Do generic keypads exist?

[beelzerob]

I almost forgot about these...

http://www.crystalfontz.com/cgi-bin/pricing.pl?product=633

Heh..ya, I'm familiar with these. I went through a phase where I was utterly into LCD's, and more specifically, VFD's. I bought a couple off ebay and had my fun. LCD's can be had pretty cheaply, but you have to beware getting ones that can't be seen at certain angles.

It's true, with various free software out there (jalcd is one, can't remember the others), you can send almost any info to these things, but you have to also be careful that it doesn't suck up CPU. Maybe that's just the pixel-based VFD's I was using, where you had to send it the whole set of pixels for a 320 X 200 grid every quarter second to have any animation....maybe that was it.

But either way, as much as I'd like something with an LCD, I really need something with a decent keypad, if I was going to have a standalone keypad.

 

[Brightan]

Hey beelzerob! I've thought about the same thing for CQC but the problem, the way I see it, is that you would still need a fairly complex driver to generate the different LCD screens and then be able to tell what button presses are coming from which button during which screen, right? If there was an inexpensive LCD with keypad with memory for programming multiple pages and a different keycode was sent for each page/keystroke it would save a lot of driver development. I haven't seen anything like that but I did do some work years ago creating custom screens of information on a Palm Pilot, and sending data out the RS232 port (before USB) I have seen the same units in the discount stores for $20 and you would get a touch screen to boot!

 

[beelzerob]

Hey beelzerob! I've thought about the same thing for CQC but the problem, the way I see it, is that you would still need a fairly complex driver to generate the different LCD screens and then be able to tell what button presses are coming from which button during which screen, right?

Well, all of the LCD's I ever worked with did not have set screens. At most, they'd have some pre-programmed characters you could access rather easily.

My LCD/VFD phase was during my HTPC phase, which was before my SPCR phase, but after my ebay phase. But since writing drivers for CQC, I've often wondered how easy it would be to program an LCD using CML. I think it's actually be pretty easy. VFD's not so much, unless you can connect via CML to a parallel port too, and even then, I believe there's some rather specific pin connections to get those to work. Shame, really...I liked the VFD's better.

The other problem you see is that most LCD's come without any packaging or even power supplies....so it's quite a ways from a "ready to use" form...at least from what I experienced.

but you can get LCD's really cheap, especially on ebay, and they ARE fun to play with....

 

[ph0n33z]

What about the Smartpad3s from Xantech? Has anyone used these before?

http://www.xantech.com/products/keypads.htm

Scroll down to Smartpad3. I believe they are all under $200, and some of the keypads are around $40-50

 

[beelzerob]

What about the Smartpad3s from Xantech? Has anyone used these before?

http://www.xantech.com/products/keypads.htm

Scroll down to Smartpad3. I believe they are all under $200, and some of the keypads are around $40-50

Well those are darn neat! And here all I thought Xantech did was control heartburn.....

I looked at some manuals for them, though, and even though they mention RS232 in some capacity, it seems to all come back to IR. I can't find for sure that if I press a key on a keypad, that it causes an RS232 message to come out somewhere.