This is great. I wonder if this concept might be better served in the form of a wifi? I don't know how persistent messages are in a Hackaday chat room, but feels to me like an indexable, searchable database of display panel knowledge would be an absolute godsend to a lot of hobbyists. Would be 100% on board with implementing something.

Anyone has details to share about the HD8503.03C card? 

would you happen to know anything about the 3ds screen and its wiring? i'd like to learn about it for a project

is there a way to convert 40-pin to hdmi? I have a HP ENVY All-in-One - 27-b255qd with a broken screen.

Laptop panel resuse is alive and well: https://donotsta.re/notice/AXdVMXlZG2ncT61y1Q

Привет , помогите пожалуйста найти распиновку 14,1 TX36D98VC1CAB Hitachi 1400x1050 30pin 1 A 2lvds eeprom, на сайте есть старая тема на которой ссылка не активна(

Хорошие новости - у меня есть точно такой же дисплей. Плохие новости - у меня он тоже не работает =D Не помню, почему точно. Я пробовал этот: https://hackaday.io/project/179868/log/193081#fix-30p-s6 , инструкция для переделки дефолтного кабеля здесь: https://hackaday.io/project/179868/log/193024 . Забегай к нам в чат, сделай @Arsenijs там, посмотрим в реалтайме!

Stumbled across your site which is great as I have already started down this path with an old screen I removed from a redundant HP laptop. I am going to put the screen inside an aluminium briefcase type of thing and then have a Rpi 400 in it as well with joysticks that will play old Amiga games via pimiga 1.5.

 I have purchased an RTD2556 edp board same as option B in this page https://hackaday.io/project/179868-all-about-laptop-display-reuse/log/195807-edp-controller-boards.

The panel itself can only do 1366x768 and when I connect up the pi400 I don't get an image displayed. I think this is due to the board not being flashed to the right resolution.

Does anybody know how you go about flashing these controller boards too different resolutions?

Hey! I didn't get a notification for this somehow, sadly. You should come to our chatroom, it's easier for me to notice comments there!

Yeah, wrong resolution would be the culprit, such boards are typically configured for 1080p. These chips have external SPI flash, so what I'd do is desolder it, then use a Raspberry Pi to flash them. You also need to obtain data to be flashed from somewhere, however, and sadly, I don't quite know where you could get that, but I think we should be able to figure that out!

I tried to flash a dump from a board configured for 1366x768 to a board configured for 1080p. The controller was a RTD2660. It did not work, after flashing the RTD didn't seem to boot in any way. Reflashing the orig. file made it work again.

I have a particular display from a Polaroid DVD player/tablet (PDT9000). Pinouts have proven impossible to find. 

Hey! Somehow Hackaday didn't notify me about this comment =( Without looking into it, I'd say, given its size, it's likely to be a TTL screen (~25 traces for the image alone) or a small LVDS one (should be 8 connections for the image, 4 differential pairs), but do join our chatroom and send us photos. What's  the model number of the screen itself?

The display has a decal:
H-M090Q-09Q
Barcode
M090WSBN40-AA-01  170323/002720

So, it could be this one:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32832757729.html

I'm looking through Google search results and there's a pretty consistent presence of "AT070TN90" in those, which is something you can easily get a datasheet for: https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/AT070TN90.pdf I suggest you compare the pinout - make sure it's the same amount of pins, GND pins go to polygons on the FPC and connect to each other, R/G/B data pins all go to thin traces to the LCD controller silicon rectangle, NC pins stay NC (but some might not). If you send closeup photos of your display's flat cable end, I can help you check that.

how can i send the photos?

Come here: https://hackaday.io/messages/room/297230 and send the pictures by using the "image" button or drag&drop

I don't think collecting data in a chatroom is the right way to go. I mean, it's going to look good on your project if you come forth with a bunch of aggregated information, but I'm not sure how I feel about the format.

As a bit of constructive criticism, here's my take using a [179868] prefix for a HaD.io page:

https://hackaday.io/page/10753-179868-154-lgphilips-lp154w01

I disagree with the notion that we're contributing to a project here. I see making a particular panel work as individual projects attributed to the people taking it upon themselves to document their work.

