Make yourself a 4x40 USB LCD

[hydrolisk1792]

To make it more compatible I'd go with trying to make it a 4 x 40. Some of those displays like that have a built in character set. I have come across some from soda vending machines that can be a giant text 1x10 through a 2x20 made by noritake.

v5.6 allows custom display sizes, the matrix orbital display plugin is compatible with something like 5x42 i think, i actually did some testing with custom display sizes (17x8) using a graphical LCD and an arduino with the U8G2 library..unfortunately i don't have pictures but it mostly worked
(had some issues where sometimes some lines weren't cleared properly when changing screens but idk if this was a problem on the arduino side or the lcdsmartie or the display plugin)

Ah yes, you're correct!! I remember that now making arduino backpacks for strange displays

[lucas_siglo21]

To make it more compatible I'd go with trying to make it a 4 x 40. Some of those displays like that have a built in character set. I have come across some from soda vending machines that can be a giant text 1x10 through a 2x20 made by noritake.

v5.6 allows custom display sizes, the matrix orbital display plugin is compatible with something like 5x42 i think, i actually did some testing with custom display sizes (17x8) using a graphical LCD and an arduino with the U8G2 library..unfortunately i don't have pictures but it mostly worked
(had some issues where sometimes some lines weren't cleared properly when changing screens but idk if this was a problem on the arduino side or the lcdsmartie or the display plugin)

Ah yes, you're correct!! I remember that now making arduino backpacks for strange displays

bruh, we need to develop something for graphical displays, not limited to characters..lcdstudio is dead and they never open sourced it, and you can get a lot of cheap graphical lcds now. developing an open source usb->GLCD protocol for showing text and graphics and then making a software like what was lcdstudio..i know it's not simple but would be a cool project.

[hydrolisk1792]

Agreed. We would have to get with fruittool about it as they are currently developing on Smartie as a whole. I'm more on the hardware development side of things.

[St. GIGA]

I've figured out a potential candidate for Unicode support that I've brought up in regards to another thread asking about graphical displays. It would involve an ESP32 fitted with LVGL and UnifontEX. Unicode allows stuff like media control symbols and information about the state of an inbox, and more. It even has power Symbols.

[St. GIGA]

To make it more compatible I'd go with trying to make it a 4 x 40. Some of those displays like that have a built in character set. I have come across some from soda vending machines that can be a giant text 1x10 through a 2x20 made by noritake.

v5.6 allows custom display sizes, the matrix orbital display plugin is compatible with something like 5x42 i think, i actually did some testing with custom display sizes (17x8) using a graphical LCD and an arduino with the U8G2 library..unfortunately i don't have pictures but it mostly worked
(had some issues where sometimes some lines weren't cleared properly when changing screens but idk if this was a problem on the arduino side or the lcdsmartie or the display plugin)

I'd be interested in more detail, I've wanted to do the same thing, but due to budget reasons I have to do an Adafruit ESP32 Reverse TFT Feather rather than an Arduino, of which the only usable one is a Portenta H7. Now, here's the thing: I'm of course using a graphical LCD to emulate a character LCD, but importantly, it's NOT a 5x7 one. I'm using my port of UnifontEX (https://stgiga.github.io/UnifontEX for those interested, LCD use is NOT the only thing it does) at 8x16+16x16 to render even emoji on a "character LCD". The LVGL version when compiled is just under 2MiB. The U8G2 version is 6MiB (and not factoring in U8G2 handling Plane 1 weirdly), and the UCGLIB version is just under 8MiB. The Portenta H7, the best non-RPi-esque Arduino, has 8MiB of RAM. So UCGLIB is *just* possible. U8G2 leaves 2MiB for whatever you seek, but LVGL works on more devices (it isn't bound to Arduino and is less-coupled to specific displays than U8G2 is), and the compiled font is less than 2MiB, meaning that Adafruit's 25USD TFT Feather boards will work. The board in question I'm going for has 4MiB of flash memory, 2MiB of PSRAM, and 512KiB of SRAM, meaning that there is JUST enough memory here to work. I only wish I could afford a larger display. The display on the board (https://www.adafruit.com/product/5691) is 240x135, so 4x40 isn't doable on this kit, rather, it behaves more like the more-common sizes. But it's color.

BUT WAIT, there's more: Sharp makes displays like the Memory Display line, and those are crisp monochrome like most e-inks but are actually LCDs. Now here's the fun part: they of course make a 168x144 (Game Boy resolution but 8px wider, and yes, Sharp made the Game Boy CPU) version, but they actually went to 400x240 (3DS 2D top screen resolution). Now, if you're using *only* halfwidth characters on-screen in UnifontEX, that figure gives you 50 columns and 15 rows of text, meaning you can outdo the HD44780. Now, fullwidth stuff like CJK and emoji will be 25 columns x 15 rows if a line is entirely those, but it's still nothing to sneeze at. I even made a splash screen at that size. Also 320x240 exists for a more-standard size, but then it just becomes the 40 column limit seen on C64, and in fullwidth characters you only get 20 columns. That's not much. Going to 400x240 just makes more sense. Also, 400x240 at 5:3 is the aspect ratio of Japanese business cards, as well as approximately the Golden Ratio, and it's a midpoint between 4:3, 16:9 (5:3 = 15:9), 16:10 (which is ALSO approximately the Golden Ratio), and 5:4. AND it was used for European widescreen films. So 400x240 isn't a bad resolution.

As a broke college student, I can't afford anything beyond the Adafruit board, but the 50 columns x 15 rows USB LCD done this way would be cool.

Now what does using Unicode in LCD Smartie do? Well, Unicode has a full set of media control symbols (regular GNU Unifont does not have all of them coexist in one file, UnifontEX does), even the Loop One Song button. Even Spotify symbols can be displayed (I actually found Unicode mappings). Oh and you have a LARGE amount of weather symbols, as well as symbols that even include the state of an inbox. It also has a LOT of symbols you could use as a UI, plus it has 16x16 versions of Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, Webdings, Marlett, and Zapf Dingbats as a result of covering most of Unicode (65422 glyphs, the maximum before FontForge starts to cause issues.)
It even has charts that go up and down, and news symbols. Basically, it could REALLY make LCD Smartie better to add Unicode, especially because non-ASCII emails can actually work.

In essence, LCD Smartie is *almost* perfect, with the exception of it not embracing Unicode in a way that would actually be really helpful, instead still targeting stuff like the HD44780 almost exclusively, though that is due to change soon according to the devs.

Edit: I didn't realize it was the same thread, sorry about that.