Free lcd software for linux

LCDML project (or Liquid Crystal Display Markup Language) is a description language based on XML and used to describe the text that should be displayed on a LCD. It supports both static and dynamic text messages and bar charts and allows to implement all kinds of (complex) status output on a display.

A LCDML player (e.g. iowlcdml in the iowlcd package) uses a LCDML input file and then displays the pages defined there. Each page will be displayed for a specified duration, then the next page is displayed. This allows to use LCDML to describe lots of status messages on different pages and its output will be displayed with time multi-plexing.

Each page defined in LCDML contains regions. The regions are rectangular boxes defined on the text screen on the LCD where text output can be placed. A region is by default static, i. e. the contents displayed is generated if the page is constructed and keeps its contents until the page is no longer displayed. Other regions can be defined to be updated more often during the display of the page. These dynamic regions allow to update its contents more often during the lifetime of a page.

In a region text and bar charts can be defined. A text can be either defined directly, read from a file, or be the output of a shell command. The last method is very useful for creating status outputs defined in LCDML. The shell command is executed each time the region is updated. Similar to text output, the bar charts can be defined in regions, too. Both vertical and horizontal bars arranged in groups are supported. The values displayed in a bar can also be generated from a command output. LCDML allows to filter command output with regular expressions to extract the values from verbose output.

As a convenience and performance feature, the command output can be also stored as strings. The strings can then be used and filtered for different values and applied in different texts and bars in a regions without re-evaluating the command.

The IOWarrior boards (available at www.codemercs.com) are very nice experimental circuit boards connected via USB to you PC (with Linux or Windows) or Mac. They provide digital input and output ports and also an interface for a LCD with dot matrix display of up to 80 characters.
IOWLCD library provides a small C-library that allows full control of the connected LCD. Furthermore a PERL interface for the library is available. IOWLCD is implemented with the USB Library and runs without special kernel modules on a Linux 2.6 system. Since the USB Library also supports other brands of Unices (including Mac OS X), the IOWLCD library should be portable to these platforms.
Main features:
- Implemented full command set of Hitachi 44780 LCDisplay Controller (including custom character upload)
- Provides higher level LCD commands for text output and read back
- Simple horizontal or vertical bar charts are supported with pixel accuracy (implemented with custom chars). The ideal tool for system meters or gauges.
- Handles more than one IOWarrior and both types: IOW24 and IOW40
- C-Library and PERL bindings (via SWIG)
- runs on Linux without extra kernel modules and on 2.6 kernels
- supports LCDML (Liquid Crystal Display Markup Language) with the iowlcdml.pl player

LCD2USB is a open source/open hardware project. LCD2USB was meant to be cheap and to be made of easily available parts.
It is therefore based on the Atmel AVR Mega8 CPU and does not require any difficult to obtain parts like separate USB controllers and the like. The total cost (without display and pcb) are about 5 to 10 Euros. LCD2USB currently comes with a simple demo application that works under Linux, MacOS X and Windows. I still have several spare PCBs, please email me if you are interested.
LCD2USB makes use of several projects to achieve this goal. LCD2USB is based on:
LCD4LINUX, a great framework to use small LCDs with linux, AVR-USB, a pure software implementation of USB for the AVR plattform, USBtiny, another software usb implementation for the AVR, and Peter Fleurys LCD routines for the AVR.
The hardware of the LCD2USB interface consists of the Atmel AVR Mega8 CPU, a cheap and easy to obtain microcontroller with 8 KBytes flash (of which ~3k are used in this application) and 2 KBytes RAM. The processor is surrounded by few parts, mainly connectors to interface to the PC and the LCD.
A power LED (LED1) indicates that the system is powered via USB. The system clock is derived from a 12Mhz crystal. This frequency is necessary due to the fact that the software USB implementation requires a precise timing with respect to the USB.
Enhancements:
- Added usbtiny based version due to user request
- AVR-USB version 1.07, USBtiny version 2.07

MicroLCD is an XMMS plugin for LCDproc. MicroLCD is a very simple plugin. It displays some info on a 1-line LCD. It is based on Wits MiniLCD plugin.

