[HN Gopher] How to convert your old laptop screen into an extern...
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How to convert your old laptop screen into an external monitor
Author : louwrentius
Score : 298 points
Date : 2021-03-13 01:21 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.slashdigit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.slashdigit.com)
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Is there any "scaler" universal controller board for driving a
| MacBook Pro 15" Retina LCD? I miss my personal laptop's PPI when
| I'm at work. It's not just about the number of pixels, it's also
| the pixel size.
| djid wrote:
| As it happens I was looking in to this yesterday and came
| across one for 2014 and earlier models:
| http://dp2mbpr.rozsnyo.com
| aryamaan wrote:
| Tangent: looking for a monitor recommendations for programming
| purpose. And also somthing which wouldn't be too harsh on the
| pocket.
| brenainn wrote:
| Dell U2412 or it's successor U2415. Cheap, IPS, 16:10, decent
| adjustable stand.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I can't recommend the U2415. Unfortunately this is one of
| these models where Dell chose to tarnish the Ultrasharp
| series with crap so you can't just say any more to "just get
| an Dell Ultrasharp".
|
| The U2415 has a horrible power supply which gets very noisy
| by design and it has a 6 bit panel with noticeable temporal
| dithering.
|
| I'd pick one of the 2560x14440 U27xx models (after checking
| they're not crap like the U2715). But beware that some of the
| older models (like the U2713) don't take the full resolution
| over HDMI and need Displayport or dual-link DVI.
| tinco wrote:
| Look for these second hand, the 27" versions are much better,
| and I think many developers upgraded to those.
| abledon wrote:
| https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/program...
| rasz wrote:
| >You can get one for as low as $16
|
| step 1: go to thrift store
|
| step 2: buy normal $5 15-17 LCD monitor
| michrassena wrote:
| I think for most people this is the better option from a cost
| perspective. I'm nearly certain I've never purchased a new
| monitor, either CRT or LCD. I like the idea of repurposing
| laptop screens in concept, but I'm not sure what problem it's
| trying to solve.
| zamadatix wrote:
| From my personal experience the problem of already having a
| working display right in front of you but it being no longer
| (reasonable) to use.
|
| You can set up something like mouse without borders or
| something that uses it as a over the network display or buy
| these controllers and make a custom case/mount/stand but in
| the end you're probably better off accepting you're better
| off buying a new monitor even though this one works great you
| "just" need to detach it from the laptop.
|
| For as many that say "but I did and it works great" you don't
| really see many people going out of their way to get a laptop
| screen instead of a monitor prior to the cost already being
| sunk. That being said sometimes it's useful when you
| explicitly set out to build a budget custom video wall
| (11520x6480 52" can be had for cheaper than one might
| imagine) but usually you're buying specific panels at that
| point not finding yourself in possession of 9 of the same
| model laptop display by accident.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| On the flipside, does anyone know if there's any caveats to
| "recycling" a laptop's motherboard? I've got a laptop that has
| awful thermals but decent hardware. One of the fans is dead, and
| I've attempted to replace it but I guess the header itself is
| busted.* The processor and GPU are just wasted in there as they
| throttle hard on basic workloads. So, I've been meaning to rip
| the board out and make an HTPC out of it. I'm not too experienced
| with electronics to know if there's any issues I could run into,
| so I've been holding off on it. I would love to see if anyone
| else has done something like that.
|
| * Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan is
| what busted the header. I'm not sure because the previous fan was
| dead and the new fan I put in didn't spin, but that's part of why
| I don't feel comfortable just winging it.
| userbinator wrote:
| Leaked schematics are available for a lot of them (even famous
| ones like Apple, as Louis Rossmann can tell you...) Component-
| level repair can be possible.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| >does anyone know if there's any caveats to "recycling" a
| laptop's motherboard?
|
| The biggest caveat in re-using old compute hardware IMO is
| power consumption, power-efficiency has been one consistent
| improvement in every new generation of computer chips. So, a
| new Raspberry Pi is _almost always as capable as your old
| hardware for HTPC but more power efficient.
|
| _ Except maybe say extremely high quality video, say 8K 10 bit
| video.
|
| >Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan
| is what busted the header.
|
| You can try passive heatsink or passing the fan thermal
| management to separate unit altogether like Corsair Commandar(I
| haven't tried it).
