I'm actually using one of them right now in a 5 1/4" bay in my housebot server. I'm running LCDC which is great software for driving these displays. I have it cycling through all kinds of system and network information. However, as cool as that is, I thought an even better use of one of these displays would be to mount it in the wall in my living room so that I could have a status display of various home automation data. Even better would be adding some type of keypad so that you could enter commands (like disarming my housebot based alarm system -- which I currently do via a PIN entered on an X10 PalmPad).
Just curious if anybody has done anything like this.
OK... Admittidly I only glanced at the specs page, so it might already support it.
But I've seen serial versions of little displays like this. They might even have USB. All you would need to do is define a serial device in HB, then pipe data out to the serial port! Yes... It could be as simple as that.
Of course that would only give you text, but if these things are loaded with chracters sets that contain little symbols/icons, you can probably call those by a specific ascii sequence or something to have them displayed.
On my caddx alarm system, on my todo list to write a script/plugin that will pipe information to my character based alarm keypad. So HB => Caddx => Caddx place info on keypad.
I have one of these displays right now running on my housbot server. I'm driving it using a program called LCDC. It is a serial device (and they do have USB versions as well). I've got it hooked up to a USB to serial adapter because I'm out of serial ports. I know there are extended characters sets (because I'm using them) although I'm not positive if this is built into the LCD or if it's a feature of LCDC. However, I'm pretty sure even though they are character based LCDs that you can display crude graphics on them because they allow you to address each pixel.
I feel fairly confident it would be pretty easy to drive one of these displays directly via housebot. The biggest challenge I think is on the hardware side. For example, wiring the device so that it can be hooked up in a remote location (far from the housebot server) as well as fabricating some kind way to install it in the wall and make it look professional.
However, if you come up with a way to do what I'm looking for with a keypad/lcd device (like the Caddx) that is already made to be mounted on a wall that would be great.
Has anybody programmed a security system lcd/keypad console to work in this way (independent of the alarm system it was designed for)? In a nutshell what I would like to do is use a security system lcd/keypad as a remote control to housebot to display status information as well as arm/disarm my housebot software based DIY security system.
You can buy it with a double gang wall plate and keypad overlay. Apparently you can hook multiple displays up to the same serial connection because each display can be uniquely addressable!
