USB Palm OS Device as an LCD Display
From NAS-Central Buffalo - The Linkstation Wiki
How to use a USB cabled Palm-OS device as an external (20x4) character LCD display for your Linkstation using the [|PalmOrb] emulator
USB LCD | These instructions are essentially for a [| USB LCD Display], a USB docking Palm-OS device can emulate a USB LCD interface so that no external adapter is needed. The same instructions could be used with some modification to add an LCD with the Articles/PPCSerialHeader
Contents |
Abstract
This article is for people that want to add an LCD display to their Linkstation, but don't want to crack it open, and happen to have a USB cabled [| Palm OS ] device lying around.
Prerequisites
This article assumes that you have installed Projects/FreeLink. A 2.6 Kernel Articles/GeneralUpgradeTo26-Kernel has better USB support, but a 2.4 Kernel would probably work as well. For these instructions you will need a USB cabled Palm-OS Device.
Method
- Install [|PalmOrb] on your USB cabled Palm-OS Device. The [| v1.1a4] version has the most font options for a (20x4) emulated LCD, there are several other versions available on the [| sourceforge site]. It emulates a Matrix Orbital LK204-25 LCD.
Configure the PalmOrb app to use the USB Port | Menu -> Options -> Serial|Device|USB 
- Install and remove LCDProc using apt-get (this should take care of any dependencies) The Debian Stable Version only has the LCDd Daemon program but not the lcdproc client, so you'll have to install lcdproc from a tarball. Kind of an ugly solution to get the dependencies resolved, but it works:
apt-get install lcdproc apt-get remove lcdproc
- Get the [|LCD Proc] tarball and compile/install it.
wget http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/download/lcdproc-0.4.5.tar.gz tar -xvzf lcdproc-0.4.5.tar.gz cd lcdproc-0.4.5 ./configure make make install
- Use these instructions to configure LCDProc to run with PalmOrb properly: [| How do I configure LCDproc for PalmOrb?] make sure that the MtxOrb part looks at least a little something like this:
........ [MtxOrb] # Matrix Orbital driver # Select the output device to use [/dev/lcd] device=/dev/ttyUSB0 #device=/dev/usb/tts/1 #device=/dev/ttyS1 # Set the display size [20x4] size=20x4 ........
- Attach the USB enabled Palm-OS device and start the PalmOrb app. Do a dmesg of your linkstation; if things went well you should see lines like this at the end:
usb 3-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0 usb 3-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1
- Run the LCDd (LCDproc Daemon) and LCDproc client with some options to see if it works.
LCDd & lcdproc C M X
- Hopefully you got some output on the Palm-OS device as an LCD. For other clients Google:lcdproc to see what other LCDProc clients you can find. Or just go here: [| LCDProc Site:Clients ]
What's the point?
Palm as terminal | untested: Enable terminal access with this command: getty -h -L ttyUSB0 9600 vt100, and use a terminal program like [[1]]
Well if you happen to have a USB enabled older Palm OS PDA lying around and want an external LCD display for the price of nothing, now you have it!
Shell Scripts
#!/bin/sh # lcdmon.sh # Kill any LCDd that are running first, Start the Daemon and # fork it to the background. Then run LCDProc with the Time option and # fork it to the background. # You can run lcdproc -? alone to see what options there are. # Run another client: netlcdclient which gives U/Dl speed # You could run this script at startup. killall LCDd LCDd & lcdproc T & netlcdclient -i eth0 -a LinkSTN -d
References
- The NSLU2-Linux project where this idea was hijacked from: [| Palm as LCD-Display or terminal]
- The PalmOrb Page: [| SourceForge:PalmOrb]
- The LCDproc home: [| LCDproc]
- The Wikipedia: [| Palm_OS_devices ]