The review and aggregation of the insights is separate from that and shouldn't be mingled with the rest. I think that's only one or two steps away from grabbing the info and stripping attribution.

Edit: right, becoming a contributor to the project is relevant for the competition aspect of it. Well, I'd rather stay away from that. Hobbyists that are in it for the competition have been nothing but trouble in my life so far.

>>> I don't think collecting data in a chatroom is the right way to go.

Oh, I don't think that a chatroom is a good place for data that has to stay accessible and searchable, either! Only mean that I've documented my own ways of "how I keep track of my laptop panel collection" - https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/original//8623601621649175483.png . What I have, however, is more personal than publishable, and it's more geared towards my own reuse effort in terms of its contents.

Your page is definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to the kind of plan we're discussing! Do keep in mind that the cable and the inverter are laptop-specific parts whereas the panel usually isn't, i.e. your panel has quite a few alternatives one could replace it with and still have it work perfectly in a laptop, but the cable and the inverter have specific pinouts, connectors and mechanical dimensions that just won't work on another laptop.

I've long planned to reuse some laptop-specific cables, however, and the next week I have a TODO task of reusing one - I'll be writing a short article about it eventually, and if you'd like to reuse this cable instead of i.e. rewiring an existing one, I hope my article will help you!

>>> I disagree with the notion that we're contributing to a project here.

Only if "technically" so, and only to the point where people can learn something about laptop display reuse intricacies from our conversation, which is no longer really about pinouts, but more about the logistics of information =) Other than this technicality, I concur!

>>> I see making a particular panel work as individual projects attributed to the people taking it upon themselves to document their work.

It certainly is an individual effort first and foremost! Due to the nature of how HaD project pages are managed, this isn't any kind of community wiki where everyone can edit pages and add their own pages, and I can't really hope to build a wiki like that at the moment, either, as much as a community-driven wiki might be more of a fitting format. I think of this project as of a knowledge database that enables people to do it quicker and cheaper, that I write based on my own experience,research and actions - it is my personal effort, others' efforts are projects on their own, and while I'll link to projects that people make so that people can learn from them, I certainly do not consider them part of this HaD project. It's one of the reasons why I keep a list of laptop display-related projects on HaD, people need to see what others do with their panels!

>>> The review and aggregation of the insights is separate from that and shouldn't be mingled with the rest. I think that's only one or two steps away from grabbing the info and stripping attribution.

"grabbing info and stripping attribution" sounds like something I'd very much like to avoid. Can you, please, expand on what is it you think I might be doing or planning wrong?

>>> right, becoming a contributor to the project is relevant for the competition aspect of it.
Funnily enough, the amount of contributors actually isn't relevant to chances of a project winning anything in Hackaday Prize, most projects I've seen win are one-man efforts. I've participated in previous Hackaday Prize challenges, and I'm pretty realistic about it - I've submitted this project to Hackaday Prize "displays" round, but nothing I do here is really "in the spirit" of projects that change the world, are commercializable easily or could benefit from a Design Lab residence. This page, realistically, has 0 chances of getting anywhere further than this round's final (which is a $500 prize), and even this chance is pretty slim, considering that, IIRC last time I checked, there's already 10 decent applications.

>>> Hobbyists that are in it for the competition

To put it explicitly, I'm treating this HaD prize round as more of "deadline for me to dump my brain and do as much research on laptop display stuff as possible + unlikely but plausible monetary reward for me to fund my crippling addiction to reusing laptop parts". Plus, there's the "positive coverage" part of that, which I've learned to be one of the most important parts - actually letting people know that this is a thing will seriously impact usefulness of what I make. After over a year of working with laptop displays specifically (and multiple years of hoping I get to do that someday), I can't help but feel like - now I owe it to people to tell every single thing I've learned. And, to be as frank and transparent as possible, the main competition here is between my lack of ability to finish projects I start and my desire to share what I've learned, as well as the desired ego boost of "I am doing a thing that people do really need" =)

One thing I do hope to be able to do, however, is eventually selling "making your display work" kits on Tindie which would cover usecases that Chinese sellers don't cover. For instance, eDP displays from laptops can easily be adapted to full-size DisplayPort with a small PCB that'd connect to commonly available eDP-FPC cables with standardized pinout, providing both a DisplayPort input and a small circuit generating EN+ADJ signals for the panel's builtin LED driver. Nobody is currently making these boards, but there's a market for them, and I will be making them. And I'll be linking to product pages for these boards from this project page, for sure - but that's not the end goal, it's merely "I can do this and it nets some extra income to fund my research" thing, especially given these boards will certainly be OSHW.

