LCD screen for your dockstar (cheap! <$5)

Peter!

Yes. As long as I keep it small font, I'm fine. I can do apt-get update and edit using nano .
I don't know how to exit nano. Usually I use control x but those commands might be next level of keyboard commands.
Not sure what to do about that.
Nice job, I was surprised you were able to do it all today.
I'm impressed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2010 09:01PM by rgtaa.

It is still does not look like it is assembling your hack.

Try...

cd st2205tool/hack
for x in `ls -1d m_* | egrep -v 'm_coby_dp151|shift'`; do mv $x xxx_$x; done
./assembleme 2>&1 | tee /tmp/assemble.log

Then attach /tmp/assemble.log

-PG

Guess I couldn't wait to find out if I could get it working with a few other ideas.

Disabled the folder which the compile process failed on. m_innovage or whatever it was.

Deleted the folders made for the Shift3 and tried to generate a hack again.

Well.

Now it displays garbage on the screen instead of hanging. Could ALMOST make out it trying to say something. Interesting. Ran LCD4Linux. Still getting tons of readline error spam and the entire screen is B&W garbage, but still displaying something other than "Updating..."

Pic: http://i.imgur.com/s4FG5.jpg

So. On a hunch... I change that 24 bit depth color setting in generate-hack back to 16.

Delete m_shift3, Generate it again...

"IT WORKS"... With a really weird blue offset. Basically instead of starting the 128x128 screen at 0x0, it's starting it at -5x-5 ish. Known issue due to the battery indicator IIRC.

Pic: http://i.imgur.com/cD4Vm.jpg

So I load up LCD4Linux... tons and tons of readline spam... but it does work, though with the right and bottom 5px blue border pushing everything off center and that blasted battery icon sitting on top in that corner. But... like the image said. It works.

Pic: http://i.imgur.com/vEIDY.jpg

I want to smash it now. (heh.)

Hopefully I'll get exactly what I want out of the DP151. Is there a way to rotate the orientation it writes to the screen so all I have to do is put it in the dock?

rgtaa Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Peter!
>
> Yes. As long as I keep it small font, I'm fine. I
> can do apt-get update and edit using nano .
> I don't know how to exit nano. Usually I use
> control x but those commands might be next level
> of keyboard commands.
> Not sure what to do about that.
> Nice job, I was surprised you were able to do it
> all today.
> I'm impressed.

Thanks, there is no key mapping defined for CTRL+X - I'll try to add one in the next us.kmap file.

In the meantime you could edit us.kmap manually...

Change

X                  45     'x'     'X'    0x00    0x00

To

X                  45     'x'     'X'    0x18    0x18

and restart st2205term. There are probably a lot of missing key combinations - I just included the ones I use frequently.

-PG

rat - thats it - you hacked it!

To fix the screen offset - edit the spec file and change OFFX=4 and OFFY=4, cd hack/ and run ./assembleme, then cd st2205tool/ and run ./hackfw.sh /dev/sdX original-firmware.bin

Should be that last flash you ever need to do on it.

Then you can download and test st2205term :-)

-PG

Peter
Yup!
That did it! :)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2010 10:03PM by rgtaa.

petergunn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> rat - thats it - you hacked it!

Grr! Hulk! Smash! Kill!

Actually. I did give it a stern look. But that's it.

So. The verdict for whoever ended up with a Shift3 and wants to know what to do...

Follow every instruction on the first page of this thread for generating a hack. The issue was somehow the compile process being interrupted, but for the most part... using generate-hack.pl to create m_shift3 does the trick with some tweaks needed after. Check the generate-hack.logfile in the folder and comment out (by renaming the m_nameofdevice directory to xxx_m_nameofdevice) anything that causes the process to stop.

That said, it was surprisingly hard for me to brick the device. I should have by most standards.

> To fix the screen offset - edit the spec file and
> change OFFX=4 and OFFY=4, cd hack/ and run
> ./assembleme, then cd st2205tool/ and run
> ./hackfw.sh /dev/sdX original-firmware.bin
> Should be that last flash you ever need to do on
> it.

Famous last words... ;)

Offset by 4 each worked well. Tried a few but then you start losing the 1 pixel clearance both top and left side, even if it does make it slightly off center with 2 pixels on the right... Close enough. Did some testing with dummy lines using the default lcd4linux.conf layout.

16 lines possible, 21 characters wide, battery icon chomps the leftmost 5 characters/columns on the last two lines. So lines 15 and 16 will have to be set with Row15.Col06 'Name' and Row16.Col06 'Name' to clear it.

