How standardized a lcd panels? Could I replace the controller in a smart TV with one of these HDMI to LCD controllers?
You must log in or register to comment.
Just fyi - Your post is 20 minutes old and the eBay link has broken already
OP has (accidentally?) added 2 underscores to the URL. Remove them and you can see the original intended URL.
Thanks. I searched for # Driver Board Universal LCD Monitor Screen Controller 5V Laptop Computer DIY
Because I had seen them used for various projects before.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/375318342725
Like the other person said, op added 2 underscores to it
If there’s a TV repair / electronics repair shop in your area – someone who works with contemporary flatscreens – I wonder if you could reach out and make the ask? They probably have a sense of which generic controllers they would use.
I don’t think anyone repairs these things anymore. I found two dumped in the desert, one with its controller and power supply boards removed and one that was complete.
I got interested in this when the previous poster asked the question. Going down the rabbit hole I think I have my answers. Avnet has some good info on the mipi interface for consumer devices. It’s been very interesting and I do see it as a path to building good, cheap, large displays.
Why go through all of that when you can just block network access, or not even connect it at all? Hell, just get a Blocklist that includes the bad URLs for your TV you don’t want it using, and run it on AdGuard or Pihole. Lots of easier ways to work around this.
Why go through all of that when you can just connect the board to the panel.
I’ve always wondered this, figure this is the thread to ask it.
I’ve been using the same dumb TV since 2013 it’s great, but eventually it’s gonna die an I’m scared of what pieces of shit smart TV’s are.
Could I not just use a computer and run it through the smart TV and bypass all the smart bullshit by using it as a monitor?
Some smart TVs require you to connect them to the Internet before you can even use them with HDMI. It’s a changing world. This post has a lot of interesting comments.
My experience with LG/WebOS has been fine if I don’t try to get online. It doesn’t pester me to do so.
I have a Hisense and a LG and I never connected them to WiFi. I have not had any issues
Seems unnecessary surly just plug in a raspberry pi into the HDMI port and never connect the TV to internet u can probably flash some version of android TV onto the pi and all set.
The samsung TV that I bought for my son had this annoying overlay thing that pops up when you turn it on that shows all the different inputs and nags about various things it thinks are wrong with the world. It is plugged into an Nvidia shield that we do most things on, but you can’t use the shield until the overlay calms the fuck down and disappears.
It’d be great if you could just have the thing turn on and display an input like our older TVs do.
The roku TV I have screens every dvd we play and tells us we can watch it easier on a streaming service.
Damn I have an old school amp with the surround sound speakers that has a single hdmi output that everything goes through so my tv never complains cos as far as its aware its just a hdmi input.
Fuuuuuuuck that
Agreed, if it wasn’t a free TV I’d return it. Though it doesn’t have any complaints about my pirated media so at least that’s nice.
If it runs android tv (I would assume so) u might be able to plug in a usb and use that to force uninstall a bunch of bloat.
so far i’ve been between simply buying a projector, im assuming those havent been smartified yet.
Or buying a big format display, i think those still exist, i hope they do at least.
Presumably you could probably mutilate a smart tv to properly disable it’s functionality, but im not electrical engineer so don’t ask me.
Possibly dumb question but can you use a Projector during the day these days?
My TV is in my living room. Right next to 2 big windows. With 2 sliding glass doors across the room
if it’s dark, or you like black looking like not black. Yes.
You should probably find a way to cover those windows so that it’s dark in that room, if you were to use a projector, which thankfully, isn’t very hard.
This is one of the downsides of having a projector, the darkest black that you can get, is based on the darkness of the environment you’re in. Which can lead to contrast issues sometimes, but if you good light regulation, it’s fine.
huh i wonder, if the answer is “yes” or “somewhat yes” is it a valid alternative to replacing the power supply in my tv?
i got one for free with a busted psu, but the power supply board is extremely rare (i only ever saw two listings of it, one on AliExpress and one on ebay, both just one piece left and for higher price than a new used tv; similar boards are like 5 times cheaper)
basically, unless i could find an alternative solution like that, I’m throwing it awayI think you will need a power supply for your panel in addition to a driver board like this. This only provides the signals needed to switch the pixels but not the power to drive them. Some of these include backlight drivers but even then I think you would probably need more current for a TV than these provide.
Why not disassemble it and sell all the working parts, if they are rare and expensive?
