A number of people have asked me about the USB LCD display we had on our table at the
Raspberry Pi Birthday on Saturday, so I have pulled together the following details.

I found the display while looking for a way to package a LCD for a project at home. It comes complete – all you need is an USB lead to connect to the Rpi. While not cheap (appox $38 shipped from the US) it makes up for this in terms of simplicity – and that it comes ‘packaged’ in a L shaped stand.

To get the LCD up and running you just need to install ‘pyusb’, and ‘pylcdsysinfo.py’.

In basic text mode you have 6 lines of text in a range of about 15 colours ( you can apparently address over 200k but I struggle to see more than 15 different distinct colours). There is also the option to download 7 pictures to the LCD modules non volatile memoey, which can then be displayed anytime – there is an extra bit of s/w included on linked site which scales high res jpg’s down and uploads them.

The primary market for the display is as an add-on for gaming machines, which explains why a number of the inbuilt instructions do not make much sense for a RPi ! The actual module could be better put together, but looks fine from the front , which will be ok for most people.

To me the great thing about the display is that no fiddling with the Rpi is needed to connect to it and start displaying ‘stuff’, accepting the cost this makes it an ideal display for kids to use

Display info Hardware Information

• LCD: 2.8inch TFT LCD, resolution 320×240, 262k colours
• mini-B USB 1.1 compliant connection  [ same as Rpi Power connection]
• Flash memory 2Mb storing icons and images
• PWM backlight control

Sourcing information:

Link to the Ebay store I purchased from

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-module-LCD-sys-info-display-temperature-fan-AIDA64-LCD-Smartie-/121004607232

Link to technical / software

http://coldtearselectronics.wikispaces.com/USB+LCD+-+LCD+System+info