> Then you can download and test st2205term :-)

A fitting punishment, I suppose. ;)

petergunn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Then you can download and test st2205term :-)

checking for initscr in -lncurses... no
configure: error: Need ncurses to compile librote.

Stuck there. Might wanna add that to your install instructions earlier in this thread.

rat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> petergunn Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Then you can download and test st2205term :-)
>
> checking for initscr in -lncurses... no
> configure: error: Need ncurses to compile
> librote.
>
> Stuck there. Might wanna add that to your install
> instructions earlier in this thread.

Thanks for the info. Does the following fix the dependency?

apt-get install libncurses5-dev

-PG

petergunn Wrote:
> Thanks for the info. Does the following fix the
> dependency?

That did it. Make completed for both parts...

Now the fun part.

root@pipsqueak:~/st2205term-alpha-0.02# LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib ./st2205term --font=small --picframe=/dev/sdb --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=./us.kmap
libst2205: detected device, 128x128, 16 bpp.
rote_vt_forkpty: PID=27940
load_kmap(./us.kmap) - loading key defintions
load_kmap(./us.kmap) - 72 key defintions loaded
Opened device /dev/input/event0 => Power Button
Segmentation fault
root@pipsqueak:~/st2205term-alpha-0.02#

Though my box itself may be a large part of the problem. It's aging Ubuntu 9.10 install from LiveCD that was sliced back down to what probably would have been better off as a Minimal Debian Install. (It's what I got the Dockstar to replace, ultimately)

Tell me what you need me to do in order to get info from that for debugging.

Seems to be something broken when you try to go to page 4...

And a pic of the setup in action:

http://i.imgur.com/ncJD5.jpg

(Sorry for the blur. Cellphone camera and all that.)

I think the forum broke it I replied to your earlier post.

To fix st2205term you need to specify a valid usb keyboard device with --keyboard=/dev/input/eventX The one you supplied looks like the Power Button on your laptop :-)

To see what devices you have try: ls -al /dev/input/by-id and choose one that says 'event-kbd'.

ls -al /dev/input/by-id
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib ./st2205term --font=tiny --picframe=/dev/sdb --keyboard=/dev/input/eventX --keymap=./us.kmap

If it keeps crashing try using the "--verbose" command line option to get more debug output.

Why not try running it on the dockstar?

-PG



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2010 07:51AM by petergunn.

petergunn Wrote:
> If you can figure out how to push images in
> real-time out to an AX20X or other device you
> might be able to adapt it for that as well.
>
This might be easier than I thought, lcdproc has a drv_Image driver which outputs to a PNG or PPM file.

/* initially flush the image to a file */
    drv_IMG_flush();

    /* regularly flush the image to a file */
    /* Fixme: make 100msec configurable */
    timer_add(drv_IMG_timer, NULL, 100, 0);

Pipe that to ImageMagick's convert for conversion to jpeg and gphoto2's CLI client to upload to the AX20X picframe. Only question is if the performance matches libst2205. gphoto also exposes a gphotofs FUSE file system if we don't want to use the CLI client.

Another piece of good news is gphoto2's camlib supports this method as well for the st2205 picframes as well - without the need to hack since we are using it as a plain old picframe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2010 08:00AM by jasonp.

Are you sure the pictures appear on the screen when they are uploaded?

-PG

Peter

Since we could plug in keyboard or mouse at any time and it would work, I wonder if there is same type of setting that could be used, so whenever lcd is plugged in , the program launches.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2010 08:14AM by rgtaa.

rgtaa Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Peter
>
> Since we could plug in keyboard or mouse at any
> time and it would work, I wonder if there is same
> type of setting that could be used, so whenever
> lcd is plugged in , the program launches.

The 'right way' would be to write a udev rule that starts st2205term when the picframe is plugged in. That way it doesn't have to be running when its not in use.

I suspect most people would just keep their picframe connected (maybe running 'top' or the curses version of LCD4Linux) and plug in the keyboard when they need access.

I'd like to keep st2205term as minimal as possible.

-PG

Peter
Would there be a way that if I plugged in keyboard , there would be way to have like control p or control t and it would launch LCD program. That way I could plug in lcd any time. Not sure if by doing this, we could launch different programs on the lcd screen, so we could have for example :

control plus number 1 could launch lcd root access
control plus number 2 could launch IP address, time/date stuff , your first test one
control plus number 3 launchs news feed program
control plus number 4 launchs pictures in some folder
control plus number 5 randomly plays music from some folder.

