[Lcdproc] Does anyone here have any experience with Matrix Orbital graphical LCDs?

[Ethan Dicks]

Hi, All,

While browsing around for Matrix Orbital manuals, I ran across these
two displays...

http://www.active-robots.com/products/intelligent-displays/glk12232-25-sm.shtml
http://www.active-robots.com/products/intelligent-displays/glc24064.shtml

Every once in a while, I start thinking about LCDproc and graphical
displays that are *not* attached directly to a parallel port.  I've
used the glcd library to drive a couple of graphical displays
directly, and while it works, fewer and fewer machines are coming with
a parallel port.

The one issue that stops me from working on a serial or USB-attached
graphical display is the lack of a standard protocol.  From looking
over the manuals for the MtxOrb glk12232-25 and glc24064, they seem to
be the textual MtxOrb commands with new ones added for font support,
bitmap display, and even direct pixel rendering.

>From looking at the command sets, it seems that the "best" technique
would be to create an LCDproc "font" or two that could handle bignums
and bargraphs, have the user set up their display with the standard
MtxOrb tools, then associate those fonts with font numbers in
LCDd.conf... low overhead compared to, say, the HD44780 technique of
repeatedly uploading custom char sets, but a bit of extra work when
initially setting things up.

Does anyone on the list _have_ a display of this style?  I could
probably code up a driver that could talk to one of these, but I would
have no way of testing it, a problem that crops up here from time to
time, anyway.

Opinions?  Thoughts?  Comments?

-ethan