small USB display

[ttboy99]

Hey guys!
I want to put a small display on my front glass panel (like fan controllers in dvd bays) to show system stats. I want to connect it over usb. So something like this. However, this is too expensive for me. I am looking for around 50€/$. Can anyone recommend me something?

[mariushm]

 

See if you can find some  lcd panel + driver ... there's people selling kits for the raspberry pi folks... for example : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32938874631.html

LCD with driver board and usb cable is 25$. then just have a hdmi cable inside your case go outside to the video card and connect then panel as a 2nd or 3rd monitor.

 

Another option would probably be to buy a shitty tablet and install it there...

 

For example 34$ for this : Amazon.com : High Performance RCA 7 Inch 1GB RAM 16G Tablet MTK Quad Core Dual Camera Touch IPS Screen 1024 x 600 WiFi Bluetooth Android 7.0 Black (Renewed) : Computers & Accessories

 

and a bunch more here : https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tablet&s=price-asc-rank&qid=1570307864&ref=sr_st_price-asc-rank

 

Newegg also has them from 38$ : https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100171661 600372017 600457674 600004793 600004794 600004796 600004797 600004798 600004800 600004804 600136700 600004791 600004792&Order=PRICE

 

ebay has some crap tablet at 28$ (for the 512MB ram + 4GB storage BLACK version) : https://www.ebay.com/itm/7-Q88H-A33-Android-Tablet-PC-1-2GHz-512MB-RAM-8GB-ROM-Dual-Cameras-WiFi-EB/362728443360

29-30$ same tablet : https://www.ebay.com/itm/Q88-7-Inch-Android-4-4-Quad-Core-512MB-4GB-WiFi-G-Sensor-GSM-Camera-Tablet-PC/254329142450

 

and lots more ...

 

 

You could remove the built in battery and connect the tablet internally to a usb 2 port to be powered. If needed you can add a mechanism to "push" the power on button when power comes from the usb header in which you plugged the tablet. ex a simple 6 pin micro and a transistor that shorts the contacts under the button for a second or two would be enough. 

 

Use its wifi to connect it to your network.

Configure it to autorun the browser in full screen mode and load a web page. The web page can be served by your own computer as long as the computer starts before the tablet boots up...

You can install apache and php on your computer and code the page.. grab the statistics you need and generate the html page you'd see full screen on the tablet.

You could put some javascript in the html page you send to the tablet or the page that loads from the tablet for the first time, and then the javascript code on the page can periodically grab data from your computer every few seconds, or load images and put them on the page without forcing reloads of the page in the browser... etc etc

 

Depending on the interface of the panels in these tablets, you may be able to use some LVDS driver and simply have a HDMI or VGA cable plugged into the LVDS driver and you see the tablet's 1280x600 screen as a 2nd monitor on your video card.

For example those 28$ tablets on eBay use AllWinner A33 which is a 4$ processor with  LVDS interface that supports up to 1280x800 resolution, or