|
| You can also use your hardware for only GPGPU applications & HW
| accel on GPU to reduce load on CPU e.g. Separate stream
| encoding machine.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > The biggest caveat in re-using old compute hardware IMO is
| power consumption, power-efficiency has been one consistent
| improvement in every new generation of computer chips. So, a
| new Raspberry Pi is almost always as capable as your old
| hardware for HTPC but more power efficient.
|
| yes but your typical laptop rarely exceeds 30W, so if your
| electricity is priced at $0.12 per kWh, and you run that
| laptop 24x7 for a year:
|
| 22.32 kWh per month
|
| same as
|
| $2.67 of electricity
| arcticbull wrote:
| Or 3.6% of a Bitcoin transaction per month haha
| DJBunnies wrote:
| Being snarky is fun, but in this case misleading.
|
| Transactions don't consume this electricity, competing
| for the next block does.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| If you're worried about power consumption from a cost
| perspective, it's going to take a long time to break even
| from the cost of new hardware, even for a cheap pi.
|
| If you're worried about it from an environmental perspective,
| it often takes more energy / resource mining / pollution to
| manufacture a new piece of hardware than the total amount
| saved from not running older hardware over a longer lifetime.
| Running a computer / smartphone / tablet until it doesn't
| work well enough for its purpose is generally better for the
| environment than upgrading because shiny, because it slightly
| reduces the demand for new hardware.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I had a nightmare last night that my 3 year old
| smartphone's screen got horribly scratched enough to be a
| constant nuisance but not bad enough to interfere with its
| function, and I had to decide whether or not to give up and
| upgrade.
| rland wrote:
| This isn't necessarily related to the discussion at hand,
| but it reminded me:
|
| I got a huge crack (https://ibb.co/1mPxC6C) in my
| smartphone's screen right around New Year's. One of my
| goals was to use my phone less (less social media). The
| crack is a big, ~.25in black diagonal line across the
| screen, but the touch still works. Because it's a
| diagonal crack, I can still read whole text
| messages/emails/etc, I just have to scroll the right way.
|
| It's now March and I still haven't fixed my screen,
| mostly out of laziness since I'm home all the time, but
| also because it's done wonders to my smartphone use. I
| practically don't idly scroll anymore, just because it's
| really annoying to do so, and I don't miss it at all.
| Everyone thinks I'm nuts, but I haven't read twitter in
| like 3 months so who's the crazy one?
|
| I'd say, don't bother upgrading! Enjoy that the addictive
| quality of your smartphone is diminished.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Lol, thankfully it was just a dream and my screen is
| still flawless! I did stop bothering to put protective
| glass on it after that cracked a few months ago.
|
| The only thing I read obsessively on my phone these days
| is hacker news. :-) I stopped using most social media 6
| or 7 years ago.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > If you're worried about power consumption from a cost
| perspective, it's going to take a long time to break even
| from the cost of new hardware, even for a cheap pi.
|
| That depends a lot on where you live. In Germany, prices
| scratch 0.3EUR/kWh. A new Pi sets you back 60EUR [0].
| Assuming you save 20W and it's on 24/7, you'll break even
| in just above a year[1].
|
| [0] I know it's marketed as cheaper, but you never get it
| for 35EUR and then you still need cables and an SD card.
|
| [1] you save 52.50EUR per year
| d3nj4l wrote:
| First of all, thanks!
|
| > The biggest caveat in re-using old compute hardware IMO is
| power consumption
|
| This is a _relatively_ recent laptop (it has a GTX 1060
| inside!), and I can 't get hardware that capable for cheap
| enough for it to be worth it. My only reason for making it an
| HTPC is that I don't want to see it gather dust on a shelf
| for no reason.
|
| > You can try passive heatsink
|
| I've considered that + other cheap ways, but I'm concerned
| about mounting. The CPU runs hot, even when well cooled, so
| I'd need some way to get good contact with the die without
| harming it. There's a few screw slots around it, but those
| are for the heat pipes it comes with. That's the biggest
| challenge in this project from my perspective.
|
| > You can also use your hardware for only GPGPU applications
| & HW accel on GPU to reduce load on CPU e.g. Separate stream
| encoding machine
|
| Unfortunately, I don't have any use cases where that could
| come in handy. Working a full-time job killed my dreams of
| producing content :'). I just want this to sit at my 4K TV
| and play content without snooping on me, like all the big
| name boxes do.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I have a 5 year old laptop whose display died after 2
| years. Rather disappointing that high-end stuff doesn't
| last and manufactures don't seem to care, but that's
| another rant. I plugged it into my TV to use for emulators.
| It's fun to play occasionally, but overall I hate it
| because of how whiny and high maintenance windows 10 is.
| Every single freaking time I want to use it, I have to pull
| it out from under the blu-ray player and reassure it of its
| insecurities. Every few days it will randomly wake up and
| start loudly revving its fans up and down too, just to
| remind me that it exists to torment me.
| stevehawk wrote:
| if you're just running emulators... linux?
