Difference between revisions of "LCDproc"

Revision as of 21:49, 8 January 2007

LCDproc is the software used to drive either LCD or VFD Displays on your MythTV Case.

LCDproc consists of a server daemon called LCDd that drives the LCD/VFD, and a collection of client applications tells the server what to display. There are also a collection of driver stubs for different LCD/VFD's. The stubs talk to the driver for your specific display.

Many Home Theater PC Cases now include VFDs from SoundGraph's iMon family of VFD displays. These typically are connected to your system through a USB port.

The Driver for the SoundGrpah iMon comes bundled with the latest LIRC package which most modern Linux distributions will have installers for. The driver name is lirc_imon

Setting up LCDproc

The following assumes your home directory is /home/mythtv and uses the imon VFD driver as an example

You will need the following packages pre-installed on your version of Linux -GCC, Make, Automake, Autoconf,ncurses, lirc, kernel headers.

First download the source package from LCDproc Website into your home directory You will now have a directory called lcdproc-0.51. Now lets build the LCDproc package.

> cd lcdproc-0.51 
>./configure --enable-drivers=all
> make
> cd shared
> make
> cd server
> make
> make install

Create a directory called "lcd" in your home directory and copy the imon driver and configuration file to it

> cd /home/mythtv 
> mkdir lcd
> cd /home/mythtv 
> cp lcdproc-0.51/servers/drivers/imon.so lcd/imon.so
> cp lcdproc-0.51/LCDd.conf lcd/LCDd.conf

Edit the LCDd.conf file to specify your driver as well as the driver path. Here are the snippets from my LCDd.conf

# The following drivers are supported:
#   bayrad, CFontz, CFontz633, CFontzPacket, curses, CwLnx, EyeboxOne,
#   g15, glcdlib, glk, hd44780, icp_a106, imon, IOWarrior, irman,
#   joy, lb216,lcdm001, lcterm, lirc,MD8800, ms6931, mtc_s16209x,
#   MtxOrb, NoritakeVFD, pyramid, sed1330, sed1520, serialVFD,
#   sli, stv5730, svga, t6963, text, tyan, ula200, xosd
 Driver=imon

# Where can we find the driver modules ?
# IMPORTANT: Make sure to change this setting to reflect your
#            specific setup! Otherwise LCDd won't be able to find
#            the driver modules and will thus not be able to
#            function properly.
# NOTE: Always place a slash as last character !
DriverPath=/home/mythtv/lcd/

Now load the driver for the iMon and check that works

> modprobe lirc_imon
> echo "Hello MythTV and good morning" > /dev/lcd0

"Hello MythTV and good morning" should now be on the display.

Here is the dmesg output after the driver has loaded

lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, at major 61 
/usr/src/packages/BUILD/lirc-0.8.0/obj/default/lirc_imon//lirc_imon.c: Driver for Soundgraph iMON MultiMedian IR/VFD, v0.3
/usr/src/packages/BUILD/lirc-0.8.0/obj/default/lirc_imon//lirc_imon.c: Venky Raju <dev@venky.ws>
/usr/src/packages/BUILD/lirc-0.8.0/obj/default/lirc_imon//lirc_imon.c: imon_probe: found IMON device
lirc_dev: lirc_register_plugin: sample_rate: 0
/usr/src/packages/BUILD/lirc-0.8.0/obj/default/lirc_imon//lirc_imon.c: imon_probe: Registered iMON plugin (minor:0)
/usr/src/packages/BUILD/lirc-0.8.0/obj/default/lirc_imon//lirc_imon.c: imon_probe: iMON device on usb<1:3> initialized
usbcore: registered new driver lirc_imon

</Pre>

Now Run the LCDd server as root with our config file

# /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c /home/mythtv/lcd/LCDd.conf

You will now see the following message on your VFD

Starting LCD PROC from boot

Need some words on how to autoload the driver as well as how to start LCDd

Now go and configure MythTV's LCD server Mythlcdserver

Associated articles

LCD - HD44780 Parallel Port

VFD - HD44780 Parallel Port

D.Vine 5 VFD - HD44780 Parallel Port