LCD Smartie

Hello all.

I've just installed LCDSmartie and looks like the best software for VFDs.
But I have some problems with my VFD.

This is Samsung 20L201DA3 that can be connected by RS232.

I integrated RS232 to USB converter inside and everything works with only one USB cable



I tested it with "vfdtools2007" and everything worked just fine.
But when I use LCDSmartie not everything works well.
I tried every display plugin and only plugin that works fine is "testdriver.dll" but it's not perfect.



Here is simple one row screen setting and everything that is in first row somehow copies to second row.

What should I do?
Can someone make correct display plugin for this display?

Anyone?

Do you have the command set used by that display?

The test driver needs configuring for your display's commands (if you haven't already edited it). You can edit the file "testdriver.ini" in your Smartie folder (create this file in Notepad if it doesn't exist). You'll have to select the testdriver in Smartie, and maybe also restart Smartie. See http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/testdriver.html for a description of the contents of this file. My sample testdriver.ini below is for a Matrix Orbital display. Each number is just a byte value (in decimal) to send to the display.
I found a datasheet for a display similar to yours at http://www.sva-e.com/resourcefolder/upl ... 887933.pdf. I don't know if it's fully compatible, but you can try using the datasheet's VFD command reference to create the required entries in the testdriver.ini file. For example, I think you need something like GotoLine1=11 (the Home command) and GotoLine2=31,36,1,2 (go to line 2 column 1). There is a native command to initialise the display, so you can use Init=27,64 (and the same for Fini if you want to blank the display on Smartie shutdown).

caesar wrote:Do you have the command set used by that display?

I don't and that is problem.

mattcro wrote:The test driver needs configuring for your display's commands (if you haven't already edited it). You can edit the file "testdriver.ini" in your Smartie folder (create this file in Notepad if it doesn't exist). You'll have to select the testdriver in Smartie, and maybe also restart Smartie. See http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/testdriver.html for a description of the contents of this file. My sample testdriver.ini below is for a Matrix Orbital display. Each number is just a byte value (in decimal) to send to the display.

Code: Select all

[Test Driver]
Init=254,66,254,84,254,88,254,75,254,82,254,68,254,65,254,152,127,254,80,125
Fini=254,70,254,88
GotoLine1=254,71,1,1
GotoLine2=254,71,1,2
GotoLine3=254,71,1,3
GotoLine4=254,71,1,4

I found a datasheet for a display similar to yours at http://www.sva-e.com/resourcefolder/upl ... 887933.pdf. I don't know if it's fully compatible, but you can try using the datasheet's VFD command reference to create the required entries in the testdriver.ini file. For example, I think you need something like GotoLine1=11 (the Home command) and GotoLine2=31,36,1,2 (go to line 2 column 1). There is a native command to initialise the display, so you can use Init=27,64 (and the same for Fini if you want to blank the display on Smartie shutdown).

Thanks very much.
It seems to work great.

I'll try to test it more later but for now it works great.
Thanks again.

Glad to hear you've got the display behaving in Smartie now. The test driver's main limitation is that it does not support custom characters, even if the display itself has custom-char support. It's mainly designed as a quick-fix driver that lets you test a display in preparation for writing a dedicated driver.

Yes, I can notice that.
But for me that is not very important.

I want to add Celsius characters if possible.
Can I just add code for that?

Have you tried searching all of the extended character set?

The VFD's i've been using do support the degree symbol but are high up in the 200's of the character map (old IBM ASCII map).

Thats a rather long and complicated initialisation string for your display, the one i've been using for my displays is;
Someone else in a similar thread (in this section) just asked a very similar question to yours. as you can see by the charmap entry I had to add the solid block character for the bargraphs as it did not display properly.

I too have made my VFD run directly from USB, i'm guessing you used the FT232RL too?

Dave.

According to that datasheet I found for the 20L203DA5 (see link in my 1st post), there is a degrees symbol (that's what it looks like in the character table) at character 248 (F8 hex) - you can try adding a charmap entry in testdriver.ini to map 176 to 248 (I think 176 is Smartie's degrees symbol).

The only reason my init string is so long in my sample ini file is that this is what Smartie sends to Matrix Orbital displays on startup and I just copied it. It resets all sorts of stuff like fan outputs, general purpose outputs, backlight level...

Thanks mattcro.
You helped me once again

It works.