This comment reminds me of an episode of Pawn Stars when the son bought a very rare and expensive bike to fix up. The dad gave him hell saying if the bike is so rare and expensive, where are they going to get parts!?
Haven’t taken any TVs apart yet, but this lookes like it could totally work on a laptop lcd panel
They are made for laptops, and I am sure they work there. There was a post here about 15days ago asking about unsmarting TVs but it has been deleted. That got me thinking about this solution.
Those boards you find on ebay are for driving laptop and tablet displays, not TVs. I doubt there is going to be an eDP or DSI connector in a TV.
The best options are to just never connect a TV to the internet, use a large computer monitor, or buy a commercial display if you don’t care about picture quality.
I don’t think this is edp or dsi out. Seems to be parallel 50 pin
Parallel RGB is typically only used on low resolution displays. It’s not practical to run a parallel TTL level interface at the speeds needed for HD.
So if anyone is interested I found the answer to my question. There seems to be two standards for LCD panels and there are these cheap converters for both of them.
Would you mind elaborating?
It seems like the current standard is MIPI DSI. This is my sourcee of information. I think it is doable.
Judging by your link and some quick googling around, including this, it’s for mobile displays which have a lot less resolution than a 4K TV display.
That said, the 4.5Gb/s speed of it seems enough to feed a 4K display at 100Hz (I didn’t really dig enough into it to determine the protocol overheads or even much detail on protocol so take it with a pinch).
At minimum, you should probably open your TV and see if there is a flat cable with the right number of lines from the display to the controller since if it does not it’s highly unlikelly to be that standard (and even if it is but using a non-standard connector, you’ll need specs to figure out which pins are which lines in order to build an adaptor).
Mind you, it sounds like a fun project if you have a TV around that you don’t mind too much if it ends up broken.
Well you could not connect it to the internet…
Not anymore with sidewalk and other similar corporate networks bypassing any requirement for the consumer to connect the TV to wifi
Do these show up as networks on devices, or are they kind of hidden? I’ve looked before and never seen any open wifi around my house, but I am near a mall and lots of shopping.
They do not use wifi. They use BLE over short range, or LoRa or FSK on 900mhz over long distances. If you wanted to see them you’d probably need a scanner built specifically to find them but idk if anyone has made one.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/everything-you-need-to-know-about-amazon-sidewalk
“How much of my internet bandwidth does Amazon Sidewalk require?”
“Very little. Sidewalk’s connectivity is distinct from your home Wi-Fi. If you choose, however, to enable Sidewalk on your eligible Bridge devices, those devices would use a small amount of internet bandwidth.”
This sounds like it still needs your internet to work unless I’m missing something.
The connection isn’t for you. It’s so the TV can fingerprint the content you watch, and then send that utilization data back to the company.
You don’t need much bandwidth to do this.
So with no wifi connection, and a blueray player, if you play Star Wars, they can fingerprint a few frames, send them back to Roku or whoever over sidewalk via your neighbors ring doorbell, and know you played star wars… Even with your completely offline setup
Jacking off with a monkey paw while you dream of a mesh network. Thanks amazon.
Ah i see, so because its connected to other devices in the sidewalk network, if my neighbor has it hooked up to wifi and mine isnt, it still can connect to the internet.
Yea that sucks. I hate that. I have “smart” TV that i never connected to my wifi cause i use a pc for streaming.
Next thing yknow theres gonna be lte modems in these things that they pay to keep on just to spy on us ffs man.
If you don’t have a sidewalk bridge but your neighbour half a mile away has one, your device will connect to your neighbour’s bridge and send data to Amazon without you knowing
im sorry how is this legal?
Corpo exception.
Also, maybe it isnt; state isnt gonna stop em either way.
correct me if im wrong, but a device trying to connect to the network in order to analytics. Which can’t, which then defaults to a SECONDARY BACKUP mechanism, just to transmit ANALYTICS. Is basically just spying, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
I… Well I might try but only if it were funny. I agree. But its not effectively (and I don’t think technically) illegal.
Maybe you’d disable it on the settings, but it remains enabled anyways. Then it would detect an open wifi and connect autimatically.
Or maybe the software that comes with it is buggy as hell your HDMI framerate and resolution became affected.
Ok, well personally, I’ve never seen an open network near my house, so if I cared that much, it would work for mine.
