Hi welcome to part three in this custom LCD Design tutorial and today we have our finished product. Check this out! Now if you haven't seen the two previous videos, I'll link them into the end and down below where we actually discuss designing this thing and all the aspects that go into that. and we've finally got our custom prototype delivered. This is the for the new micro supply our project which we're slowly working on fully custom LCD from scratch and I think it cost a grand total of a hundred and thirty-eight US dollars For five of these, it was $100 hundred, US dollars for tooling plus like $33 for courier delivery.

but it did take him a couple of months. I know it's been three months since the last video, we just haven't had time to do this video. that's all. but yeah.

they finally came through and we got five of these things and check it out. It looks like a ball boy doesn't it? and these are like supposed to be just like samples they gave us are five of them. but this looks like any production LCD I've ever seen. I'll show you this up close for those who want to see the pin attachments down there, they look glued in very nicely.

I mean nothing about this looks like it's you know, like a prototype. You really wouldn't tell this apart from a production LCD Really? So I'm not sure the exact steps although there are a lot of steps and I put up a graphic of that of what goes into actually manufacturing these. LCDs There's just so many Steps: it's crazy. I'm not sure you know and what liberties they take with those are steps to get you.

These are prototyping quote: mark some LCDs but Jesus It looks pretty good. So as seen in a previous video are this is the datasheet they gave us based on our original word drawing and it looks like the real thing. It's not actually 1:1 scale there, but you know it's got the bump on the end like that down there. and you know all the dimensions are absolutely bang-on No problem whatsoever.

And for those playing along at home, here's all our specs. It's a positive mode: Super Twist Pneumatic 18th designed for 8th Judy's cycle Quarter bias 6 o'clock a viewing angle which if you don't know, this is the bottom of the LCD So the viewing angle is like it's not directly on its optimum viewing angle sorry is like 6 o'clock is actually like looking down like if you've got the product flat on the bench. you're looking down like that as the camera would here. So we're basically I'm viewing this with the camera at the 6 o'clock angle.

Operating Temperature minus 10 to 50. Good enough for Australia Storage temp goes up to 60 designed for an operating voltage of 3.3 volts. Here's where we might have an issue which will go into Design 464 Hertz Frame Frequency The polarizer on the front is a transmissive type ie. you can actually see through the thing and it uses an adhesive type rather than I guess just like sandwiched together and held together with the glue on the outside or something like that.

So anyway, they use adhesive down and the back polarizer is reflective because this is not designed for a backlight at all. So I guess maybe you could edge light the thing if you wanted to. but backlight wasn't a requirement for this thing. And of course it's a pin based one.

and of course we could order exactly the same. LCD Nothing would change. We've wanted to use zebra strips the conductive elastomer rubber with this thing. they would simply just leave off the pins and then the contacts would be on the bottom there and they would make contacts with your conductive zebra strip and Bob's your uncle.

So I'm sure that we could change between a zebra contact 1 and a pin based one with basically no change in speck. it would be cheaper cuz then they wouldn't have to do the pins. but I haven't actually quoted that up. And of course this is actually quite a complex.

The LCD it's got a bar graph and you know what is it. Two for a five different four-digit seven segment displays on it. and there's the US segment and Comm how they actually join them all together inside as we looked at in a previous video. and it basically uses 8 Commons and 32 pins on the thing.

it doesn't necessarily use all of them in all circumstances. there's a couple of ones which aren't connected in here, but yeah, we basically needed an 8 common driver with the thing with a 32 segment, so we decided to use a whole Tech chipset. The whole tech HT 16 22 to drive this thing I Know you're saying shut up Dave Plug it in and show us it working. Ok, well here we go.

We've just got a little test board here. Don't get excited, this is just a a micro supply just like a test bed that we can use. So here we go. Let's plug it in and tada like a bought one.

