uSupply Custom LCD

[Mr. Scram]

What sort of minimum order quantity is there for a custom LCD? 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000000000000000000?

I gather that fully depends on the bag of money you bring. If you want one, they'll make one. Just beprepared to bring a large bag.

[tszaboo]

Slightly fuzzy examples attached.

I would prefer this one. Maybe CC should be an LED but that's just me.
Also is OCP planned? Because you need something for that for the LCD. Blinking maybee...

[xani]

I'd prefer graphical LCD ( or hell, even text one at cost of readability) just because it would make it easier to hack the firmware and add extra features like "work as battery charger" or "work as phone charger"

[NivagSwerdna]

What sort of minimum order quantity is there for a custom LCD? 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000000000000000000?

I gather that fully depends on the bag of money you bring. If you want one, they'll make one. Just beprepared to bring a large bag.

So they make 100000000000000000000, bin 99999999999999999999 and dispatch 1? 

I googled and found a site suggesting tooling cost is around $2-3k

[Mr. Scram]

So they make 100000000000000000000, bin 99999999999999999999 and dispatch 1? 

I googled and found a site suggesting tooling cost is around $2-3k

I think they make a handful and ship one. There is no obligation to do a full run, you just need enough to tweak to process to something acceptable and ship one of the succesful ones.

[dr.diesel]

What are the approx dimensions? 

[mariush]

Just for fun, you could just order thousands of those 0603 leds and make your own seven segment digits at the size you want.

Then just use some of that brown/black foil (display film) that improves contrast and spreads the led light more uniformly and maybe laser cut the segments from a transparent plastic foil you can stick to this display film.

Probably costs more in leds and pick and place and all that, but no MOQ, no tooling costs, you can iterate through several layouts faster etc etc 

[ebclr]

LCD main reason is cost, if cost is not an issue a TFT will fit much better than a lot of Leds, one LCD like that will cost less than 1USD, in 1K units, plus 300Usd for tooling

[jpc]

I quite agree, for over the years I've seen many a piece of otherwise excellent kit made virtually unusable by a poorly thought out display, assuming there was any thought put into the design beyond cramming on as much display information as possible. Sometimes less is more, as Whale's improvement over the  original, while relatively minor in of itself, leads to a significantly more readable display,at least IMO. 


Unfortunately, over the years, I found that for all their other good qualities, engineers were often the last people you wanted in charge of designing displays and UIs. For unless they had some training in display/UI design, the tendency was to cram every piece of information they could onto the display. Something I have been guilty of myself in my early years in engineering before I was lucky enough to work for some multi-disciplinary teams that included members who maybe had little or limited engineering experience, initially anyway, but did understand what worked in displays and UIs with many often coming from a graphic arts or design background.

[KNSSoftware]

Is this not suppose to be an open source project though?  As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays?

[kalel]

I quite agree, for over the years I've seen many a piece of otherwise excellent kit made virtually unusable by a poorly thought out display, assuming there was any thought put into the design beyond cramming on as much display information as possible. Sometimes less is more, as Whale's improvement over the  original, while relatively minor in of itself, leads to a significantly more readable display,at least IMO. 


Unfortunately, over the years, I found that for all their other good qualities, engineers were often the last people you wanted in charge of designing displays and UIs. For unless they had some training in display/UI design, the tendency was to cram every piece of information they could onto the display. Something I have been guilty of myself in my early years in engineering before I was lucky enough to work for some multi-disciplinary teams that included members who maybe had little or limited engineering experience, initially anyway, but did understand what worked in displays and UIs with many often coming from a graphic arts or design background.

I could be wrong with this as I have no such design experience at all (anything related to hardware), but when possible/practical, it might help to have a simulated emulated working model first. If it's a display, perhaps model it on the PC, make a little emulation app for the GUI (just the GUI and some controls - obviously not a simulation of the entire real usage) and try to use it and/or ask others in the team to do the same. This is just to get a sense on whether or not it is intuitive.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Is this not suppose to be an open source project though?  As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays?

And the problem with that is..?
I'm sure Dave will (if only out of necessity/MOQ) have plenty of displays available
The cost of buying parts (whether from Dave or making your own batch) has no bearing on the open-sourceness or otherwise.
 

