Cheap LCD's for trade/sell

P!-Ro · 2010-08-16 21:36

I recently got my hands on a bunch of 1x16 LCD's and I'm willing to sell them cheaply or trade them for electronics or computer parts. The part number for these LCD's is AC161B-YA70H.

Data sheet:
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/277445/ZETTLER/AC161B.html

Price: $3 for 1-4,
$2.50 for 5-9,
$2 for 10+

All I need is your email and address by PM. For trades, talk to me by PM and I'll work something out.

Note: I haven't tested them on the Propeller yet, I'll do that tomorrow and post the results. This display is similar to other LCD drivers in the OBEX, hopefully making it plug-and-play.

I currently have 25 but can get up to 175 more tomorrow, depending on demand.

Also: Half the displays have a female connectors soldered on them, the other half don't. If you want a specific type please let me know.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 00:21

I have gotten the LCD to work well with the Propeller using this object in 8 bit mode:
http://obex.parallax.com/objects/104/
I will have to try the 4 bit version later.

There is one thing that I noticed during testing, however, that you must know about. Although it is a 16x1 character LCD it acts like a 8x2. If data is too long it will be cut off in the center until the command is sent to take it to the next line. Here is my example code:

lcd.start
lcd.str(string("Testing"))
lcd.move(1,2)
lcd.dec(123)

If the "lcd.move(1,2)" is not included then the data going past the center of the screen will not show.

Because I know this is an annoyance to anybody using this LCD, I'm willing to give away 5 LCD's to the first person to come up with a fix. If the offer stands for a long time, I'll make it 10.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 10:01

I'm in a good mood, so drop the price by 50 cents. Its now $1.50 for 10-19, $1 for 20+. Do keep in mind these are brand-new displays, they still have a screen protector on them. They also have large sized text making them easy too see. Normal cost for these would be $6 or more each.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 10:40

LCD 4 bit test works! I also placed the Parallax 16x2 LCD by it for a size comparison. As you can see this LCD is much larger.

Also--forgot to mention in top post. It's also 10 free LCD's to anyone who can fix the 8x2 problem.

Sound fair enough?

Spiral_72 · 2010-08-17 10:43

OK. so I'm ignorant. I think I posted a message on your visitor page instead of a PM. I'm not seeing the PM button on this new forum. It used to be under your avatar...... I thought.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 10:48

Yeah I saw that, no problem. Just to answer your question here I'm planning to use google checkout. I've never used it but I know someone who has, so hopefully it will work out. All I need is email and address and I can send you a form to order it.

eod_punk · 2010-08-17 11:07

Spiral_72 wrote: »

OK. so I'm ignorant. I think I posted a message on your visitor page instead of a PM. I'm not seeing the PM button on this new forum. It used to be under your avatar...... I thought.

If you click the username, above the avatar, a menu shows up. The second link from the top is for sending a PM.

Spiral_72 · 2010-08-17 11:14

eod_punk wrote: »

If you click the username, above the avatar, a menu shows up. The second link from the top is for sending a PM.

HA! Right you are. Thanks. Good grief.

Ding-Batty · 2010-08-17 11:49

@pi'd,

You may not be able to solve the 2x8 problem -- the KS0066 is like the HD44780 -- it addresses 40 segments (5 dots * 8 characters) by 16 "common" lines (8 dots x 2 characters). That can be organized several ways, but the most common is 2x8 characters.

These chips can address more characters per _row_ with "extension driver" chips (e.g. KS0065B, KS0063B). But for the very low-end LCDs, I wouldn't be surprised if there were no extension driver chips, resulting in a display that acts like a 2x8 display.

At this link you will see several people reporting on the memory to displayed character mappings for 1x16 displays, several of which reported an organization that is more like 2x8 in that the two 8-character ranges are not adjacent in memory:
http://home.iae.nl/users/pouweha/lcd/lcd0.shtml#_1_line_displays

Perhaps the LCDDEMO code could be modified to "know" about this limitation and adjust for it... Hmmm, perhaps I feel a small project coming on... Guess I will have to order a few cheap displays

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 12:10

I'd be happy to send you the free displays if you modified the object to work

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 12:28

I talked to the guy who's helping me with the orders and he's going to loan me the money to get the rest of the LCD displays (so there are plenty to buy

) He said he's busy until this evening so anyone who orders will get their form tonight. After that once you pay I'll ship it out immediately.

