Introduction

LCDproc makes it possible to output information to all kinds of LCD and VFD displays on Linux and BSD based systems. There are drivers for all kinds of brands and types of displays but one for my Noritake K612A4 VFD was missing so that's when I decided to write my own. The driver is still very new and still has some timing problems which put it in an illegal state at times. The other problem is that it seems that the default client doesn't seem to adhere to the specifications which makes certain optimizations impossible resulting in a flickering display in certain circumstances.

 

Installation

• Download lcdproc 0.4.4 and untar it
• Download the Noritake driver tar ball
• Untar the driver in the lcdproc server/drivers directory
• Apply this patch in the main lcdproc directory using patch -p0 < noritake.patch
• Perform the following commands: aclocal, autoconf and automake --add-missing
• Now you can compile as described in the documentation (using configure and make)

 

Configuration

Add the following section to the LCDd.conf file:

[Noritake]
# Noritake driver

# Select the output device to use [/dev/lcd]
Device=/dev/ttyS0
# Select the LCD type (size) [20x4]
Size=30x4
#Size=16x2
# Select the font size (0 = normal, 1 = large) [0]
# NB: Don't forget to adjust the Size when changing this!
LargeFont=0
# Set the communication speed [9600]
# possible values: 1200, 2400, 9600
Speed=19200
# Fix a problem with bars not painting right
# enabling this will show the bars correctly but
# will cause the bars to flicker
FixClientAbuse=0
# When set to a value larger than 0 it specifies that we
# want the display reset every 'ResetDelay' seconds [600]
# This option exists because in some circumstances the
# display gets corrupted and restarting LCDd was the only
# solution
ResetDelay=600

 

History

28 february 2004 - version 0.3

Updated the driver. It now actually determines how far a bar can grow and clears that part so a bar that becomes smaller can actually be seen to shrink. Before the bar would only grow and never shrink.

The driver now also resets the display once every 10 minutes so that if it enters an illegal state it will at some time be reset to normal again. Problem is that it makes the display flicker so doing it more often just doesn't look good.

21 february 2004 - version 0.2

The driver is now released for the latest release version of lcdproc (0.4.4) instead of the 0.5 version from CVS. It now actually works with MythtTV which is what I needed this driver for.

15 february 2004 - version 0.1

First release of the driver for the 0.5 CVS version of lcdproc

 

Known bugs

• The brightness settings are ignored for now because it seems that the server sets it to 0 (off) after a few seconds and I haven't been able to determine yet why
• Fix timing problems which put the display in an illegal state at times

 

To Do

• Implement support for icons as defined by the specifications
• Try to see if we can somehow do without the FixClientAbuse kludge