Newhaven or other 'slim' Displays

[brendanclarke]

Hi all!
So, I'm looking into midiboxifying this thing I have. I'd like to put a couple character displays above the button matrix, but not completely re-machine it, thus space is tight. I'm looking into these displays, and trying to figure out how much modification they will take to work. I've looked through a few threads on the Newhaven displays, but these seem to have a different driver (us2066). Can anyone offer some insight into how easily these can be used? Thanks!

[Hawkeye]

Hi there,

had a quick look into the datasheet, and they should work after some hacking... If you are using a new 32 bit MIDIbox core, this corresponds to some C coding and is doable, if you have some patience. On an old 8-bit core, you need to revert to PIC assembly, which results in more grey hair, but also works after some grumbling :-). You are aiming for a 6800 parallel 4-bit mode in general (so some jumper/pads need to be soldered).

Newhaven also has (slightly larger) character modules that are HD44780 compatible and should init without problems, so I would recommend one of these, if it fits... otherwise you might really waste some hours for a few saved centimeters :-):

http://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Newhaven-Display/NHD-0220DZW-AY5/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMt82OzCyDsLFJpT9hslWrFHVkGqpl0m5Z4%3d

I did a fair bit of Newhaven OLED display hacking in the last years, and sometimes it works out of the box, sometimes it is a mess because of messy documentation :-) :

Many greets and enjoy!
Peter
 

[brendanclarke]

Thanks Peter! C coding I can do. I'm aiming for the STM32F4 based core, so fingers crossed, sounds like I could get it to work. The other one I was looking at was this little guy, but messing with flat cabling seems like a touchy proposition. Besides which I can't even find a place that supplies zif connectors with a .7mm pitch.

Anyway, thanks for the pointers and the welcome!