WOOHOO! UPDATE- It's working! -- HELP! Ugly picture - sharp LQ9D161 and Allens Cont

pigseye · 02-09-2002, 11:03 PM

Hey Everyone,
It's working!!!

Thanks to Toto, Infrared, and littlej for suggesting to wire the LCD and controller differently. Pinouts for colors are

ro to r2
r1 to r3
r2 to r4
r3 to r5

and so on for the other colors.

Now, here's the downside. Just like several of you have said, 12bit is not good enough for DVD. Film Movies look pretty bad, cartoons look OK but not great.

But who the hell cares you're watching a 8.4" screen in a car. It's sure better than nothing! Plus it's TFT VGA and not composite so for the PC screen it looks really sharp. I'm hoping it's good enough for GPS and it certainly is going to be great for Winamp!!!

Thanks to everyone for their help.

Now time to get the touch screen going. Anyone know how to connect the touch screen controller to the serial port? DennisK didn't provide a pinout and the link he shows for pinouts is not for the same touch screen controller.

Finally, I'll be ordering hirose cables and will be placing a bulk order. I need 3 or 4. If anyone needs one let me know. I can get the 1 to 1s and for the LQ9D161 to Allen controller too.

Price will probably be around $31 plus shipping.

Let me know if you're interested and I'll order extras.

Pigseye

>>>>>>>>>>>>Or iginal Post<<<<<<<<<<<&l t;<<<<<
I bought the LQ9D161 LCD from that guy on Ebay but can't get it to work right with Allen's controller.

Has anyone been able to get this combo to work and look good?

I built a custom hirose 31 pin cable using the pin out of Allens controller and the pin out of the LCD but the picture looks terrible. Specifically anything that is white or bright comes out orange and yellow. There seems to be to much contrast or brightness but contrast adjustments don't help and the brightness adjustments don't do anything. I can tell the picture can be better because when a scene fades dark the picture looks much better (not to much contrast) just before it fades to black.

Blacks, greens, and flesh tones look pretty good.

I'm not expecting DVD movies to look perfect but certainly better than this.

Did I screw something up?
Am I missing a color on the controller or VGA cable?
Has anyone seen this before?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

thanks,
Pigseye

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: pigseye ]

[ 02-17-2002: Message edited by: pigseye ]

pigseye · 02-10-2002, 12:19 AM

By the way here's the pinout I used.

gnd = ground
nc= no connection
tst= test (I'm guessing)
CK=Clock
enab=?

I did not connect any test points and tied all the grounds together.

Allen's
Controller/ LQ9D161
1 gnd/ 2 gnd
2 ck/ 10 ck
3 hsync/ 6 hsync
4 vsync/ 4 vsync
5 gnd/ 8 gnd
6 r0/ 1 r0
7 r1/ 3 r1
8 r2/ 5 r2
9 r3/ 7 r3
10 r4/ nc
11 r5/ nc
12 gnd/ 9 gnd
13 g0/ 11 g0
14 g1/ 13 g1
15 g2/ 17 g2
16 g3/ 19 g3
17 g4/ nc
18 g5/ nc
19 gnd/ 12 gnd
20 b0/ 23 b0
21 b1/ 25 b1
22 b2/ 29 b2
23 b3/ 31 b3
24 b4/ nc
25 b5/ nc
26 gnd/ 15 gnd
27 enab/ 28 enab
28 Vcc 5V/ 22 Vcc 5
29 Vcc 5V/ 24 Vcc 5
30 tst/ nc
31 tst/ nc

/14 tst nc
/16 tst nc
/18 tst nc /20 gnd
/21 gnd
/26 tst nc
/27 gnd
/30 gnd

Thanks
Pigseye

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: pigseye ]

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: pigseye ]

Arby · 02-10-2002, 01:34 AM

maybe your video card outputs voltages higher than the lcd wants... and it's screwing up the brights?

If your video card has gamma adjustments in the display properties, mess with that.

infrared · 02-10-2002, 01:45 AM

hmm could this be because your LCD is 12bit and allens controller has up to 18 bit?

pigseye · 02-10-2002, 01:52 AM

Hi Arby,
I tried that already and it didn't help. I still don't udnerstand why the brightness control doesn't do anything.

maybe I got a bad controller.

Thanks for your suggestion,
Pigseye

pigseye · 02-10-2002, 01:55 AM

Hi Infrared,
Well Allens web site says the controller will drive the LQ9D161, it just won't have as many colors.

So with this setup I did not hook up r4, r5, g4,g5, b4 and b5.

