[Noisebridge-discuss] Fwd: HW donations (LCD panels)

[Andy Isaacson]

Hello hackers,

We received the following interesting offer from a local company.  Does
anyone want to get this hardware donated?  I suspect we can build some
awesome display walls with these LCD panels.

I'm happy to take on the logistical challenge of getting the hardware
from the company's office to 2169, but I don't have bandwidth to figure
out the panels and put them to good use.  So I need someone to step up
as "LCD grandmaster" and sort the hardware once it arrives.

If nobody steps up, I'll suggest the company donate the hardware to
another local nonprofit.


> The company I work for has some assorted LCD panels, touch screens,
> etc. from an older prototype that was discontinued. I'm wondering if
> Noisebridge might be interested in them, and if so whether you might
> be able to write us a donation letter in return.  
> 
> Some of these are fairly standard, some are specially cut displays for
> a super-widescreen Android platform we were working on, some have DVI
> interface boards and some are probably mostly useful for taking apart
> and playing with the diffusers & assorted parts (unless someone wants
> to invest time in writing drivers & going through a bit of work).


> < 15.6 inch 2/3 cutting >
> - LCD without Touch : 1
> - LCD with Touch : 2
> - Only Touch screen panel : 105
> * Anybody who want to use them needs to implement their own driver on
> * their own platform.
>   Touch driver is very easy, but LCD, we spent over a month for that
> development.
> 
> < 21.5 inch 1/2 cutting >
> - LCD with Touch : 10
> - LCD with Touch but no touch driver board : 1
> - Only Touch screen panel : 1
> * We have some of LCD driver boards with DVI I/F
> 
> < Easy use sample >
> - 10.1 inch Touch sample with USB I/F : 1
> - 15.6 inch no cutting display with chassis and DVI/RGB I/F : 5
> - 19.0 inch no cutting display with chassis and DVI/RGB I/F : 3 ***
>   Note: I think these only have VGA inputs, not DVI
> 
> < Else >
> - 15.6 inch cutting sample(not working) : 3
> - 15.6 inch before cutting : 3
> - 21.5 inch before cutting : 2
> 
> 
> "Touch screen panel" refers to just the touch overlay, not an LCD.  It's
> my understanding that the touch panels all have I2C interface, except
> the ones that explicitly have USB.  It's my understanding that these
> shouldn't be hard to interface.
> 
> "cutting" refers to some of the displays actually being physically cut
> in size by an LCD company -- it was cheaper for prototyping to have full
> sized screens cut to size than to have to-size LCDs built from scratch.
> The panels work -- they are just physically smaller, though they are
> driven like a full sized display.  
>
> The "easy to use" panels have a sheet metal chassis -- ones i looked at
> include VESA mount.  I think the 19" ones are 1920x1080; 15 inch are
> 1280 x 800 I believe.
> 
> The LCD panels that don't have DVI / VGA are going to be more
> challenging to interface (if someone wants to put in the time, the board
> they were interfaced to is loosely based off of a Beagleboard XM
> IIRC; I don't remember what the tricky parts were of getting them up,
> but it wasn't straight-forward).  


Thanks,
-andy