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| When I looked into it 5 years ago, there were supposedly
| issues with it having a non-standard NVME interface
| firmware or something. There's a good chance that it
| would just work these days, but in my experience getting
| linux to run reliably on a laptop that wasn't designed
| for it can be tricky. It was originally a work laptop, so
| linux compatibility wasn't originally a consideration.
|
| Maybe I'll whip up a Linux live usb drive and try booting
| it this weekend!
| hattmall wrote:
| Mineral oil submersion for cooling may work
| dmos62 wrote:
| Or, keeping it in a moisture-conditioned freezer. Or, ...
| That's it, that's the only impractical idea I had. Oh
| wait, water cooling!
| alias_neo wrote:
| This is the key for me, and a major reason I've always
| avoided the cheap, older hardware off of eBay for home use.
| My server rack consists of new (released) at time of purchase
| hardware with power efficiency as a major focus.
|
| One measurement which really surprised me was that my 2019
| XPS 13 idles with about 1.5W, screen on according to
| powertop. That's less power than a Raspberry Pi takes to
| idle!
| swirepe wrote:
| You could sit the whole thing in front of a normal desk fan
| until you can get a usb one, if everything else seems
| functional.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| I've mentioned this in a sibling comment, but my concern with
| that is that it wouldn't be enough for a 45W CPU that runs
| fairly hot.
| whymauri wrote:
| I did this for my younger sister's first computer. We didn't
| have a lot of expendable cash, so I took my old laptop,
| stripped the motherblard out, mounted it on a makeshift open-
| air rig, and hooked it up to a second-hand monitor (laptop
| screen was irreparably broken). Served her well for three years
| or so.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| How did you get good contact with the CPU die? I've
| considered an open air setup even before I had a backup PC to
| be bold with the laptop, but I wasn't sure it could cool the
| CPU.
| moftz wrote:
| It won't be pretty but if you can access the CPU from the
| top or bottom, you can strap a desktop heatsink down with
| zipties running both ways around the laptop.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| I did this with a 2015 MacBook Pro, because I needed it
| to go full tilt and didn't want it to throttle. https://t
| witter.com/nehbit/status/1243329494481432581?s=21
|
| In my case, the weight of the fan connected to a 12v
| motorcycle battery was enough to make it not throttle at
| indefinite 100% load, I didn't have to zip tie anything.
| Mind that I did not remove the existing fans, just used
| thermal interface material on top of the existing heat
| sink, add some salvaged aluminium passive cooling sinks
| on top, and then on top of that, have the fan screwed
| into an Amazon shipping box so that the fan blades didn't
| hit the sinks.
| flower-giraffe wrote:
| You could just getting a 5v fan with a USB connector and
| plugging it into a USB port.
| prvc wrote:
| This is a pretty popular video, so many may already be aware of
| this type of project, but just in case:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fnsGHe8eE
| rzzzt wrote:
| Let me add three additional DIY Perks video links, as they
| are also relevant to the original topic (hopefully I'm not
| going overboard with these):
|
| - Build a DIY screen out of recycled parts for cheap:
| https://youtu.be/CfirQC99xPc
|
| - Building a USB-C touchscreen monitor:
| https://youtu.be/DrqdHVeBkp4
|
| - Transform a Damaged Laptop into an all-in-one desktop PC:
| https://youtu.be/8jeLCQ62vFk
|
| The Lenovo with the bent bottom case appeared in many
| episodes as illustration, until it finally got repurposed!
| blackrock wrote:
| I did wonder if you can create some type of laptop terminal KVM
| (keyboard video mouse) for a Mac Mini or small PC box.
|
| This way, it becomes a sort of portable desktop/laptop hybrid.
|
| Maybe someone can mill an exoframe box and sell it on Etsy, that
| allows you to plug in a monitor, keyboard, and the magic Apple
| trackpad for such an idea?