KLcdDimmer is a KDE applet to adjust LCD brightness.
To adjust the brightness simply click with the mouse left button and use the slider
KLcdDimmer relies on an external program to get/set the brightness, such as smartdimmer or nvclock.
For instance, Ive used
- SmartDimmer
- NVclock
but it is supposed to work also with others, since you can configure the applet.
Installation:
When you run configure, you should pass the KDE root directory as --prefix (in my system it is /usr).
The steps to perform for the installation are standard for packages in source form: once you have unpacked the sources in a directory, `cd to the directory containing the packages source code and execute the following steps:
./configure --prefix=
make
make install (as root)
Then youll be able to add the applet to the panel, by using your KDE panel.
Enhancements:
- Fixed tooltips and added whats this helps
- Fixed geometry (now should fit the panel better)

iowlcd_amarok script receives status information from amaroK and sends it to iowlircemu which then displays it on the LCD.

iowlircemu is basically a driver for LCDs based on Code Mercenaries GmbHs IO-Warrior24 starterkit.

The LCDs width (in characters) and the display priority (if other applications are using the LCD as well) can be configured.

LCD4Linux is a small program that grabs information from the kernel and some subsystems and displays it on an external liquid crystal display.
Enhancements:
- GPOs are back!
- new drivers: WincorNixdorf, LPH7508, Crystalfontz CF635, LUIse, LCD2USB, LEDMatrix, USBHUB, Logitech G-15, picoLCD, Electronic Assembly
- updated drivers: TREFON, Crystalfontz, BWCT, LCD-Linux, serdisplib, M50530, T6963
- new widgets: Image, Timer, Keypad, GPO
- new plugins: file, mpd, string::strupper(), KVV, iconv
- dynamic properties for most widgets (evaluated at runtime)
- bold font for graphic displays
- Layers
- graphic subsystem changed to full-color RGBA
- HD44780 power supply from parport
- lots of minor fixes and enhancements

Basically, its an approach to build a small, cut to the bone, ready and easy to install VDR Linux distribution.
LinVDR is a complete, breathing Linux system smaller than 128 MB with a complete digital Video Disk Recorder (VDR) / Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and several plugins -- listed seperately below.
For easy access we installed additionaly the browser frontend VDR Admin and a Samba share for up- and downloading music or DVD images with Windows clients.
The base system is Debian Woody compatible (only compatible, not Debian Woody itself!) with the DVB driver from Convergence and Klaus Schmidingers unbeated Video Disk Recorder Software VDR.
All this Tom has mixed smoothly together, and I made the install system and installation programme -- suitable for normal users without Linux knowledge.
Enhancements:
VDR Version and Plugins
VDR 1.3.17 with enAIO-Patch and this plugins:
- Autotimer-Edit 0.1.4 new
- DVD-Burn 0.0.5 new
- Clock 0.0.5b1 update
- Console 0.6 update
- DVD 0.3.5b06 (without CSS support)
- EPG-Search 0.0.3 new
- Femon (signal strength) 0.1.6 update
- Games 0.6.1 update
- GraphLCD 0.1.1 update
- GraphTFT 0.0.8 new
- Hello 0.1.0
- Image (Diashow) 0.2.2 update
- LCD-Proc 0.0.10 update
- Mailbox 0.3 update
- Manual 0.0.2 (german only) new
- Media-MVP 0.1.5 new
- Media-MVP-Server new
- M-LCD 0.0.4 update
- MP3 0.9.8 update
- MPlayer 0.9.8 update
- OSD-Demo 0.1.0
- Osd-PiP Plugin 0.0.7 update
- OSD-Teletext 0.3.1 update
- Pilot 0.0.7 new
- PIM 0.0.3 new
- Remote 0.3.2 (for IR receiver of Hauppauge Nexus-s cards) update
- Skin-Curses 0.1.0
- Sky 0.1.1
- Sleeptimer 0.6 update
- Status 0.1.0
- Stream-Dev 0.3.3 update
- Taste 0.0.2b new
- Text2Skin (loadable skins) 0.0.8.1 new
- Timeline 0.8.1
- TV-OnScreen 0.6.0 update
- TVTV 0.1.6
- VBox (ISDN voice mailbox) 0.5.1 update
- (S)VCD 0.0.6c
- VDR-CD (playing audio CDs) 0.0.10 update
- WAP 0.0.6d new
Others
- Multi-Language support (currently German and English)
- Install programm updated
- Setup programm updated
- Kernel 2.6.9 with support for (nearly) all chipsets and network cards updated
- DVB driver CVS 2004-12-03 updated
- VDR Admin 0.97 supporting VDR 1.3.x updated
- MPlayer 1.0pre5
- NoAd 0.4.2
- FBTV updated
- Samba 3.0
- DVD-Author 0.6.10 updated
- convert.pl
- vdrsync
- Editor nano
- Alsa
- USB Keyboard support
- dvd+rw-tools 5.13.4.7.4 (suitable for DVD+R/W and DVD-R/W)
- udftools
- Read-only support for NTFS