How come

dwombat · Post by **dwombat** » February 27th, 2007, 6:51 am

I am just getting into this LCD.I downloaded and unzipped Smartie 5.3 into a folder and also installed MBM.I went to Smartie folder and clicked on Smartie icon and up comes the Smartie LCD window,with all the screens working.My question is two fold.I gather it dosen't install and if it brings up the imatation LCD,why do we need a LCD.I run it on Win98SE.Great little program and sorry if these question seem dumb,Dennis

Post by **mattcro** » February 27th, 2007, 12:50 pm

There's no installer as such. You just unzip the files to a suitable folder and run Smartie.

The on-screen LCD emulator window is just there to help with configuring "screens" (Smartie's configurable info pages that display system stats, media info etc) and troubleshooting real hardware LCDs.

One purpose for having an external hardware LCD is to display system or media info when you're watching a DVD or playing a game. You don't want a little virtual LCD on the screen in front of your film or game, so we use an LCD mounted in the PC case or a small enclosure on the desk.

For everyday use, you can see at a glance what track is playing in your media player, what the latest news headlines are, the weather forecast, if you have new mail, what your CPU temp is, network transfer speed.... etc, all without having to open any windows/popups or switch applications. If you have a media PC connected to a TV, you can see when the next recording is scheduled for, whether it's currently recording, etc, without the TV switched on.

There are heaps of uses for a small, separate LCD connected to your PC. Admittedly, some of it is just "eye-candy" like Winamp spectrum visualizations, but there are many serious uses too. You can use a small LCD to show network server health status for example.

dwombat · Post by **dwombat** » March 2nd, 2007, 7:38 am

mattcro,
Thanks for good description and I agree, never thought in those terms.Now have you any source for LCD,as I have one coming from a fellow in Germany[ocinside] and you have to hardwire the thing for a serial connection.Well after I ordered it I find this place called cwlinux.com,and they sell the LCD with or without the keypad and done up with serial or usb with cables and all the links to Smartie and the linux programs to run the LCD.Have you a better place or am I going in the right direction.Thanks in advance foe your advice,Dennis

Post by **mattcro** » March 2nd, 2007, 12:09 pm

I made my own LCD interface using a microcontroller, so it connects to the serial port and emulates a Matrix Orbital display. There are a few similar projects documented on this forum. Making your own like this involves microcontroller programming and careful electronics assembly.

If you don't have much electronics experience, it's best to get a ready-made LCD module like the CWLinux ones. They will cost more but you know it will work and they are easy to connect/install. Some people have had problems getting parallel port connections to work, and some new PCs don't even have a parallel port.

I'm not sure if the CWLinux LCDs are properly supported in Smartie yet. They use a different communication protocol, but I think there is a driver for Smartie in development. See this thread for info.

Alternatively, you can look for a reasonably priced Matrix Orbital, CrystalFontz, IRTrans or similar Smartie-compatible display.