These would be examples of stuff I can imagine the screen could be useful for.

What were some uses you were thinking of using it for?

This keyboard key combo could be very useful because we could then launch at any time 5 or 6 programs for the lcd screen.

Also, if we didn't know if lcd was in sda or sdb , the control plus could also be like
control plus a would run lcd from sda
control plus b would run lcd from sdb
So script would be assigned to these control keys.

I have other programs I would love to start using some thing like this:
starting squeezebox server program using keyboard combo
shutting down dockstar using keyboard combo
rebooting dockstar using keyboard combo



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2010 09:31AM by rgtaa.

rgtaa Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Peter
> Would there be a way that if I plugged in keyboard
> , there would be way to have like control p or
> control t and it would launch LCD program.

I think twinpeaks instructions regarding using USB keypad to control the dockstar will probably work for regular keyboards as well.

Another option is to leave st2205term running all the time and run LCD4Linux in curses mode on the terminal. Should work but I haven't tried it.

-PG

Yay! st2205term has its own website: http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/lcd/

Spread the word! :-)

-PG

Peter
Nice, like the webpage
Now, that is it main stream, maybe someone will come up for a way to do hotplug type thing andr keyboard combo's to launch different lcd programs on it.
That would be cool.

control 1 turns lcd into root access
control 2 turns lcd into lcd ip address/time/date network status
control 3 turns lcd into news feeds
control 4 starts "startx"

maybe even 4 keyboard combo's for starting LCD screen root access at sda , sdb , sdc, sdd . Because if no SSH in , we wouldn't know where dockstar is putting the lcd on startup.

p.s. Part of the reason I think hotplug might be useful would be because we don't know if the battery in the lcd screen could go bad, or leak if lcd is left on all the time. I don't know. The other reason for hot swap type thing or keyboard combo is we can attach it when we need it and check IP settings and network status. Then at another time plug it in for apt-get stuff. And starting or stopping other programs with keyboard combo's. We wouldn't have to do SSH from other computers anymore. Peter, you just added a lot of value to my dockstar the last day. Thanks again. I'm not expecting the hotplug or keyboard combo's to be done any time soon, but , I can see the lcd screen and keyboard combo's could be super cool. And all types of functions we can do with those 2 features. :)

p.s.s. I wonder if 5 inch or 7 inch picture frame type stuff like this would be hackable? Not sure if bigger screen sizes have the same chipset, but it would be more readable for me from further away.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2010 02:16PM by rgtaa.

Peter: I'll be working on getting your code running on the Dockstar during the weekend. So I'll let you know what breaks/works/stalls/explodes then. ;) (Though it's likely a keyboard and path issue as there wasn't one hooked up then.)

I really like rgtta's suggestion on being able to switch what goes to the LCD. There was only two things I wanted to be able to send to the LCD and lcd4Linux does neither: The DHCP assigned IP address if I have to hook up this box to an unknown router...

And the amount of free ram the box has. Using the variable MemFree returns a completely inaccurate number and the other RAM Variable just returns total available to system ram. So it's effectively broken. (Oddly enough, Diskspace works.)

Also would like the ability to dim/shut off backlight to the screen, but the hardware itself may not even support that as it seems to be either on or off with the device itself.

>p.s. Part of the reason I think hotplug might be useful would be because
>we don't know if the battery in the lcd screen could go bad, or leak if lcd
>is left on all the time. I don't know.

Also rgtta: I desoldered the battery from my LCD screen. It works fine without it. Have another Sitronix based LCD screen here with the infamous CDRom partition and that one also works without the battery attached. So if you're that concerned about having an LCD with an unused/aging/constantly being recharged battery in it, go ahead and yank it out^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H gently desolder it from the mainboard and close the unit back up again.

Probably a better idea to do that anyway since the batteries generally will never get used and are already past their expiration dates.

>p.s.s. I wonder if 5 inch or 7 inch picture frame type stuff like this would be hackable?
>Not sure if bigger screen sizes have the same chipset, but it would be more readable
>for me from further away.

Potentially hackable. Haven't seen any developments in that area. But I agree. Even a 3" screen would be a major improvement... But there seems to be one common theme when it comes to very generic and common LCD picture frames: JTAG is disabled and the USB port is power only. There's been a proliferation of 'interactive' LCD screens lately and people have taken to just putting Linux on those outright instead of having a Linux Box + USB LCD. Shame, because I like the idea of having an LCD that will work on any Linux box I can plug it into.