Other example - currently, a programming interface for M.NT68676 costs $25, but there doesn't seem to be anything to it that couldn't be replicated with a Raspberry Pi. When I get to reverse-engineering it, I'll certainly be making and selling small boards which'd plug into a VGA port of the M.NT68676 board, hook up to the programming interface pins (VGA SDA and SCL, but I do have to check that) and provide level shifting, if that's even necessary. However, as with all of the stuff I make and sell, it will be fully OSHW and anyone will likely be able to replicate that circuit using just a breadboard.

I have been doing projects online for a while now, and if there's a track record to what I do, it's "not finishing things", not "doing it for money/competition" =D This is, and always has been, my main challenge, and me participating in Hackaday Prize is mainly a tool for me to help provide some of the internal "drive" I'm missing.

And, to make it clear, I care about people's ethical concerns no less than I care about people's ability to reuse parts that'd otherwise end up in landfill - which is to say, I care about them a lot, as the amount of text I'm typing might indicate ;-P Please do check back as I go on and tell if you think this project is going in a direction you find undesirable - for me, it's a "openly accessible knowledge database" first and foremost, and if you think it deviates from this goal in a major way, I'd like to know about it.

Thank you for elaborating. I think you understand my concerns, but rest assured that they are more a consequence of observing the shift in paradigms characteristic of the youtube content creator economy and the "maker" "community", where you support some random person in their hobby project quest, and before you know it you're expected to show the same kind of support and engagement and loyalty towards "oh yeah I decided to go all in and do this full-time now", and "support" has become "give me money and buy my stuff". I think it's abusive and should be discouraged.

So let's hope this is not that.


edit: strictly speaking, there would need to be criteria other than good faith that qualify a body of work as nonprofit. I'm not buying "it's open source" as a qualifying criterion on its own. If you've got exclusive production means or control the market (through brand recognition and access to the community, and thereby discouraging others from overcoming initial investment risks and NRE costs), that's as good a monopoly as there is.

I don't have a commercial interest in basically all projects I do, and I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to surround  myself with people that are like-minded in that regard.

Idk, maybe I just need this pandemic to be over and have some quality time with friends at a hackerpace. I just don't trust people's intentions enough to go with a threshold assumption that they're idealistic as long as they stay below a certain amount of profit from their work.

> Laptop displays and microcontrollers?

YES! Using avr attiny

https://github.com/ericwazhung/avr-lvds-lcd

https://sites.google.com/site/geekattempts/home-1/drive-an-old-laptop-display-from-an-avr

Definitely trying that out one day - I want to build an AVR clock using one of these!

BTW, that's a project by our own @esot.eric , even has a page here on HaD! #avr-lvds-lcd binary-clock  some good extra info and comments there =)

Thankya for the interest and shout-out @dearuserhron and @Arsenijs! There are a couple other wonky ideas in my various pages, too... e.g. using a Really Simple controller (just a few shift registers and a clock, no MCU!) to create a color filter for stage/spot lights, or maybe even a lamp shade... Some displays (especially DE-only which don't use H/V-sync) can (WAY out of spec) take in just a repeating pixel-value and try to display it, even lacking sync signals). That sorta hackery is very panel-specific, though, as again it's way out of specs.

Cool repository, @Arsenijs!

There's something negative to be said as well though - this project may be cancer for the laptop repair surplus market. I was once lucky to find a spare display assembly for cheap when I needed it to fix my laptop.

