Mee_n_Mac:
I’d ditch the Trinket for something like this and use it for both tasks.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11098
For the price of that, I can get 2 trinkets! Space isn’t a huge concern, these micro arduino-esque boards are so small that they’re all more than small enough to fit behind the motherboard panel. Even as cramped as it is behind there, I can still hide a 100+ quarter sized pieces of plastic. Hopefully I can do both tasks on the trinket, if not I’ll consider either buying another trinket or buying a slightly larger micro-board and selling off the trinket.
Can I use an arduino thing to hook straight up to the lcd/screen and then hook the mc to the mobo to provide values to the lcd? dont i need some backpack thing?
However, there are a number of boxes out there that run software on the machine and send all that info, including a lot of whatever else you want to throw out there, over a USB link, to the external display.
And define dirt cheap?
I have not seen any. Dirt cheap is under $20, over $50 is a bit ridiculous, over $75 is absolutely absurd even for something that is 100% perfect (perfect size, perfect display for what I want, easy control).
Your time & money developing the hardware, software, etc. for this application can’t/won’t come close to what’s out there on the open market.
I don’t know what you mean by this, a custom built thing will always be WAY better than anything on the open market (i mean you could literally build whatever it is that’s on the open market for just 1/4th the cost…), and secondly, what I’m looking for absolutely does not exist below $100 (which is ludicrous) and even the $100+ Matrix Orbital displays are pieces of crap (not paying $110 for an ugly, steel, 16x2 micro green no backlight lcd…). And they don’t come anywhere close to being ~$20.
Worst case scenario, I can buy that 16x2 RGB Negative LCD + USB Backpack kit on adafruit for ~$24. I’d rather a display that was a bit larger (not even more pixels, just viewing/active area so it could fit in a 3.5 or 5.25 bay), and that I could get the microcontroller on it’s own instead of in that negative LCD kit.
i mean I could literally just buy that kit, scrap the 16x2, and buy some 20x4 that’s a little bigger, for under $40. But I don’t think it’s worth paying that much for it. I mean putting that 16x2 just inside my computer case would be very cool, I was just hoping either for something a bit bigger, or putting it in my 3.5/5.25 bay.
Seriously, that 16x2 RGB kit is very ideal. I’m really just asking how to do this, rather than a plug and play kit. After all is said and done, there is a very high likelihood that I’m just going to buy that kit, and be extremely satisfied. I have 2 very simple questions, and am having trouble getting an answer:
1. Can I use any arduino or trinket/adafruit or etc microcontroller, to straight attach to the LCD and to the motherboard, to display my software/hardware CPU temps (and other system values)?
2. Is there any USB LCD backpack that I can buy on it’s own, like the one supplied in the discussed 16x2 rgb adafruit kit? And then I can just hook that straight up to the mobo right?
3. Can I use an i2c to USB adaptor to solve the issue of all screens using i2c? I see adafruit has an i2c lcd backpack, could I use that with a usb adaptor straight to pc?
Very Simply, I want to use a ‘screen’ to display my CPU temps as reported by the hardware itself, to the motherboard (or software values pulling from said sensors). How in the world do I do this. HOW do I do it. Not ‘buy this and plug it in and play’, I’m literally asking a very simple question of HOW. Arduino? i2c to usb adaptor? lcd backpack?
I didn’t come here to be attacked, I assure you I’ve spent a ton of hours searching this topic, and have not gotten help on it further than ‘i2c is incredibly complicated and you can’t directly connect it to your motherboard/computer’ and ‘this adafruit kit will work’.
You’ve spent weeks searching and a couple of the top results is people saying that it’s practically impossible to do?
I’m calling B.S. on both points. For those in the know, it’s trivial from both a PC programming standpoint and a hardware development standpoint to do what you want to do.
I am shocked at how rude you are to someone interested in this community. Here you go, top results on ‘how to use an lcd screen to monitor cpu temps’:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1381544
Looking for control panel with CPU/GPU temp display
I use a Scythe 5.25" LCD unit, in which I just attach the probes to the CPU before I mount the HS, GPU (remove cooling assembling, attach the thermistor to the core with supplied tape, reattach cooling) and just attach another one to your motherboard wherever you feel you want to monitor the temperature
i’m not sure how there’d be any other way to do it
http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=1260241
LED display for CPU temperature?
those are great, and I had seen them on new egg, but as I mentioned above, I was hoping not to have a bunch of wires going everywhere, so I was looking for a display that did not use temperature probes.
Ahh, well that’s not possible to my knowledge… It’s that or nothing I think… I just check mine at idle, and load, then I just run my rig. They shouldn’t ever change too often.
I assure you, I have done a ton of research into this.
Oh, here’s my thread that’s been active at the adafruit forums asking the same question. I thought the sparkfun community might be a better community, silly me:
http://www.forums.adafruit.com/viewtopi … 02cf64ae95
There are zero guides on how to do this out there. I’ve searched, I’ve read every guide. No, the adafruit tutorial merely show show to do it if you buy their kit, but what if I want to use a screen other than the 16x2, where do I get a USB LCD backpack? Because no one else in the world sells it, packaged or otherwise. There’s a ton of tutorials showing how to do it with highly inaccurate thermistors. I’ve seen guides on how to use matrix orbitals.
But no guides on how to hook up any screen I choose - LCD, TFT, OLED, etc, which are all i2c - to a microcontroller or backpack or whatever I need, to read values from the motherboard.