| penetraitor69 wrote:
| Dang, if only every laptop I've had die didn't tend to go screen-
| first.
| villgax wrote:
| Instead of having to buy another board, I'm planning on detaching
| the lid & flipping it backwards like a tablet. Then only using it
| for reading PDFs in portrait & hook up Leap Motion controller to
| it.
| gonesilent wrote:
| Too bad the screen is usually the first thing to have issues.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I've had batteries die on 2 laptops, motherboards on one. Never
| had a screen go bad. Off the top of my head this is on a herd
| of 10 laptops over 20 years.
| hattmall wrote:
| Batteries are an expected failure they are easily replacable
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Batteries in a good number of modern laptops are inside the
| device. Not that easy to replace - I've found some that are
| harder to replace than memory, drives and keyboards. Plus
| that's beside the point - my point is that in my experience
| screens don't fail that often - replaceable or not.
| toast0 wrote:
| That hasn't been the case in my sample size of ~ 10 laptops.
| Batteries wear out, hard drives die, cpus get old, but screens
| pretty much work; unless the backlight cable breaks (I repaired
| that for a friend multiple times; maybe my soldering wasn't the
| best though)
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Usually the power jack breaks and it stops charging.
|
| As far as I can tell, they make them flimsy and not
| replaceable on cheaper laptops on purpose. I shudder to think
| of the environmental impact.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Very few laptops also comes with screens worth reusing. It's
| getting better, but only a few models of laptop have screens
| I'd consider using, even as a secondary monitor.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Is there a good software-only solution for using a MacBook as an
| external display for another Mac?
|
| I have an old MacBook 12" that it would be nice to use as an
| extra display. I looked into this a few years ago and all the
| options had really poor video quality as they used Airplay (I
| would probably mainly use it for a terminal window so I'd want
| sharp text, I could handle a little lag)
| jraph wrote:
| If you only / mainly plan to use the terminal on this
| laptop,what about using a local terminal and ssh into the main
| computer? And maybe use Barrier to use the same mouse /
| keyboard for the two machines.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| That's actually a really good idea that I hadn't thought of!
| Of course it would be nice to have full flexibility to
| display whatever I want on there, but I think this would be
| useful. Great suggestion, thank you!
| ja27 wrote:
| I'd previously used AirServer for this. I don't remember bad
| quality but had a little lag and they got bit by some OS
| compatibility for a while.
|
| https://www.airserver.com/Mac
| Bancakes wrote:
| Or controller board for mac displays?
| dentalperson wrote:
| This is indeed cool. A lazier and less efficient solution for
| those that don't want to take apart the computer is synergy
| (https://symless.com/synergy and
| https://github.com/symless/synergy-core) which lets you share
| keyboard/mouse and clipboard over multiple computers.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Synergy's commercial nature of their product is weird and
| wrong, use barrier instead.
|
| https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Can you expand on why you think it's weird and wrong to
| charge for software?
|
| I'm not a developer and I first discovered Syngerg about 10
| years ago when I was working physical infrastructure and
| physical security in a data centre, and used it across my
| work provided Windows desktop and my personal (BYOD) Macbook
| Air.
|
| If I recall correctly I was able to use it for free
| initially, but as soon as I discovered I could pay for it I
| did.
| walrus01 wrote:
| In the specific case of Synergy, because it was originally
| open source and free. The people using the name Synergy now
| have sort of hijacked it. Synergy originated at SGI.
| ddalex wrote:
| Isn't often heard around HN that it's ok to charge for
| Open Source software ? If you don't want to pay for it,
| you're free to choose not to, but if others want to pay,
| what's in it for you?
|
| BTW the parts of Synergy that were Open Source are still
| Open Source, so you're free to download those and build
| them yourself if you so choose.
| j4yav wrote:
| They don't make it very easy to do so - my understanding
| is that's essentially what Barrier is (making it easy to
| use the open source parts of Synergy).
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Fair point, thanks for the response.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I got the impression the assumption is the laptop is otherwise
| dead (fried motherboard perhaps) and the screen is the main
| salvageable component.
| bayesianbot wrote:
| Since synergy is currently asking money for their main product,
| I've changed to fork called barrier (
| https://github.com/debauchee/barrier ).
|
| But +1 for the recommendation, so easy to set up and it works
| so well it feels like magic when using for first time.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| Is there a place to find a generic container to house the remote
| controller and allow button pressing? I'm unsure of where to
| look, or even what search terms to use.
| singhkays wrote:
| That's great but Windows Vista??