Much like when TheSignalPath or EEVBlog release a video about that "bargain ebay find" lab equipment and how to repair them, they are effectively being removed from the market, because all it effectively does is create interest and competition, and I f* hate that.

So, it's a double-edged sword.

I see your point, I think there's definitely dangers, but I don't think it's going to play out the same way. Reusing display assemblies themselves isn't all that easy, as I've described in my previous reply to you - if there's any replacement parts that people will be incentivized to buy because of this knowledge database, it's laptop panels specifically, since that's what this project provides information on.

Out of all the things that a display assembly provides, you only really need the panel, but all those extra things (casing, hinges, webcam, cabling etc) make a display assembly cost significantly more than the panel, something that's basically a hard rule in the laptop display market - it's really not often that a display assembly costs less than the panel inside it does, and it's basically a guarantee otherwise.

This could apply less for touchscreen-equipped display assemblies. It's usually possible to buy a touchscreen+panel assembly, but less often so... Even then, however, the usual "reverse-engineering of the display assembly cables is hard" caveat applies.

I'd say, the biggest problem currently with finding assemblies is that they're a "value added" option. Most people, and certainly most repair shops are able to replace just what's broke - be it the display, touchscreen, hinges, cable, or whatever else. Even with glued together display assemblies becoming a norm, it's certainly a driver towards moving to assemblies, but people adapt to that and learn to deal with these, like I have learned to. And, in cases where an assembly breaks in a way that ppl are really incentivised to buy the entire assembly, i.e. hinges breaking and ruining the case or even touchscreen - especially if it's a factory defect that affects a lot of people (see also: every non-Thinkpad Lenovo from 2010 to this day) -, display assemblies are going to become expensive and rare purely because of the supply&demand law.

I have an example in mind of what you're describing that's definitely possible, but is a long shot - people eventually figuring out a way to reuse some kind of interesting display assembly as-is, adapting the connectors and everything. It's not going to be "cancer" as such, but it might very well result in some assemblies being harder to buy - having said that, it shouldn't be much of a problem if the display assembly in question doesn't have some kind of family defect (*ahem* Lenovo *ahem*), since people will still be generally able to replace parts of the assembly when they break.

I know I've done some reverse-engineering work to try and reuse Lenovo Flex 2 14 assemblies, and a "assembly becomes rare because of hobbyists" scenario is possible if a certain assembly becomes popular as a result of someone's RE work, however, we're currently nowhere near the point where this'd be a thing affecting markets in a meaningful way. In fact, we're at a point where laptop displays are e-waste more often than not, and if certain parts become rare as a result of us moving away from that, we might even see the market react in a repair-friendly way. Having said that - is definitely a thing to keep in mind!

I appreciate that you took some time to reflect on the issue. Perhaps I have been on the receiving end of that equation more often than I'd like.

Hypothesizing that panels may outlive the hobby project they are being upcycled for, I would hope that the community is open to requests to "trade in" a sought-after panel for another one, even an off-the-shelf one currently in production, on a case-to-case basis.

I hope this won't be gamed by repair shops showing up as private people in need, but whom can one even trust today.

>>> Perhaps I have been on the receiving end of that equation more often than I'd like.

I have been too, and it's forced me to learn how to fix glued-in displays and crappy hinges, but it's nowhere near the effort I'd like to expend to keep my own laptop alive! And more often than not, hinge problems I encountered were also factory defects that a lot of people had, resulting in the display assembly prices going up specifically when I could use the whole assembly - so I feel your pain! I've ended up both having to learn new repair skills, as well as buying whole laptops (with i.e. motherboard issues) and harvesting them for parts in cases where the assembly wasn't salvageable.

>>> being open to requests to "trade in" a sought-after panel for another one

That'd be stellar to pull off! Shipping is probably going to be a bit of a problem - on the other hand, hopefully, people will be cataloguing panels they have (like I do, see: image in our public chatroom), and keeping their lists public... Maybe, I'll be able to impact the current "people have unused panels but nobody talks about it" situation, as much as it's status-quo-ey and comfortable - at the very least, I'll share my own best practices on "what to do if you have many panels, and ones you don't use".