FYI - st2205term now has support for DisplayLink devices! (and its still only ~400 lines of code :-)

-PG

Peter

The start up s2005 term (run as root):

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH # to find librote
./st2205term --font=tiny --picframe=/dev/sdb --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=./us.kmap

is very confusing, maybe try it on one of your dockstars for Displaylink support.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 01:33PM by rgtaa.

rtgaa, thanks for the feedback. I fixed the typo.

For displaylink support you would specify --dlo in place of --picframe=/dev/sdX

I've made a bunch of changes that are now in version 0.06...

• more key mappings (CTRL+A CTRL+B CTRL+F, TAB is fixed etc)
• key auto repeat is fixed
• hotplugging of both picframe and displaylink devices is supported - yay!

Hot plugging is a bit tricky as your picframe may be assigned a new device by the kernel when you plug it back in (i.e. /dev/sdb changes to /dev/sdc). You can now provide a symlink in place of the read device to st2205term so that the device can be found when its plugged back in...

ls -al /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep SITRONIX
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   9 Nov 26 16:06 usb-SITRONIX_MULTIMEDIA-0:0 -> ../../sdc

So, if your device is /dev/sdc you can either specify --picframe=/dev/sdc or --picframe=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-SITRONIX_MULTIMEDIA-0\:0 if you want hotplugging support.

Hotplugging is easier with displaylink as it will automatically find the device if you just specify --dlo. Downside is that you cannot run st2205term on more than one displaylink device concurrently :-)

-PG

Peter
Thanks for doing the hotplugging stuff. That really helps.
Also, Displaylink stuff is also excellent, so I can use bigger monitor.
I'm in the process of checking version 06.

I haven't had problems with the 5 dollar lcd.

What I am having problems with is Displaylink stuff.

I'm thinking maybe divide the page into 2 or 3 sections.

Because it seems commands are different and paths are different.

here is the mak file, and I figure the default is just for the 5 dollar lcd.

The 2 other options here are confusing. Maybe on that page you could put instructions and # in front of lines.

Is the 2nd option just for displaylink and no 5 dollar lcd.

And 3rd option is that if you have both? If it is why not just use that line since either would work, right?

mak

#!/bin/bash

# compile using libst2205
gcc -Wall -g -O2 -DHAVE_ST2205 -o st2205term st2205term.c -lrote -lst2205 -lgd

# compile using libdlo
#gcc -Wall -g -O2 -DHAVE_DLO -o st2205term st2205term.c -lrote -lgd -ldlo

# compile using libst2205 and libdlo
# gcc -Wall -g -O2 -DHAVE_ST2205 -DHAVE_DLO -o st2205term st2205term.c -lrote -lst2205 -lgd -ldlo


Also that

Start up st2205term (run as root):

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH # to find librote
./st2205term --font=tiny --picframe=/dev/sdb --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=./us.kmap


Needs to be expanded, maybe to match the 3 different ways to do it , each with command lines for each type.
The kmap is different for the different programs, right?

Maybe you can just install it the regular way that works for me. Then figure out what the commands lines and directory and file names for the other 2 options.

here is my /etc/rc.local
#!/bin/bash
rdate ptbtime1.ptb.de >/dev/null &
echo 2 > /proc/cpu/alignment
echo default-on > /sys/class/leds/dockstar\:orange\:health/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/dockstar\:orange\:misc/trigger
mount -a
/usr/local/bin/camstart &
/usr/bin/startx < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &

PS1='# ' LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib /root/rote-0.2.8/librote.so.0.2.8 --font=large --picframe=/dev/sda --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=$

exit 0


I'm trying to use my displaylink monitor using this ps1 line

But it doesn't work, you said to point to liborte in your version, right? it's in rote-0.2.8 directory, can you see how it is confusing if you want to do the displaylink options. If the keymap the same in all 3 versions, or different for displaylink?

So 3 different setup options would be very helpful to me.

Peter
What exactly would be the command line in rc.local for being about to hotplug either the 5 lcd or displaylink monitor? I am experimenting but I know your experience on doing it is vastly superior to what I can come up with. :)

here are 3 I'm experimenting on :
#PS1='# ' LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib /root/rote-0.2.8/librote.so.0.2.8 --font=large --picframe=/dev/sda --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=/root/rote-0.2.8/rote_keymap.c </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 &
#PS1='# ' LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib /root/st2205term-0.06/st2205term --font=large --picframe=/dev/sda --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=/root/st2205term-0.06/us.kmap </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 &

PS1='# ' LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib /root/st2205term-0.06/st2205term --font=large --picframe=/dev/sda --keyboard=/dev/input/event0 --keymap=/root/st2205term-0.06/us.kmap </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 &



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 05:11PM by rgtaa.