BTW, he said I lowered the price too soon. But thats no problem, I hope?

zappman · 2010-08-17 16:35

pi'd wrote: »

I'm in a good mood, so drop the price by 50 cents. Its now $1.50 for 10-19, $1 for 20+. Do keep in mind these are brand-new displays, they still have a screen protector on them. They also have large sized text making them easy too see. Normal cost for these would be $6 or more each.

Pi'd,

I just sent you a PM about the LCD Displays.

Regards,

zappman

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 21:48

All the invoices have been shipped out to those who ordered, so once you pay it will be shipped to you. The shipping cost is $5 for 10 LCD's.

The orders have also put me above the water, so to speak, so in celebration of this I'm going back to the previous cost 50 cents higher (I know, bummer) as soon as I get back from talking to the the photographer tomorrow for senior pictures. Any orders sent before I make the post tomorrow will be at the discounted price. The time you have: I really don't know. Sometime after lunch

P!-Ro · 2010-08-17 23:35

Somebody very intelligent told me running a business isn't like running a charity. I got to thinking about those words tonight and I've descided I wholeheartedly disagree. Perhaps it makes me a fool, but either way I'll send the 50 cents extra in price to a charitable cause, or a little over $50 once I finish selling the LCD's. I'm not sure where yet, but I know a priest who's from Nigeria, so perhaps he could find a great place to invest it in perhaps a school or an anti-violence organization.

Anyways, best of wishes too you all and thank you to everyone who has purchased these LCD's so far.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-18 14:20

Okay the price is back to what it was. I didn't get any orders so hopefully you all want to donate? Anyway I talked to Reginald Nwauzor and he told me a good way to spend the $50 is to support a student trying to go to school. I don't know much more about it, but I'm headed to his place soon and I'll talk to him about it and post the info on this thread. If I can get everything set up I'll probably let anyone wanting to donate to help the cause.

Here are the donation specs:
5 LCD's - 20% of $12.50 donated - $2.50 to a good cause
10 LCD's - 25% of $20 donated - $5 to a good cause
20 LCD's - 33.3% of $30 donated - $10 to a good cause
or, when I get everything set up you can donate without buying LCD's

Spiral_72 · 2010-08-18 14:32

Perhaps help a future nerd / broke kid to buy his first Basic Stamp and dongle? Of course a computer would be a required, so I dunno if that's a deal breaker.

The description above pretty much described me as a kid. Dad give me a lot of neat junk though. Whatever he could scrap together

Edit:
Ah, maybe a BS is a little heavy..... some electronics junk, maybe 1000 in one kits or something? Those were always neat.

Ding-Batty · 2010-08-18 16:01

OK. I have made what I think are the needed changes to the LCDDEMO.spin object to support the "geometry" of this display correctly.

Unfortunately, I don't have any LCD displays (of any number of lines and columns) to test the code against, and I was unable to get my hands on one today to test the code.

So, instead of being a reasonable software engineer, and waiting until I could test the code before releasing it into the wild, I will just attach it here, optimistically hoping that it will "just work." But YMMV.

Pi'd, if you want to test this with one of the displays, I'd appreciate it. It should treat the display as having one 16-character long line, without needing any odd coding to use it.

Just as a note about the LCD Demo -- it has the geometry of the display hard-coded into the object in the CON section (as did the original demo from the OBEX). When using it with another display of different configuration, you should only have to change the number of lines and characters per line to get it to work. (Project for the future: make the object configurable when initialized...)

After performing the surgery, I have to fight the urge to completely rewrite it -- that my big weakness doing maintenance programming.

zappman · 2010-08-18 16:47

Ding-Batty, thanks for the changes to LCDDEMO.spin.
I don't have any of the displays yet, but I have ordered some from Pi'd.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-18 17:42

Okay wow I've found myself very busy all of a sudden. I'm buying 200 LCD's in and hour and then I'll package up the LCD's to everyone who has purchased so far. As of now I've had two people offer $10 and $5 dollars even though they purchased before the price increase.

I talked to Reginald and it seems the best person I could support is Monica, a young gal in her early 20's trying to go to school. Her mom died years ago, and her dad had a hernia last year so he can't work any longer.

Unfortunately I don't know much more about her right now but Reginald promised to ask her and send me some more information on her Friday. As soon as I get it I'll post it on these forums so all of you donating can know where your money is going.

Right now there are two ways for anyone donating to pay: send a check to me or Reginald and pay postage, or have 3% deducted and pay with Google checkout. If you want to donate just send me a pm, and leave your email address if you want me to personally send you more info about Monica or others needing help once I get it.