>>> repair shops showing up as private people in need

In a way, repair shops are a proxy for private people in need! But I get what you mean, for sure, there's a lot of variables that can make things less-than-ethical, i.e. if they sell such a panel to their customer for the market cost of the sought-after one.

What a fun undertaking. As it seems, I've got at least 2 laptop panels sitting around, and I bought a VGA/DVI to lvds interface, but then decided it's too much hassle to figure out the connectors (Lenovo and Acer).

Seems like this project could turn "too much trouble to be worth it" into "hey, free display" for many people.

>>> turn "too much trouble to be worth it" into "hey, free display"

is exactly my intention with this project =)

>>> too much hassle to figure out the connectors (Lenovo and Acer)

You are talking about connectors for cables that come out of an laptop's display assembly, like this one?

https://cdn.hackaday.io/images//2153391621759640500.jpg

If so, they are indeed trouble to figure out - and I've tried! Thank you for a reminder, I should write a blog post about these! Apart from LVDS, they typically have inverter connections in them (for CCFL assemblies), touchscreen connections where applicable, sometimes even USB camera (often) and i.e. Bluetooth&LED pins (on Thinkpads), and every single one of these combined cables has a pinout that's tough to figure out; schematics help but only to a certain point, and wiring receptacles for these is also troublesome.

Instead, I highly suggest disassembling the display assembly and getting to the LCD panel itself. The connectors on the panels are very standardized by this point, there's basically 5 types of connectors+pinouts (3 LVDS and 2 eDP) that you'll encounter on the regular, it's highly unlikely that the one you'll encounter will be a unique one.

Thank you for reminding me about this factor! Goes on my TODO as a topic =)

Fyi the chatroom link above is broken.

The first panel I could find is an LG/Philips LP154W01

(ok WTF, HaD removes pictures attached to replies. Thanks for nothing, HaD.io)

>>> LG/Philips LP154W01

I have two of these! (sneaky edit: they're 1280x800 LVDS-1-6 panels with regular LVDS-1-6 30-pin connector pinout) They both work with an universal MT6820 controller and one of these cables: https://www.ebay.com/itm/142163214663 , plus a CCFL inverter, of course (mine are reused ones from laptops). I will be writing an article on reusing inverters soon - if you have laptop inverters already, then it'll cost you about $10 (inverter+cable) to turn one of these displays into a VGA display. Or even $6 if you rewire the default display cable that comes with the $6 controller, according to the MT6820 cable rewire guide I wrote, it takes about half an hour of work but that's it! And you can always opt for the ~$20 "panel-specific" controller =)

>>> broken link

Interesting, I checked all the links. They all take you to the same place that the "public chat" button in top left of the page, under the project name, takes you! Which is https://hackaday.io/messages/room/297230 . You can try to click the "public chat" button and that should work!

>>> removed pictures

Yep. Seeing how it's kinda possible to attach a picture to a comment, it seems to be a bug, someone should report it over at #Feedback - Hackaday.io 

Perhaps Hackaday should Rethink Rebuild Refresh their wysiwyg text editor. They haven't fixed other bugs for years. Placing and handling pictures is a huge pain for me. When I delete an empty line under a picture, it often deletes an entire paragraph above, pictures, text and all. Sometimes it jumps to the beginning of the page, sometimes it just fails to publish with an error.

I don't think we'll get to see improvements here, as it doesn't immediately create revenue for them.

>>> Perhaps Hackaday should Rethink Rebuild Refresh their wysiwyg text editor.

That would be great - I encounter quite a bit of problems while working with it, too! Usually, they're resolved by liberally pressing Ctrl+Z and trying to achieve my text editing goal with a slightly different sequence of keypresses (i.e. Backspace instead of Delete), if that fails, dropping into the HTML view and changing it up a bit so that i.e. a <h1> tag doesn't apply to a picture I just uploaded, or an entire block of text. I don't see it happening, however, seeing how this editor's misbehaviour has been a constant occurrence for years. I agree that it's no moneymaker, and I'd certainly also guess that, as with any platform, there's always more immediate tasks to work on and this just isn't high on the TODO list compared to i.e. immediate Hackaday Prize-related changes.