Allen also said that it should work fine with his controller, just need to build the custom Hirose cable and no connect the unused colors.

Thanks,
Pigseye

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: pigseye ]

toto3 · 02-10-2002, 04:18 AM

pigseye. I have the same controller from allen. and the same LCD from ebay. : ) our connections are the same.. guess what !!?? .. SAME thing!! ugly picture! Maybe Arby is right about the outputs voltages thing. Allens controller puts out 5v and the lq9d161 takes 3.3v vcc. Take a look at the .pdf. Think we can just drop the voltage down with a resistor. (will try that when i have the time)
Pigseye. brightness adjustments don't do anything is becos you are not connecting the inverter to the 5 pin connecter on the controller ? .. (same here , dont' know pin out for the 5 pin inverter con. inverter is just puting out Max output)
(Things i find out)
A way for you the see a "better" picture is holding up/down then adjust contrast.
H pos and H clk toghter will do a reset of adjustments.

How about connecting it like this ??

TAllen's
Controller/ LQ9D161

r0/ nc
r1/ nc
r2/ r0
r3/ r1
r4/ r2
r5/ r3

What do you think ? . report back please ..
sorry .. me got bad english

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: toto3 ]

Meatballman · 02-11-2002, 02:34 PM

I'm not using Allens controller, but with 3.3V, the colors all look fine. There's just not enough of them. My controller uses the CHIPS 65550 chipset.

plaiming2 · 02-12-2002, 11:12 AM

As far as the pinout i think you want to connect the least significant bits of the colors (ie. r0,r1,r2,r3) but you also might want to make sure that you aren't overdriving the amount of colors. Try setting your video driver to 256 colors first
and see if that looks ok. if it does then you just have to figure out how to up it to 4096. if it doesn't look ok then i bet its your voltage problem.

mp3z24 · 02-12-2002, 11:47 AM

hey, kinda off topic, but what backlight invertor was included with the screen. in the specs, it lists 2 different cuurent ratings for the invertors and 2 different corresponding brightness values. i believe the 2 currents listed were 2A and 5A output for the invertors. do you know which one comes with the screen. im waiting to get my kit in the mail, and i was curious.
thanks

~mike

Meatballman · 02-12-2002, 04:55 PM

My inverter outputs 600Vrms at 5mA. It is a TDK CXA-L0512-NJL. Seems to be a pretty commonly used inverter.

pigseye · 02-14-2002, 12:51 AM

Hi Everyone,
Sorry I haven't responded lately. The family (myself included) all had the flu for the last week. It's been pretty bad. There's been very interesting discussion here and I appreciate it.

Toto3,
Lowering the volatage may help. Please let me know if it works.

I agre with Plaiming2 though, we should keep the lsbs connected and not try things like ro to r2, etc.

Finally, don't worry about your english. It is actually quite good.

Plaiming,
I tried 256 colors and it didn't help.

Mp3Z24,
I'm using the backlight that Allen sold me with the controller. It seems to work almost OK on an LQ10D367. I still get funny red shading on that one. All other colors look great. Even in DVD (except for red shading of course)

This weekend I'll do more work on it and report the results. I've been busy at work and haven't had time lately.

But I gotta admit, I've spent quite a bit of time and money on LCDs and controllers lately and am starting to wonder if it was worth it to get VGA versus composite. I could have been miles ahead in this project by buying a composite video screen from ebay. Oh well live and learn.

Don't let me give up guys! The payoff could be awesome if these 8.4" LCDs look good in my car!

Thanks Again,
Pigseye

[ 02-14-2002: Message edited by: pigseye ]

infrared · 02-14-2002, 01:54 AM

hmm.. wouldn't one want to try and connect most significant bits rather than the lower significant bits? The reason I say this is because suppose the color is color 110000 in binary (48).. if you connect the 4 least significant bits you would connect the pins that are 0000, therefore showing 0 when the color should be 48.. Is this right? It makes sense but I dunno.. theres really no harm such as frying your LCD or controller so doesnt hurt trying (unless you permanently soldered all the junk already)

Jason

PaulzY · 02-15-2002, 07:42 AM

pigseye: did you get your screen from "DenenisK" from ebay caus i won an auction from him, paypaled him and since payin him havent heard anything for a week now, hes got a high ebay rating though, but still a bit worried.

Meatballman · 02-15-2002, 01:25 PM

PaulzY - I got mine from him. He's not the best communicator and he's kinda slow, but you'll get your screen. I think it ended up taking like 2 and a half weeks for me, but that was during the 9/11 thing and the airports were shutdown and all that jazz.