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Without a monitor and keyboard it can be hard to see what is going on with a computer system. You can remote in from another computer on the network. This small device allows you to monitor and control you system without booting up any other computers. "I have a Mini-ITX server that runs my website, runs my weather station, and acts as a home file server. This server doesn’t have a monitor or keyboard connected to it as I use Windows Remote Desktop for most things. Sometimes, it’s nice to be able to take a quick peak at the server or monitor network settings without using another computer. So I decided to make a basic auxiliary display with a keypad. Many people have created auxiliary displays for computers some of which are commercially available. Most are serial port based, and many of the ones that are USB based use a USB to serial converter and expose the display to Windows through a virtual COM port. The display I created uses the PIC18F4550 with WinUSB and doesn’t expose a virtual COM port. The display itself is a 128×64 parallel graphical display model GDM12864H from SparkFun. The display includes a keypad and a bright backlight. It is capable of displaying text in either horizontal or vertical mode or running in a pure graphical mode."
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November 6th, 2008
Cool project! It might be fun to try with an arduino + xport shield too. I’m not sure what to say about the physical construction…I’d like to meet the beaver that gnawed all the holes in that enclosure cover…
November 6th, 2008
Ugh, is this trying to ear the “most hideous hacked device award”? If you’re going to bother drilling holes in something, at least make a tiny attempt to make them a legitimate structured array.
November 6th, 2008
Ignore those who dislike the aesthetics, thats the easy part to rectify once the prototype is working. Great idea, many thanks
November 6th, 2008
While I agree it is a cool hack, the case really should have been better planned. Please don’t take offense to that.