Recycled parts - How to get more information..? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: JamesAtCriterion
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 01:29:52 am
content: Hello all!One of my passions is recycling, especially now "e-waste", and I am using this to help me learn about electronics, robotics, and the like.However, I have a question, how can I get more information about some of the parts that I am finding?Eg: I have just pulled apart a old baby monitor, and it had a small LCD screen inside it (see attached picture), and I have tried to Google all the numbers that I can see (which are just on the ribbon cable), with no joyI just want to know things like where to put power, what power to apply, etc.. I don't want to break it (not sure if it is even working!)So, any ideas on how/where to find this kind of thing out?

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 02:13:04 am
content: Welcome!... and welcome to our worldSometimes trying to track this information down is enough to make you toss the thing.You can try using a smaller group of characters than the whole string - for example: SY236 - and coupling it with other words like "LCD" or "display". Using the full string often proves to knock out useful results as it might reference a variation for which there is no information available - but these variations can still have the same basic connectivity and operation (although this is not a guarantee) as a model which does have something on the internet. I tried "SY236A LCD" and got some hits that suggested there are some things out there with SY236 in their identity. I have no idea if these might be for that type of module and the few I checked out didn't yield anything.The other thing is to do exactly what you have done - bring it here. You never know if someone here knows about this module, perhaps having worked with them or even designed with them (Remote, but not impossible.) If someone here can help you, count yourself lucky - but, if nothing else, you will have had confirmation that the information will unlikely be found.One other suggestion I can offer is to try contacting the manufacturer (if you can work out who they are) and ask for a datasheet. No guarantees there, either.

author: groinksan
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2019, 10:21:09 am
content: Did you keep the PCB to which that ribbon cable was connected? Anytime you disassemble something that has an LCD display, it is always a good idea to keep the board associated with it. Usually, there's a controller chip of some kind on the PCB that runs the LCD display. Once we can identify the controller chip, we could pull the data sheet for it, and with some reverse engineering we could at the very least figure out how the LCD display was wired, and quite possibly figure out the resolution, power rails, protocols and much more.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2019, 10:29:03 am
content: and depending on who made it / what product range it came from, it can also be totally custom. Wouldn't be the first time I've found that done, often it is to save a few cents .. all counts in high production.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2019, 01:48:26 pm
content: Quote from: digsys on July 14, 2019, 10:29:03 amExactly. Any part that you find that doesn't have a standard PN on it is probably going to be totally useless to you since you probably won't be able to get data on it. You'll soon be overwhelmed with parts anyway so you need to learn what parts to keep and what parts to simply throw away and forget. That said, you can learn a LOT by taking apart old equipment and reverse-engineering it's circuits. If you want standard parts that you can reuse, you're best bet by far is some of the test equipment that is made for testing US military electronics. A lot of it is made out of extremely high grade standard components and it usually hand built. The hard ware (screws, etc) is usually stainless steel and they use a zillion of them. It's usually full of banana jack test points, type N connectors, etc.I see that you're in NZ so I don't know what's available to you there.

author: Old Printer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2019, 02:29:21 pm
content: I understand the recycling point but I ran into the same situation. Have a bunch of displays around from phones and various appliances I have stripped. Figured someone must have already figured this out, but in reality I came up empty. The advice was they are so cheap to buy with data sheets and controllers it's just not worth the time with so many dead ends, but it sure would be a hoot to get one going.

author: JamesAtCriterion
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 14, 2019, 07:59:01 pm
content: Wow! Thank you all for the great responses!Firstly, yes I still have the PCB and all the other parts that came with the screen.However, I feel the consensus is that it might be too much hard work for little gain, which is a shame, I hate to see working (or reusable) things end up in the waste pilesSo for my location, I am in Australia, so getting US military parts might be too costly, however old Australian military equipment might be the same...? You never know. Now..... how do I get my hands on that?!?!

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2019, 09:27:47 pm
content: Manufacturer appears to be"Shenzhen Youshuo" (http://www.worldsources.com/companies/temp4/aboutus.aspx?cid=E112973805) but they've long disappeared. Their site used to be youshuo-lcd.com and archive.org has one or two pages saved from it in late 2008 --- you may be able to dig up more info from them, but I didn't try going further.That said, judging by the part number it appears to be a 2.36" LCD with a 40-pin interface. A quick search reveals lots of parts matching those characteristics, and the pinout may be figured from the arrangement of the traces on the FPC - there's a group of thin traces, followed by 5 thick ones (could be power or backlight), and then another group of thin traces. Unless the product it was in was made by a huge company, it's unlikely to be a full-custom design.

author: JamesAtCriterion
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 15, 2019, 05:59:54 am
content: Thank you amyk,Below are photos of the back and front of the device, with the ribbon coming through the center. Is there an easy way to identify the controller for the screen?Is there anything else on the images that are an easy "give away" for identifying things like this? (Or anything of interest).Are there any tools, methods, or experiments I can do to attempt to map that pin out? .... with minimal damage I hope!Thank you all again!<3

author: JamesAtCriterion
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 15, 2019, 09:42:17 am
content: Also, general additional question (no bonus points, sorry), I have... an idea!!What about plugging it all back together, however, inline with the connectors, putting in DIP/Jumpers on each of the 40 connection lines. So, when it is all active I can turn off one by one to see what they do. Would that work?Would turning off pin 7 prove that pin 7 did "something" ? Or am I wildly wrong with life, the universe, and everything??

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 15, 2019, 10:05:05 am
content: errrr naaaa ... with the complex address / data / strobe / backlight multiplexing, you'd really have NO idea of what signal you were interrupting.PLUS it may knock out a whole set of other signals. EVEN if you had a 4 channel DSO and captured waveforms etc, aligned them to figure out sync / data etc, it is still really a waste of time. This LCD is software driven, from that MPU, so who the heck knows how they generated the signals. Next patient please ...Had it have been an "off the shelf" LCD driver, you would have had a damn good chance, but custom ... naaa

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2019, 01:21:38 am
content: Quote from: digsys on July 15, 2019, 10:05:05 amHaving a socketed(!) flash is definitely the opposite of a cheap highly cost-optimised design, and there seems to be plenty of documentation on the VC0706 that it uses (it's popular enough that Adafruit is selling (overpriced as usual) stuff with it), so I'd consider this quite a hackable design.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2019, 04:42:54 am
content: A 40 pin LCD is almost always going to be a parallel interface LCD. The data interface usually are all the same and consist of sync signals (usually either HSYNC/VSYNC or EN) and RGB lines (24 signals). The place where it might differ is the power rails, some need negative rails or +22V rails.

author: JamesAtCriterion
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 16, 2019, 08:33:00 pm
content: Thanks again all, I think that the answer here is that this is beyond my current level of skill, and I should start with a smaller projectI think that I will hold on to the parts, and put them in a box marked "when I have more skill and time to play with".Thank you again, everyone for all your input, it has been great.This has been my first post on this site, and I am so happy with the positive feedback I have received, very happy to be part of this community!<3

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2019, 12:09:18 am
content: I do agree with amyk that "I'd consider this quite a hackable design", for "us" that have been around a bit, or had some practical experience, but it is only aguessthat it is standard. At minimum, you'd need a 2-4 ch DSO to understand it properly. Definitely start with "simpler" stuff. Happy hunting.

author: JamesAtCriterion
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 17, 2019, 12:11:39 am
content: Quote from: digsys on July 17, 2019, 12:09:18 amWhen you are digging through rubbish tips looking for "cool things" everything looks 'simple' !!I will continue my hunting and continue bugging you all with questions!