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Why do with repurposing your old laptop's monitor, when you can
| also reuse it's obsolete OS?
| yunyu wrote:
| The taskbar looks like Windows 7
| anonymfus wrote:
| Well that article was written in 2017 and extended support for
| Vista ended in 2017 too.
| mmerlin wrote:
| Mouse without Borders for Windows [0]
|
| Gives your main PC extra screens from spare laptops. Plus you can
| farm out secondary tasks (like run Chrome) on the ancillary
| screen devices.
|
| [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/wall-of-fame/mouse-
| wi...
| keenreed wrote:
| Barrier is opensource, multiplatform and works pretty well.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I've done this a few times, as 4:3 panels are good for Retro-
| Computing. The bigger issue for me is finding a way to
| support/frame the panel securely enough that it won't get
| damaged. I keep meaning to get a 3D printer to try and sort this
| but I can't really justify the cost.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Yup, I got extremely excited at the prospect of converting my
| 15" 4:3 monitor into a side screen for my laptop, but I can't
| figure out how I'd prop it up cheaply and securely.
| jameshart wrote:
| Some aluminum t-slot extrusions and maybe some 3D printed
| connectors and mounts would probably work (or you could
| dremel and drill custom fittings out of a block of delrin if
| you don't have access to a 3D printer)
| RoehlJ wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_LskiXQ73c
| tubularhells wrote:
| The quality of laptop screens is so sad, I wish I could do this
| swap the other way around.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I bought such a card several years ago for a panel I took out of
| a junkyard laptop.
|
| You can defineteley do it, but I still haven't found a good use
| case for my 15" LCD screen.
|
| For that price (~30$) you can get a much bigger used monitor.
| aryamaan wrote:
| Where can people get monitors in such cheaper price?
| akadruid1 wrote:
| In the UK during the lockdown I suddenly needed to kit out my
| wife and four children for working from home and there was a
| shortage of cheap screens online so I bought screens without
| stands on eBay. These seem to be taken from office closures
| or equipment refresh and so they are higher end devices with
| more robust design and more connectivity options than cheap
| consumer ones. You can buy monitor arms cheaply now that
| clamp to your desk and provide a much wider range of
| positions to get an ergonomic clutter free setup. Cost was
| roughly PS30-60 per 19-24" 1080 Dell or HP screen with
| HDMI/DP, PS20 for a good arm and PS10 for box containing
| enough M4 screws of different lengths to last a lifetime. Now
| that the kids are back in school and more offices are hitting
| the end of their leases I expect the eBay prices will drop
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Thrift stores, charity shops.
|
| I'm typing this on a Compaq laptop I rescued from a skip
| (running Debian), a keyboard I paid 50 NOK for at a jumble
| sale, connected to a 20 inch Dell LCD VGA monitor bought at
| Fretex, the Norwegian Salvation army chain of second hand
| shops. I think I paid about 150 NOK for the monitor about
| five years ago, that was about 20 USD then.
| rasengan wrote:
| You could also recycle your old laptop by running a cloud OS app
| like Shells [1]. You just need an old laptop that can run a
| modern browser.
|
| [1] https://shells.com
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > an old laptop that can run a modern browser.
|
| This requirement means that it mustn't be a very old laptop. I
| have a nice IBM R52 Thinkpad, Pentium M 1.8 GHz, 512 MB memory
| that runs Antix Linux but struggles to run a modern web
| browser.
|
| It seems to me that if you can run a modern web browser then
| you have enough hardware to run a modern OS locally.
| ev1 wrote:
| How are you affiliated with them?
| xxel wrote:
| Or you can run DietPi on old laptop. Then
| pihole+openvpn+nextcloud+webserber apache nginx etc.
| zxexz wrote:
| Or you could use the FOSS alternative you can host yourself,
| Apache Guacamole[0].
|
| EDIT: Interesting. It seems you actually work for/with a
| company affiliated with Shells? If so, can you do a
| compare/contrast with Guacamole, AWS Workspaces, etc.?
