have. You should set the baud rate to something fairly fast like 19200. There's instructions on the Crystalfontz drivers pages.