inexpensive source for wifi and lcd display

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Development
1

I have been toying with the idea of developing something for my house, and if it actually works possibly developing a PCB and selling it as a development platform

My needs include wifi hardware such as the wishield, and an LCD display such as the Kent display:

For my own use the prices are more than fair, I'd rather buy stuff that is easy to use than save $10 to build a kit (if that makes sense).

But if I were to ever make this a product, those two individual components drive the price up to $130 before any PCB, relays or other hardware are included.

My question is, do you guys know of other sources for wifi and displays that I may not know of that you would recommend?

Also, I suppose I could make the wifi access optional and have the standard an RJ45 connection, but if I do that, what is a good ethernet hardware solution? The ethernet requirement (wired or wireless) is to go to a site and scrape some numbers off a page for display. Nothing too fancy.

Thanks.
Jeff

2

The BlackWidow (http://asynclabs.com/) is pretty darn nice, and the gerbers are available so if you were to scale up you could integrate it into your own board.

3

That is a sexy little combo board. Not having to stack will save space.

4

Has anyone worked with an LCD like this:

Its specs are here:
http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/datasheet/295/CFAG128128BTFHVZ.pdf?olddir=128128b

and its controller specs are here:
http://www.crystalfontz.com/controllers/NT7086.pdf

It mentions a NT7086PQ shift register to feed the data to the display, but I can't tell if those registers are already on the board, or if a circuit would have to be built.

Most of the LCD's I get are the hobby type that shows pin mapping to my board along with code examples. This may be too hardcore for me, unless some of you view these as easy-peasy to write to.