|
| [0] http://guacamole.apache.org/
| userbinator wrote:
| The same universal controller boards (more commonly known in the
| industry as "scalers") can be used to "dumb down" smart TVs. For
| monitor use, one with HDMI/DVI/VGA is sufficient but you can find
| the TV-oriented ones with a tuner and composite video input too,
| as well as speaker outputs.
| patrickk wrote:
| It like be amazing to have a broad movement around hacking
| smart TVs to make them dumb. Either repurposing broken ones to
| reduce e-waste or to de-crap all the privacy abusing smart
| features.
| rzzzt wrote:
| If you find the panel's model number, adding a "controller"
| suffix to it will get quite a few results on your online
| marketplace of choice.
| stevehawk wrote:
| does finding a panel model number involve taking it apart?
| or has someone been nice enough to aggregate that data
| somewhere based on, say, tv model (maybe even serial
| number)
| myself248 wrote:
| Sometimes reviews for a particular monitor or TV will
| talk about the specific panel inside. But finding them is
| sort of awkward, especially since you have no guarantee
| that such reviews exist.
|
| Taking the thing apart is gonna be required at some point
| anyway, you might as well take that plunge. Lay a soft
| blanket on a sufficiently large work surface, grab some
| tools, and have at!
| patrickk wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I would love the idea of getting a
| smart tv, cracking it open and dumbing it down but the risk
| of destroying it in the process is a bit scary. I think
| there's a business opportunity for hardware hackers do de-
| crap modern hardware like smart TVs or robot vacuums for
| those who can barely use a soldering iron or a terminal
| zeropoint46 wrote:
| This interestingly made me think, I wonder if there is the
| opposite of this. Capture those signals to a capture card to
| avoid HDCP or the likes. I realize there are HDCP
| splitter/strippers but maybe one day those don't work, who
| knows.
| myself248 wrote:
| I believe that's the function of this tool:
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32953589043.html
|
| Though it only operates at 1080p, I'm not sure whether it can
| accept more and then downscales the output, or what.
|
| The existence of this possibility, by the way, is why there's
| some push in the movie industry to encrypt the scaler-to-
| panel connection. (eyeroll...)
| moftz wrote:
| An FPGA dev board with enough LVDS inputs might work but I've
| also heard that the levels that LCDs use are not quite the
| same LVDS spec.
| lovedswain wrote:
| Do you have a few links to share? Pretty sure you triggered
| quite a few folk here! Loving the idea of a TV dumbification
| movement
| userbinator wrote:
| https://www.aliexpress.com/i/4000046044120.html
|
| Reviewed at http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://
| redlightgre... (discussed at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363 )
|
| https://sites.google.com/site/lcd4hobby/6-lcd-as-pc-vga-
| hdmi...
|
| https://imall.com/product/LCD-TV-Controller-Driver-Board-
| MSD...
|
| It's hard to keep track of all the different variants as this
| seems to be a bunch of Chinese companies all copying each
| other. You can find these boards under names such as
| MSD3663/3463 DS3663LUA, TSUMV53/V56/V59, etc.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I wonder if there are any of these with VRR and lower
| latency. I'd like to upgrade my TV but it seems pretty
| wasteful to throw out the panel when it's mostly the
| firmware that's the problem.
| guessbest wrote:
| I went to that google link and this popped up.
|
| Ethereum Phishing Detection
|
| > This domain is currently on the Crypto Wallets domain
| warning list. This means that based on information
| available to us, Crypto Wallets believes this domain could
| currently compromise your security and, as an added safety
| feature, Crypto Wallets has restricted access to the site.
| To override this, please read the rest of this warning for
| instructions on how to continue at your own risk.
| hansel_der wrote:
| "oh noes! someone on the internet is trying to con me!!!"
|
| guess an 3rd-party script- and ad-blocker is the way to
| go
| jgbmlg wrote:
| I've sort of dumbified 2 smart TVs by coupling them with
| cheap small computers with ethernet or WiFI in and HDMI out.
| I don't know absolutely that the TV's are not spying on us,
| but I can get to the internet going around the TVs not
| through them.
| input_sh wrote:
| If you're already down that route, why have your TVs
| connected to your WiFi at all?
| ddalex wrote:
| How do you know the TVs don't connect to any open WiFi
| network, or simply get shipped with embedded 4G radios ?
| mcny wrote:
| I used to think that would be too expensive but then I
| saw smartphones sell new for USD 20 on Black Friday and I
| also see one year of 200 MB a month data plans selling
| for USD 30.
|
| That's retail.
|
| I have changed my mind on this: if you were selling a
| million televisions a month, you could absolutely make it
| work from a money standpoint. They don't need to send
| back tons of data and they don't need to do it
| particularly fast.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I expect with a lot of these kinds of use cases you could
| get absolutely rock bottom volume m2m prices by promising
| to only use it during designated quiet periods when the
| network is underutilized.
| rusk wrote:
| I think you vastly overestimate how progressive telcos
| are with this kind of thing ...
