Smart LCD on a Teensylu

Hi all,

I picked up a Smart LCD controller : [www.ebay.com] to work with my new Teensylu V0.8, but of course the provided adapter is for Ramps, however iv heard that you can still use it on a Teensylu as long as you break out all the wires and place them on the correct pins, however i am having a really hard time finding a clear diagram of what wires go to what pins on the Teensylu i was instructed to search here, but I'm not finding much here on the subject with the obvious search words. i did find one PDFs that sort of says what pins link to what pins,. but there's no silk screen on my Teensylu which means i don't really know how the pins there are numbered,..

Any good photo references or additional information would be greatly appreciated.

This is precisely what is so lovely about open source.

-[reprap.org]
-section schematics, github link, download
-install eagle free, open brd and sch files, in the top left you will have an small icon with an eye on it, click it and next click a line you are interested to highlight

Do the same with the source files of the lcd, and see how you can patch them up. Good luck and have fun!

Thanks, I'll try to figure that all out, but I am starting to think my biggest problem seems to be that i ordered Chinese knock offs without labeling/silkscreen, and with two flat ribbon cables that don't seem to be assembled correctly (pin one is not the colored wire on the ribbon like it should be so i think its flip/flopped backwards on both ends) so I am going to have to pick up the schematics of both boards/chips, go into the code to get pin assignments, and follow traces to find each traces pin (hoping that non travel through middle layers), then try to translate to factor for the incorrect cable pinning, all along hoping i don't fry the thing with a translation mistake. with it being that much work I am almost at the point of throwing the Teensylu out the window and just ordering a ramps that will work with the provided adapter and likely have proper labeling..

Though i am somewhat surprised that no one has documented this in an easy to follow manner that does not involve having to backwards engineer al the way back to the main chips.. if i ever do figure this out, ill do a "connect the dots" visual diagram that makes it easy.

Anyway, lesson learned, don't buy Chinese knock offs of key parts, unless you don't need, silk screen, decent documentation, or accurately assembled parts. =P

I also have a similar Smart LCD controller (from Sainsmart). The stripe is not on pin 1 but I think it's ok because both ends are the same. Confusingly some people seem to wire the connectors rotated so that pin 1 may actually be pin 10!

I found some schematics for the one I bought, which were pretty unreadable. I have redrawn the schematics on KiCad according to what I think it should be, but might not actually match the cabling - I haven't tried the board yet. There are several variants of adapter it seems, but they should be similar.

You misunderstood me, what i suggested is not hard. Its how you can check things out with great ease.

You can try identifying the traces on the physical board, but that is a painful thing to do, even when its possible.

Perhaps it gets a bit hard when you try working with the source files the first time, but its also an opportunity to learn. When you get used to it, i think you will see that sources are the only piece of documentation that is *really* needed. All other documentation is pheripheal to the sources being there.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, it would be worth checking to see if this adaptor for the Sanguinololu is compatible with Teensylu.

[www.geeetech.com]

I am unsure on the Sanguinololu adapter working, the LCD/SD card are labeled as needing exp 1 and exp 2, the San does not have an expantion 2 slot. however it does look like the teensylou has the same pins as that adapter between its exp1 pins and its smaller com Buss header, unfortunately I am a hesitant to plug this adapter in and have it fry the teensy since i don't know how close the two boards are to each other.

The reason i would have to backwards engineer it is because this odd variant of a teensylu i received from china does not have the same pin outs as is described in any of the docs for the teensylu provided here (also why i am hesitant to try that adapter). in addition the various docs here aren't even the most up to date schematics for a v0.8 board. (checked some of the 5 and 12v pins and they are not outputting what they should be according to the potentially outdated teensylu docs here) I don't really know if the pins changed in the more current version (cant find current schematics) or if whoever made this board decided to move the order of the pins for some ungodly reason,. (iv also noted that the few bits of sikscreen that do grace this board that defines the end stop pins and the motors are not correctly labeled for there correct axis)

Oddly though i did just pull off a first print with this teensylu, so everything else seems functional (when ignoring the silkscreen), just the expansion pins are screwy which makes figuring out what goes where on the LCD hookup very tricky. i know my way around eagle cad,. this one is still tricky due to lack of accuracy between the board and the available schematics. i am pretty sure at this point the problems are all on the board side but getting a reference doc from some random re sellers variant in china is likely going to be a bear if even possible.

At this point i think i am going to flip flop what i had planned,. I am going to take my old 6x6x6 PrintrBot and put the LCD on it, and then this new 12x12x12 bot I am building will have direct USB control, rather than the other way around. problem solved as long as the PrintrBoard has more accurate labeling & documentation. (will delve into that tomorrow)

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/03/2013 08:20PM by AlexCphoto.