LCDProc and the PCIDEA 20×4 LCD display

A couple of weeks ago, I got it into my head that the death of Blinkenlights was a bad thing. My primary PC already has a little LCD on the keyboard (I got a deal on a first-generation Logitech G15 gaming keyboard... not just useful for gamers) and, combined with LCDProc, it makes a great diagnostic display for figuring out why your newest creation is freezing up the GUI before you kill it. ...so I went on eBay and ordered an inexpensive Chinese LCD display for my experimentation machine. The PCIDEA 20x4 USB drive-bay LCD. As the manufacturer claims, it IS fully compatible with the CrystalFontz driver in LCDProc... but they neglect to tell you which of the three CrystalFontz drivers to use and how to configure it. Here is your answer in the form of an LCDd.conf snippet: [gist]http://gist.github.com/224847[/gist] The key elements which aren't default and aren't immediately obvious to the layperson seem to be the use of the CFontzPacket driver, Model=631, /dev/ttyUSB0, and a 19200 bitrate.

A couple of weeks ago, I got it into my head that the death of Blinkenlights was a bad thing. My primary PC already has a little LCD on the keyboard (I got a deal on a first-generation Logitech G15 gaming keyboard… not just useful for gamers) and, combined with LCDProc, it makes a great diagnostic display for figuring out why your newest creation is freezing up the GUI before you kill it.

…so I went on eBay and ordered an inexpensive Chinese LCD display for my experimentation machine. The PCIDEA 20×4 USB drive-bay LCD. As the manufacturer claims, it IS fully compatible with the CrystalFontz driver in LCDProc… but they neglect to tell you which of the three CrystalFontz drivers to use and how to configure it. Here is your answer in the form of an LCDd.conf snippet:

[server]
Driver=CFontzPacket

## CrystalFontz packet driver (for CF631, CF633 & CF635) ##
[CFontzPacket]

# Select the LCD model [default: 633; legal: 631, 633, 635]
Model=631
# Select the output device to use [default: /dev/lcd]
Device=/dev/ttyUSB0
# Select the LCD size [default: depending on model: 635: 20x4, 631: 20x2, 633: 16x2]
Size=20x4
# Set the initial contrast [default: 560; legal: 0 - 1000]
Contrast=350
# Set the initial brightness [default: 1000; legal: 0 - 1000]
Brightness=1000
# Set the initial off-brightness [default: 0; legal: 0 - 1000]
# This value is used when the display is normally
# switched off in case LCDd is inactive
OffBrightness=50
# Set the communication speed [default: 9600; legal: 1200, 2400, 9600, 19200, 115200]
Speed=19200
# Reinitialize the LCD's BIOS [default: no; legal: yes, no]
# I want to reboot the LCD to make sure we start from a known state
Reboot=yes

The key elements which aren’t default and aren’t immediately obvious to the layperson seem to be the use of the CFontzPacket driver, Model=631, /dev/ttyUSB0, and a 19200 bitrate.

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.