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Maybe, but I feel like there'd be a pretty easy calculus
| on it at scale-- like "your competitor is cheaper. We're
| going with them unless you can cut your rate in half. One
| way you can do that is by giving us SIMs that only unlock
| for an hour once every 24 hours, and you can decide when
| that hour is, as long as we see our devices at least once
| a day."
|
| This should be pretty easy to implement on the telco side
| and it would let them monetize the dead time in the
| network, same as TOU pricing for electricity.
| foobiekr wrote:
| A 3g module was $2.50 COGS in 2013 when I was looking
| into an IoT startup.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| And data and devices will be even cheaper in another
| 12-18 months once LoRa is rolled out nationwide in the
| US.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
| samastur wrote:
| You don't, but connecting them to a WiFi won't solve that
| problem because they can (and probably do) switch to
| radio if they can't reach their servers through Wifi
| connection.
| myself248 wrote:
| Panels tend to have one of a few common interface standards:
| https://www.digitalview.com/blog/lcd-panel-interfaces-a-
| quic...
|
| I recently came into a pile of V-by-one panels, and
| discovered boards for them are significantly harder to come
| by than their eDP or LVDS brethren. But I've found a few on
| aliexpress and we're up and running:
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32860791745.html
|
| The nice thing about VBO is the connector is more-or-less
| standardized, and it's a very durable JAE series, so plugging
| and unplugging isn't such an issue. (Prototyping with LVDS or
| MIPI DSI tends to run into fatigue issues unless you're
| scrupulously gentle.)
|
| Beyond the panel interface, there's also the matter of the
| backlight. Sometimes the backlight driver is separate,
| sometimes it's built into the scaler board. The connectors
| for these are almost always evil and you have to hope your
| supplier can include the cables, because you'll never find
| them yourself.
|
| I would loooooove to find a source for the SDK to build the
| software that runs in the scaler chip. When I buy the scaler
| boards, they come with random firmware that the supplier
| isn't particularly interested in updating. Other builds of
| the same board support DDC/CI but don't have the backlight
| driver on 'em, and cost more. There's so much stuff about the
| firmware I'd like to change...
| grahamannett wrote:
| ive always thought about doing this for old macbook pros that i
| cant resell but never found any info
| squarefoot wrote:
| A search for "LCD controller" on Ebay, Aliexpress, Banggood etc.
| returns many products; some of these boards need reprogramming
| for a specific screen, while others can be configured through
| jumpers. Here are some useful links I collected in the past on
| the chips and programming tools, plus info about panels.
|
| https://www.panelook.com/index.php
|
| https://github.com/avtehnik/RTD2662
|
| https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=ru&tl=en&u=htt...
|
| http://monitor.espec.ws/files/rtd2662_spec_brief_0702_171.pd...
|
| https://github.com/ghent360/RTD-2660-Programmer/
|
| https://sites.google.com/site/lcd4hobby/how-to-start
|
| http://www.mattmillman.com/info/lcd/rovatools
|
| http://www.elecrealm.com/down/class/
|
| https://www.codeforge.com/article/258602
| marcodiego wrote:
| This is something I've been considering for a future project
| for a long time. Is there any reputable vender you can
| recommend?
| squarefoot wrote:
| Not directly for these products, however I usually buy only
| from sellers with feedback ratings above 99%, and check their
| negative feedback to see if there are any related to the
| product I'm going to buy. A great number of online vendors
| from China/HK sell counterfeit parts, also the best ones do
| that, sometimes unknowingly as they very often have no idea
| of what they sell, but those are ready made boards which is a
| completely different product. They could be spare parts for
| cheap old TVs (some have a analog only TV receiver on board).
| My experience with Far East sellers suggest to never ever buy
| active parts (chips, transistors) because they're very likely
| relabeled fake parts, while boards, modules and passives are
| usually ok. Probably not the best quality but they always
| worked.
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