Hi for those who aren't subscribed to my Eevblog 2 channel and you really should be because you'll miss interesting art stuff like this and so I'll link in my ear' eevblog 2 channel and down below and at the end if you're not subscribed, set the notification bill and all that sort of stuff anyway. I Had to check the date for this but back in December 2017 I set up this long term LCD experiment. A lot of people have been asking me over the years what's the update on this LCD experiment that I did. Now this came about because of my LCD tutorial I did how to actually drive seven segment displays like this and I'll link that in and the end and down below as well because there's a very interesting tutorial on how to drive LCDs and you basically you have to drive them with a AC waveform.

you've the polarity has to alternate between the common and the segments. so this is why you need like a special LCD driver to drive LCDs but I can't remember why at the time. But anyway I decided to set up this experiment to see if a typical LCD like this would actually die like how long it would last if you actually drove it incorrectly with just DC ie. on the common pin you put ground and on the segment you just put five volts and you just left it there like this is totally against the recommendations of all the LCD manufacturers because else it is, of course liquid crystal display.

There's actually liquid crystals inside there and depending on the electrostatic polarity of it, you can either turn them on the individual segments which are filled with the liquid crystals on or off. and you can't just keep DC on there. but it does actually work in quote marks, you can't actually drive it because this is the experiment that I set up. I'm actually driving this with an Arduino Uno down here.

I Set up two examples for this: I had I think in maybe in my driving tutorial, a I had the Arduino set up to drive it correctly with the reverse polarity. You would just reverse the pins on these segments and you could actually drive an LCD properly. but of course you run out of pin squidy. Pretty quick to do that, but you can certainly do that.

So I decided to set up this experiment but this one has been was running since then. It was running for a couple of years until like I moved here and then the flood happened or something and it hasn't been running since. So a lot of people have been asking what's the update because I'm I'm driving this with just five volts. DC So the comments just connected to ground as you can see down here and it just I dry.

It just puts five volts and any of the LCD segments it rather than just turn them all on I thought I'd just have it boringly count from zero to nine and then reset and it's actually been. As you can see, it works. But when I powered this up like I've had no results over the last couple years, but when I powered it up this time, it's got it out of storage to like see if this thing like to basically just put it back on power and I noticed something unusual. Check this out right.

It just counts like normal. but if I actually remove the power from it, they notice that the segment's stay there now. I Covered this in my original video where you can actually get that it's like Electress - it's a capacitive charge like capacitive charge buildup. You can actually get segments to stay on for a quite a substantial amount of time, but if that's not what that's not you, they would have faded by now, but that's not what's happening in this particular case.

It doesn't matter like we can just stop it on any segment like this and it actually it. The segments just like permanently stay on. This is unbelievably bizarre. This is like opposite to what I sort of expected to happen because from kind of some stuff.

I read if I remember correctly back in the day is like if you drive these with DC then the liquid crystals can get they get bogged up lethargic so they can actually stay on or you know you just can't drive these segments anymore like it just kills the LCD basically and I don't know I haven't driven this with like a higher frequency, haven't modified the firmware to go higher in frequency, but this is this is bizarre. It'll just reset like this and as far as I know there's I can. Maybe you can see at home, but there's nothing there's like hang on wait I'll pull it out. there we go and that there's seems to be no like lag or fade in those segments at all.

So like it's almost as if this is like taking on the properties of like a ink. a paper type display where it doesn't require power to actually maintain the image. Isn't that cool? Totally not what I expected. Um, but this seems to be well in this particular case of this particular LCD this is a Lu mix one.

I'll try and link in the data sheet down below. You can bite on digi-key and it's a nice big 7-segment display, but this particular one seems to be now acting like an ink or ePaper display where you do not need power to and I've left this off for ages so I'll just leave that off and it'll just stay like that. It's absolutely incredible I don't know what the heck is causing that, so if there's any liquid crystal experts out there, please let us know. But isn't that cool so probably do some experiments on your own like I Obviously it might take a long time for this effect actually happened for this LCD the ink conversion to actually a paper.

what do they call them these days? paper ink? Anyway, it might take a while and get this to happen. Maybe there's some way to accelerate the process or something like that, but definitely try and experiment with like drive. Maybe if you drive them at a high a DC voltage or something I don't know you might be able to accelerate the process, but clearly the liquid crystals are doing something really bizarre. like they're just staying on that.

It's like I just no. I have no idea what's going on. so I'm gonna hand this over to the audience but that that is really cool. Can we convert an LCD into an ink or ePaper display? Hey so that could be really cool if you've got like a a favorite 7 7 segment display that you want to use and wanna like use the properties of ink which it retains the image with no power.

So yeah. anyway I left this like overnight and it's was still holding the thing on there and holding the image on there. It's just incredible. It seems to have converted it into some form of eating display so that could be really useful anyway.

I'm gonna have to let me know in the comments down below. some more experiments you want me to do with this like I Drive at a high frequency and you know, maybe the high-speed camera to see if there's any lag in the segments at higher update rates and and things like that. I Don't know that's a bit of work involved in doing something like that, but isn't that weird? Anyway, that is bizarre. so please, if you know heard of this effect before I Couldn't find any info on it, so let me know in the comments down below.

So anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. As always, discuss a down below and also over on my library. Channel I'm about to hit 15,000 subs over there.

Absolutely fantastic! Catch you next time.