[jpc]

kalel, ideally you want 'outsiders' to look it over as well as users with a range of experience and for them to use it for a while as the design team are often too close. Of course, how far down the external testing route you can go will depend on the budget but scrimping on the display/UI is often a false economy. It can mean the difference between a great device and something you reluctantly dig out of the bottom of the cupboard because its the only device you have that can do that particular task.

[tszaboo]

Is this not suppose to be an open source project though?  As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays?

In that case, the Arduino Uno wouldn't be open source, because you gotta use an ATMega328 on it, and it is only manufactured by Microchip (so strange to even write this).

[free_electron]

Here we go.  Adding a little bit more vertical space between the three "row sections" makes it much easier to find your visual bearings when you glance at the display.

this on has my vote. however, i would like to see 3 small indicators ( a number 1 ,2 and 3 with a circle around them , showing that a preset is in effect )

[jpc]

Quote from: KNSSoftware on Today at 16:00:35

Is this not suppose to be an open source project though?  As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays?

Open Source just refers to the licensing applying to the design and says nothing about the availability of components.

[mariush]

In that case, the Arduino Uno wouldn't be open source, because you gotta use an ATMega328 on it, and it is only manufactured by Microchip (so strange to even write this).

But you can buy the part from multiple sources, while you would only be able to buy the part from Dave and he could impose artificial restrictions like 1 part per household to make sure you're not making custom versions to sell them.
In contrast, I can buy the Atmega328 from lots of places.

With such parts like made-to-order display, you'd force someone to also spend money and order a compatible display in volume and pay tooling costs. Not cool.. not illegal, not against open source and all that, just not cool.
 

[ataradov]

With such parts like made-to-order display, you'd force someone to also spend money and order a compatible display in volume and pay tooling costs. Not cool.. not illegal, not against open source and all that, just not cool.

Or Dave can just close source the whole thing and not have to deal with open-source whiners.

Custom display is a cool feature, and I'm looking forward for the practical description on how to order one. To use in my open projects.

[mariush]

Custom display is a cool feature, and I'm looking forward for the practical description on how to order one. To use in my open projects.

That's easy. Go at companies like Digikey, Mouser, Newark/Farnell and make a list of companies that sell lcd displays, then go on alibaba / aliexpress and make a list of companies that sell lcd displays in volume
then find email addresses or phones for every one of them and send emails / call and ask about custom lcd displays and how much would cost, minimum order quantity and all that.

It's not rocket science, it just takes a lot of time and research.

Whatever Dave picks may not be the best for you anyway, he'll most likely pick something that's convenient for him and his location (Australia) , just like he does his circuit boards in New Zealand or somewhere close to him.

[ataradov]

It's not rocket science, it just takes a lot of time and research.

Exactly. And I'm looking for someone to do this research.

Anyway, this is OT here.

[texaspyro]

I don't like the idea of a custom display.   Just look at all the test equipment repair threads where a failed, unobtainium display is problem.   Particularly painful is all the devices that used VFD displays with a known finite lifetime and wearout mechanism.

I have a front panel replacement design on the back burner for my HP-531xx counter for when the VFD eventually fails.  The only way to replace the VFD now is to send HP $1800 for a new front panel board.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Overcurrent indication...

[mikeselectricstuff]

If you have any spare segment lines, adding the additional decimal points (especially on the watts) wouldn't hurt, for future expansion or use on other things, like a dummy load perhaps, or for indicating mains voltages ( e.g. a volatge/power logger). maybe add a Hz icon?

[KNSSoftware]

Is this not suppose to be an open source project though?  As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays?

In that case, the Arduino Uno wouldn't be open source, because you gotta use an ATMega328 on it, and it is only manufactured by Microchip (so strange to even write this).

no the ATMega is not custom and solely distributed by arduino, it is an off the shelf produt like any of the product components on the board.  This would be custom and only available via Dave, it is not the same.

[TimNJ]

Going off some other's ideas...here's what I came up with. It's a different aspect ratio, but perhaps that's okay (since it's custom)?

I don't see a benefit to using italics. I think it's just harder to read for no reason. I think it would be nice to have the 'Set' and 'Measured' voltages/currents clearly defined. It's a power supply; The learning curve should be <10 seconds, in my opinion.

Also, if you use an RGB LED backlight, the screen could be, say, yellow in the 'output-off' state, green in 'CV' and red in 'CC'.

Let me know what you guys think!