Wow And those segments look good don't they? But there's a bit of an issue. Let me show you. So there we go. There's the digits up close and that's from roughly the six o'clock viewing position.

normal viewing position that's from being on 90 degrees there and sorry, oh, we're getting a little bit of a glare off the overhead lights there, but it's not too shabby is it? But although that looks ok, there is a bit of an issue which there with this which we only noticed when we started to use the thing. Let me actually switch it on here and we get our larger digits like that and they look okay, but you can actually I'm not sure if this will sharp on camera I Have to look at the Edit edit later but that V is not the best and you'll notice that when the teachers change they are a bit faded. There are some digits in there which do which are like not like the others and it's like a drive problem with the LCD but as I said, we are using that whole tech. HD 1622 driver chip which is designed specifically for this and there are no like a software commands like there's no you know registers in there that we can screw up the buyers voltage or anything like that is supposed to be able to handle this just fine.

If you stare at it for a while, you might especially look if I go to a higher angle like this up here like it works by the way. Angle: you know it's designed for six o'clock which is roughly about there like straight on is there so it looks really good from the low angles. like that it really starts to fade out so it's it's by no means you know the world's best LCD but oh look that one's not - that one's pretty good isn't it at that angle? Anyway, it could be, you know, studio lights and stuff like that. But anyway, if I tilt that up so we're looking down on it, you can see that some of the segments just aren't as crisp as some of the others and would that includes the V that segment there.

So I suspect that they're all on a common I'll have to double-check that, but if they are, then we've just got something slightly out and we contacted the manufacturer and they didn't know off the top of their head of course, but they said hey, you know it could be just a drive voltage issue. So try increasing the supply voltage to the chip. Now our whole take where and we're using our whole tech chip at 3.3 volts. we specified a 3.3 volt nominal L You know supply voltage LCD but it just looks like maybe one of them has just, you know, slightly out.

Pretty sure that's going to show up on camera. and of course if you take it back to 90 degrees, it looks fine and dandy. You can kind of just see it. maybe on the ideal six o'clock angle there.

But anyway, go that high angle. Yes, so we might have to hack into this thing and increase our the supply voltage of our chip. It can actually go higher. So yeah, it just wasn't quite as good as we're expecting.

We don't know whether or not this is just a prototype as we said, but of course that's the idea of getting prototypes as you can see what the quality is going to look like and you know you wouldn't just go. Oh, you know she'll be right. it's only a prototype, it'll be better in production. No, you know you want to solve this problem now.

So anyway, it might get in there and hack the voltage on there and increase it and see if it makes a difference on that. They've got to be on the same common. Surely. And sure enough, they are.

Look at this: if we follow the money for the line down here that connects to that segment there and then that goes. That shows that it actually goes through the gap in there and connects to this one. So that segment that segment. it's tied to that segment which then goes around and does it go to the V I Think it might go to the V I Think we have a winner.

So that Common is. you know there's some issue with that Common now. Whether or not it's the driver chip we've got shouldn't be. It's an industry standard driver chips.

been around a long time. she'll be doing the business. There's no, you know it's it's optimized for this kind of application, you know? So I suspect it's more likely something to do with the design of the manufacture of the LCD It just doesn't. You know they didn't optimize it right for the supply voltage.

but I guess you could say what do we expect for like a hundred bucks to Lin Yeah, for how five LCDs delivered or 138 us folks delivered. Ridiculously cheap and we got a pretty half decent LCD out of it. I Mean it's absolutely phenomenal that they can do this for the price. They're obviously not making money on it.

they're hoping for the big order. Well, gave it a bit of a cleanup, but it's still there. But curiously, this segment which is part of these which I thought was dodgy before faded before is not faded anymore. So anyway, alright so what I'm gonna do is hook it up to an external supply I've broken into a track underneath which has the just the supply for the HTR 16, 22, LCD driver and I've currently got it set to 3.3 volts and I'll change it in naught point 1 volt increments.

So I know I am viewing it from the ideal 6 o'clock angle here. But anyway, let's go down to 3.2 see what happens? Oh there we go. 3.1 3.1 it's fading 3.0 Look at that Hopeless. So I'd expect three-point-four to be rocks.

Oh there we got 3.7 Now it's rock-solid Four volts. Oh, now we starting to see some ghosts in on the segments. Now you don't want that. That's no good.

So that's at four volts. so you definitely don't want to run dat for. 3.8 3.7 3.6 3.6 seems to be I'm going to say that's ideal. You know that now we're looking down like that.