This is a great resource! I've got a few displays around that I could reuse, nice to have all the info in one place. Thanks!

Thank you - hopefully the amount of things I want to list here won't be too overwhelming =)

Inverter info is in the PDF datasheet I sent you, Sharp intended it to go with the panel! ;)

As also stated (albeit in a different place) -- the universal inverter i have is for another project and won't work here after all -- but I can scrounge one from another laptop. I also have one from a bad controller, that is an odd design that eBay doesn't seem to sell any more... photos in 30-60min or so when I get home. But maybe *it* will work.

Checked out the datasheet! Seems straightforward, actually - feed 12V on VIN and 5V on VBB&VBC to the inverter and set FPVEE to logic high, it should start at max brightness. Then, for brightness control, level shift your I2C to 5V, use I2C address 0x28, then write two 0x7f bytes to get medium brightness - is an inverted range, FF means minimum backlight and 00 means maximum, and you need to send the value twice because there's two "digital pots" to set it (for whatever reason - dual-lamp LCD?)

Sadly, doesn't seem to be a pin to signal a fault anywhere, lamps do burn out, after all - but it should work when you connect 12V and 5V, so you shouldn't need to fiddle with I2C for simple testing.

=== Question from @Ricardo on old project page: ===

This is interesting. I have a ltn154at07 screen from an HP laptop. It would be great to make it work with a RPi. It has a 20x2 connector for the video signals and power, two u.fl for wifi antennas and a usb for an integrated camera.

=== My answer: ===

If you have $20 to spare, then, assuming your panel's model is correct, this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/184478444884 would be your best bet! On a lower budget, it can also be done with a $4 VGA-only board, $3 VGA-HDMI dongle, reuse of the original CCFL and some cable rewiring - I'll do a tutorial on that eventually =) + I have an RPi HAT planned that'd allow you to direct-connect an LVDS display to GPIOs using DPI - hopefully I can get it to cost $5 or so, and it'll be the most energy-efficient option!

=== Question from @Starhawk on old project page: ===

I have an LQ141F1LH02 panel by Sharp, from a Pentium III Dell. This thing is... bizarre. I also have an MT561-B V2.1 Universal LCD Controller PCB. I'll PM you the datasheet for the panel and... what info I have on the controller PCB; you're welcome to add both as files to this Project.

Is there *any* way in H--- I can use that panel, with that controller? eBay doesn't have a specialized PCB for the panel itself. I'm not surprised... it's stupid crazy: dual LVDS clocks, an inverter with an I2C-like serial protocol to control it (I have a replacement inverter, too!) and so on. If it wasn't a 14in 1400x1050 panel, I'd not be bothered with it.

=== My answer: ===

14in 1400x1050? I respect that, a 1400x1050 14" panel was the very first panel I tried to make work, and also the first panel I made work! Well, I have 3 of those, and I did burn up the first one I tried to connect, by switching to 5V panel voltage accidentally, but the second one worked wonders =)

Yes, you should be able to use it! In fact, I am certain you will be able to! Dual LVDS clocks is exactly what you'd expect for a panel of such a resolution. I wrote a worklog on rewiring the stock "MT6820" board cable - it's designed for the desktop LCD monitor panels, not for laptop panels, these are 2 very different pinouts! I hope my tutorial explains it well enough - https://hackaday.io/project/166666/log/193018

You will want to take care of the inverter, first - you won't really know if your display's working fine until you get it backlit. It will also help you understand if, perhaps, the panel is cracked or the backlight is toast, which'd mean this panel might not be worth the trouble to begin with!

I usually deal with inverters that are controlled by two signals - "EN" and the "ADJ" PWM signal. I2C... I'd probably like to see more info about the inverter! I hope the inverter IC datasheet is available with all the I2C commands needed to make it work, that'd imply you can actually use it with a Pi (maybe with I2C level shifting if that one's 5V)... Are you sure it's I2C and not a slightly more convoluted EN+ADJ?

If you can't make an I2C inverter work, thankfully, EN+ADJ inverters are easy to get from old laptops, so you should be able to find a working one easily!