Thanks everyone for your support! Hopefully selling these displays here and elsewhere I can get over a hundred dollars to support Monica and other needy people in Nigeria!

P!-Ro · 2010-08-18 22:12

I have packaged every order that has been paid for so far and will ship them out first thing tomorrow.

As for Monica, I have the best possible news. Thanks to one very generous forum member the money I have going to her has jumped from $15 to $65! For all of the people who want to donate I've decided to go ahead and use Google checkout and I'll personally repay any money taken out by processing. If you already told me the amount you want to donate I'll send you a form to pay for it tomorrow. If any others of you want to donate just send me your email and the amount and I'll send you the invoice. I can also include the amount you want to donate with an order of LCD's.

Thankfully, since I got more LCD's than I originally planned, I should be able to donate $100 once all these LCD's get sold, however long that takes.

P!-Ro · 2010-08-18 22:16

@batty--I didn't get any text out of your demo. One thing that I noticed however which may have nothing to do with it is that the tried and true code I'm using takes 7 pins. Your code is modified for 6. Can you include your source before it was modified? I would like to try that first and see if it really is the problem.

Ding-Batty · 2010-08-19 06:38

The code I started with is from the OBEX -- the original is:

http://obex.parallax.com/objects/106/

This is a write-only object -- it does not read the busy signal from the display.

What code have you been using -- one of the PASM-based objects?

Ding-Batty · 2010-08-19 06:43

@Pi'd, the LCD object I am using is the same one that you referred to in your second post in this thread.

logan996 · 2010-08-19 17:14

Hi Pi'd, im sorry but i really dont get what your pricing is, ive read over it but still dont get it, so how much would say.. 6 displays cost? and if i wanted just 1 how would 1 just cost? i really would love to have some but i first have to get an idea of the price (parents), Thanks!!!

P!-Ro · 2010-08-19 18:21

I know how that goes Logan, I still have to do that myself. I can't wait until college next year...

Anyway here is the pricing:
Price: $3 for 1-4,
$2.50 for 5-9,
$2 for 10-19
$1.50 for 20+

The reason I discount it so much with quantity is because it really is easier to handle. But, to answer your question, 1 would cost $3, and 6 would cost $15.

@Batty--I must have done that by mistake, but, if it works, it will be much better due to it using 1 less pin. I'll test it out when I can and let you know what happens.

Ding-Batty · 2010-08-19 20:52

@Pi'd,

Well, I don't think the LCD object (104 from ObEx) is particularly good -- its string output routine doesn't even use the same end-of-string convention as Spin in the Propeller Tool (Spin strings end with a zero character, but the strings handled by that LCD object end in $FF, ugh.)

So let me know which LCD object you used, and I will take a look at modifying that one.

And I have given into my worse impulse, and I'm trying my hand at writing my own LCD driver object in Spin, that should be more flexible -- at least, that's the plan...

P!-Ro · 2010-08-19 21:08

It's this one: http://obex.parallax.com/objects/106/
I was just double-checking to make sure but it isn't working for some reason. I think I don't have the pinout quite right...

P!-Ro · 2010-08-19 21:18

Ah, I found the problem. In the code it uses an object called "timing" which I don't have, nor do I know where to get it. So, instead I just put in the code for the 15ms and 5ms pauses. Unfortunately I forgot to add the "+cnt" on one of them so it didn't work. It is the right object though, I promise

P!-Ro · 2010-08-19 21:39

Good news--the invoices for everyone who wanted to donate have been sent.

Ding-Batty · 2010-08-19 21:39

@Pi'd,

That one is "dumber" than the one I modified, in that it doesn't really know anything about line lengths, etc. So it might be a little more work, but I'll think about it some more. It also doesn't really handle the Busy bit either, even though it connects to the R/W signal on the display.

Also, the pinouts are odd -- the default version maps the data pins DB4 to DB7 in reverse order:

DB4 is P11
DB5 is P10
DB6 is P9
DB7 is P8

Not the order I would have done it -- the low order bits should stay low-order.

But I did "borrow" that wonderful comment block documenting many things about the HD44780 for the new version I started working on

P!-Ro · 2010-08-19 21:47

I'm sorry that it's "dumb", if you've got a better one I'll gladly test it. Here are my pinouts:
RS = 6
RW = 5
E = 4

DB4 = 3
DB7 = 0
Changing it will only make my life easier when I test it :scool:

Cheap LCD's for trade/sell

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