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[on:]

I'm interested in using a nokia 6100 screen. On eBay they are less than $5. But for a breakout board they are up to $40. I know the ribbon cable is tiny, but aside from physical interfacing and LED power, is there anything about the breadboard that is necessary to use it with the arduino? Could I use the $5 ebay screen if I can manage to connect it? Or is there some kind of additional driver on the breakout board?

If it is the case that I can use the plain cheap screen, is there a way to know what kind of ribbon cable that is so I can try to find something to adapt it to a PCB?

Thanks

edit: I think the ones I found on ebay might be knockoffs, but my question remains, can they be used as simply as the breakout boards?

[Reply #1 on:]

These are the connectors:
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/570
Or these:
http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=40T0656

You can't use it on anything but a pcb. The ribbon cable is FAR too fragile to have them floating on a cable.

The only thing on the breakout board that you really need is the boost converter. These displays require 7v to power the backlight. It is possible to do this with a capacitor voltage doubler though - this method is alot cheaper, and in fact you can make an arduino PWM output do it with just two additional diodes and two capacitors.

The connectors are very hard to solder by hand. it is possible, you just have to be careful not to melt them. The simplest way is to find a breakout board for a 0.5mm pitch 10 pin TSSOP package, which are quite cheap, and solder the connector to that using desolder braid to ensure there are no shorts. If using that method, be very careful to support the display and stop it flapping around.

Beyond that, you just need a 1.8K resistor inline with each of the comms lines (SCLK,SDATA,RS,CS).

The displays of ebay can be very hit and miss as to what controller they are, so it might take some experimentation to get the code working. (My library should work with most of these screens: https://github.com/TCWORLD/gLCD-Library )

[Reply #2 on:]

Thank you very much, this is really helpful.

[Reply #3 on:]

I managed to solder one of those plugs to a little board I etched. I had a lot of trouble, but ultimately I got one of my screens working with your library. The connections seemed sketchy, the LED was flickering but there didn't seem to be any errors on the screen. I tried to switch it out to test my second screen and I tore off the plug. So I'm gonna try again when I get a better soldering setup. I'd say it went well considering everything though.