That's three point six volts, 3 point 5 volts. Sorry, that's three point six. There you go. That's 3.5 3.4 volts and three point three.

And sure enough, we have our ghost in segments or a faded segments whatever you want to call it. And Three Point Three Point Two. Yeah, it's horrible. So 3.1 3.2 3.3 and 3.4 There you go.

So we only had to go up a hundred millivolts to get rid of our problem I think really are Three Point Four I don't know Three Point Five I'd say to completely get rid of it, go up to Three Point Six. There you go. That's Three Point Six. So yep, there you go.

That's Three Point Six volts I Like that so it looks like it's even though we specified like a nominal 3.3 volt suppliers what this thing's working at and we I think we may have told them what hold what ship set we will use in I think I can't can't recall exactly but anyway, yeah, they they designed it around all of our specs which came from the datasheet from the whole tech device. So all of this stuff down here this all came from you know, 1/8 Judy quarter bias all that sort of jazz 64 Hertz frame frequency operating voltage that all came from the whole tech chipset itself. So I can only presume that the LCD manufacturer has. you know the tolerance is just like slightly off what manufacturing step that would actually be that makes it out like that.

I don't exactly know, will have to I talk to them. So there you go. I mean it's fixable I mean even if we had these in volume, you know, even if we push the button and ordered, you know a thousand or ten thousand leads, we could still run with this. You know we can modify the design to operate it from just the whole tech chipset from a higher voltage.

That's no problem at all because the 3.3 volt interface digital interface would still work because we've got CMOS voltage levels so they'd be 0 and 3.3 volts. So even if we ran it from 3.6 or might even still work at five, we might even still be able to interface with it still. So no problems in the logic level. wouldn't need a logic level translator or anything like that.

You just need to run it at a higher voltage. Now whether or not this problem would have been fixed in the production ones, Well, you know you wouldn't want to take the risk, would you? That's the whole idea of getting these prototypes so you can see stuff like this. So I'm kind of glad that we had an issue with our bargain-basement $100 US dollars for five. LCDs That's the tool in charge.

that's everything and 30 bucks courier to get it. here. It's it's. basically you know it's it's peanuts.

It really is. Although, it did take a couple of months. But you expect that when you're paying like that ridiculously low rate, that's just crazy low. So anyway, um yeah, we'll talk to the LCD manufacturer might do a follow-up video, or I'll just follow up on the eevblog forum with comments or something like that.

But 3.6 Merrick and that's the go. and that's quite a nice LCD There you go. So that is. That's the par 3 in how design your own custom.

LCD It's not that hard. it wouldn't necessarily be this cheap for you and me. We found a very cheap manufacturer who won't say who it is. But and there they look.

you know, quite reputable and large-ish So you know it's not like some you know, someone's eye kitchen so it's not like someone's a kitchen table in in Shenzhen or something like that or the back room at the Shenzhen markets. So this is quite a large LCD company doing this. But yeah, I mean I guess you might get what you pay for in this case. You know they sort of have one of these hundred buck the prototype jobs.

We'll just slap it together. You know she'll be right. No worries. So it's you know it's hard to say where the issue is, but I'm very impressed with that for a fully custom LCD like that for five.

Of course we we had to sort of not promise them, but we had to give them a ballpark of you know. look we're serious and we're thinking about making thousands of these things so you know we might order. You know, five thousand LCDs or something like that in the future and sort of, ya know, happy to give us these prototypes for a hundred bucks. So I Hope the takeaway from this little video series for you is that hey, it's not that difficult or expensive to custom design your own.

LCD You probably won't might not be able to get it for this price, but you know typical prices might be you know, to $300 or something like that for our prototype? LCDs And if you only want you know, add like a few dozen of them or something like that, then it's even a viable option at that sort of price. It could make or break your product for example, and it makes your product look custom and professional, doesn't it? I Really like it, We know. Winner chicken dinner. So anyway, if you like that video, please give it a big thumbs up as always and discuss below either in YouTube comments or on the eave ebook forum I Hope you found it interesting.

Catch you next time.