1602 LED Smartie by Sure Electronics

[tdg8934]

I purchased a 1602 Red LED Smartie（Edition I by Sure Electronics: http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=1047

I found the download materials but did not see any manual to know how to configure this LED device. Has anyone done this yet sucessfully?

[mattcro]

I don't own one of these - I just had a quick look at the sureelectronics site and the downloads for this product appear to only be a demo video and the virtual serial port driver... no manual.

Install the driver if you haven't already. Connect the display board and power it up, then look in device manager to find the COM port number (it should be shown as something like Silicon Labs CP210x) and put this number into Smartie's display config (see http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/MOSetup.html ). You will have to guess at the baud rate. Set the display plugin to matrix (a bit of a guess here...) and see if you can get anything to come up.

[tdg8934]

Thanks for the help. I saw that information in the manual for the Sure Electronic 1602 LCD Smartie (Edition I) but this is not an LCD but 8 sets of (32x8 LEDs) in what they call the 1602 LED Smartie (Edition I). It is very confusing that they are using similar naming on 2 of their products. I have tried COM6,9600 and a couple of other baud rates with the conformed and checked COM6 driver for the Cp210x driver. I am using Windows 7 too but running the LCD Smartie 5.4 software as Vista so this should be ok either way. Problems exits for both Windows configurations. Any other help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[limbo]

First of all i like to say that Sure Electronics should support you.
I thing that the whole implementation is a simulator of an 16x2 LCD (and thats a good idea as far i can see on the speccs and the pictures).
So there are two thing to have in mind while you trying to connect this device to computer and make it work with LCD Smartie:
1. Driver to use on LCD Smartie configuration. There are lot of options, but the most common are three types (i'm not saying that the device is compatible with one of them, you have to test it) Matrxi Orbital, Crystal Fontz, HD44780.
2. Connection type and possibly a needed driver for your OS. (probably you dont need one if the connection type is RS232)


Finally checking the answers on Sure Electronics pages I found this :

Where is the manual? How do I configure this? I found the other download material but no manual showing what driver or DLL to use. Nothing works so far.
tdg8934 2010-01-16 02:17:06
The manual will soon be available. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Administrator:xiachangning 2010-01-19 10:49:38

That is ridiculus
Especially for a device with a price of $99.

I understan you are in hard position have you tried to mail them directly?

[tdg8934]

Sure Electronics emailed me back last week and provided a link for updated USB-UART driver software (including Windows 7). https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pag ... ivers.aspx

After I uninstalled the old CP210x driver and installed the new Windows 7 version, everything worked. It was not an issue with the MATRIX.DLL file after all.

Just wanted to provide closure to this. Very nice display.

[caesar]

Thanks for letting us know, great that you solved it!