> And 3rd option is that if you have both? If it is why not just use that line since either would work, right?

Yes, but you need both libst2205 and libdlo installed to compile it. Most people will only have one or the other :-)

> Maybe you can just install it the regular way that works for me. Then figure out what the commands lines and directory and file names for the other 2 options.

Yes, eventually I'll have a Makefile and you would be able to do a "make install" and everything should work automagically.

> I'm trying to use my displaylink monitor using this ps1 line. But it doesn't work

Correct - I thought it would but rote is spawning a "bash --login" so it doesn't inherit the environment. I'll have to figure out something better - perhaps a command line argument to specify what program to run.

> But it doesn't work, you said to point to liborte in your version, right?

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a standard Linux thing - its a list of directories to search for libraries. You need to add /usr/local/lib to the search path. Most applications wont even mention this as its standard procedure.

> I am interested to be able to hotplug either the 5 dollar lcd or my displaylink monitor in

That would require you to run 2 concurrent st2205terms - in case you plug both in at once :-)

-PG

oh
Gee, I'm still confused, say I would only plug in either the 5 dollar lcd , take it off, and put on the displaylink one, I would need 2 different lines in rc.local?

I don't mine doing 2 installs , I'm just confused how to do it.

I also understand people that just want the 5 dollar lcd method, so they would get the commands for that.
So that was why I was thinking, maybe divide the page into 3 sections. So if we have the displaylink , you have seperate section with all the links for that.

And if somebody wants to have combo method , the ability to use 5 dollars lcd or any displaylink monitor, follow this part of the guide.

I was also wondering if we could make it so if hotplug looks for the device ID , instead of looking in sda or sdb. So if it finds this ID it will load it whereever it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 05:22PM by rgtaa.

> I don't mine doing 2 installs , I'm just confused how to do it.

Compile v0.06 with both lidst2205 and libdlo support and let me know what directory you compiled it in and I'll give you the 2 lines you need for /etc/rc.local :-)

I also need the device name for your picframe ( ls -al /dev/disk/by-id ).

-PG

Peter here is the ID device ,

root@debian:~# ls -al /dev/disk/by-id
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 160 Nov 26 23:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 100 Jan 1 1970 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Jan 1 1970 usb-FANTOM_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_57442D5743415 34A31373733-0:0 -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan 1 1970 usb-FANTOM_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_57442D5743415 34A31373733-0:0-part1 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan 1 1970 usb-FANTOM_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_57442D5743415 34A31373733-0:0-part2 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan 1 1970 usb-FANTOM_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_57442D5743415 34A31373733-0:0-part3 -> ../../sda3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan 1 1970 usb-FANTOM_WD10EACS-00ZJB0_57442D5743415 34A31373733-0:0-part4 -> ../../sda4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 26 23:32 usb-SITRONIX_MULTIMEDIA-0:0 -> ../../sdb

I plugged the display link monitor in too , but I don't see it with device ID

I installed the programs the way your guide instructed , so would the path be the same for all of us, that is why I asked you the other day to write if we start from "root" and you made your guide NOW so we all should have same directory structure, right.

here is my root directory:
root@debian:~# dir
Desktop libdlo-0.1.2 st2205term-0.04 st2205term-0.06.tgz udlfb
lcd4linux-0.11.0-SVN rote-0.2.8 st2205term-0.06 st2205term-alpha-0.02 xf86-video-displaylink

So whereever you wrote in your guide to install it to and your cd / commands I followed, so you and me should have exact same structure, right?

also can you make sure I did the right line in nano mak

#!/bin/bash

# compile using libst2205
#gcc -Wall -g -O2 -DHAVE_ST2205 -o st2205term st2205term.c -lrote -lst2205 -lgd

# compile using libdlo
#gcc -Wall -g -O2 -DHAVE_DLO -o st2205term st2205term.c -lrote -lgd -ldlo

# compile using libst2205 and libdlo
gcc -Wall -g -O2 -DHAVE_ST2205 -DHAVE_DLO -o st2205term st2205term.c -lrote -lst2205 -lgd -ldlo



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 05:46PM by rgtaa.