You really shouldn’t run an open wifi at your home. Or do you carry your TV to Starbuck’s or something?
Do you live in a farm your whole life or something?
Just in a country where open wifi without landing pages don’t exist. Apologies, didn’t think about actual open, public wifi.
Most people are more aware of these things nowadays, so you may not see it as much…
LCDs do tend to speak somewhat standardised languages, but there is a lot more to a modern TV than just an LCD controller.
Color and white balance calibration, image/motion processing, HDR Processing, backlight control/dimming zones, input management, audio decoding/encoding/passthrough, digitizing analogue sources, HDMI licencing, Dolby licencing, etc.
If you want a better smart TV the best thing to do is to get a hackable TV like most android based models, replace the launcher, strip out system apps and telemetry with ADB and start fresh, then either leave it offline or use filtering to only allow access to the services you approve.
@Faceman2K23
Do you know a list of hackable tv’s or at least brands?
I’m very interested in preparing for the moment my current tv break.
@HaywardTOh my god this is the most depressing shit. Remember just watching TV?
Not sure if there’s a list, but most Android based TVs can be cleaned and modded to some degree via ADB. If you can access the dev settings in android, chances are you can do a lot to make it better, strip out some google or branded packages, replace the launcher to block OS level ads etc. Projectivy usually works well since it supports input switching on many devices, but it’s still better to do all of this to a separate box and then plug it into a TV that is firewalled/filtered/offline. more control and less to fuck up.
Rooting and unlocking bootloaders is more complex as these android devices dont have normal recovery systems and require a lot of custom drivers to make the video and audio processing work, so it’s not worth going that far.
I wonder if anyone has made a custom rom for TVs, sort like Lineage or Graphene. These panels run Android, so why not?
I have seen some talk over on XDA forums, but since there is more to an android TV than just the basic android OS, it’s a bit trickier without risking losing licences/compatibility/DRM/features.
Some older LG webOS tvs can be rooted and custom apps installed too such as ad free youtube players etc.
Just found some LG business TVs/displays/signage that actually run Tizen. Remember that cool Linux distro that was supposed to take over the mobile world nearly 15 years ago? Well, turns out, it didn’t, but it didn’t it die completely either.
Hopefully those panels are a bit more hackable or more privacy oriented.
Gets even weirder when you see LGs webOS kinda started out as PalmOS
I have rematched controllers to displays in the past. It’s neither simple nor easy. You’ll need to dig through spec sheets to ensure you’re sending the correct signals over the correct pinouts, at the correct frequencies and voltages. Be prepared to read some IO documentation for the sending and receiving chipsts, then verify pinouts with certainty. They are not always standard.
Here are 2 identical LCDs, with 2 very similar, nearly identical looking controllers. Note that one needed to be re-wired. It is not fun butt-connecting 2 dozen 28ga wires.
Why did you do it?
I was a poor college student and had access to engineering samples from a local manufacturer. Discarded parts gave me twin 15" LCDs for free in the mid 00’s. Also, to see if I could. It was a fun challenge. These are different revs of a controller that were outfitted in several slot machine prototypes. They gave me many years of service. I probably still have inkjet prints of the pinout and signal diagrams, somewhere.
Seems like a fun project to me too. It also seems like things have changed since the turn of the century, with regards to interoperability.
Oh, things are way better now than they were back then. I’d still confirm via documentation that the interfaces are compatible :)
I retired from embedded systems design and design-for-manufacture a decade ago. Reading datasheets was most of the job. This doesn’t look too daunting. It’s a single interface between two readymade components. I’ve identified where some issues might come up, and there are probably some that I don’t know about yet. Still this seems less like building a circuit around existing ASICs and more like hooking up stereo equipment to me.
There are some amazing projectors available these days and they don’t seem to be crippled by smartification. There are some cool homebuilt projectors that are made of bright light sources and old cell phone screens to, if you want to learn.
Alternatively, you could also get a 40+” monitor. Avoid Samsung, because nowadays they are really pushing their spyware everywhere, including displays. Some other brands should be fine though.
In short, this is one of those questions where if you have to ask the answer is no. It may be possible but unless you have a spare TV laying around that you don’t mind breaking it’s not a good idea to try. The best advice I have for any modder is to have multiples of whatever you’re modifying on hand.
I can think of no better use for a TV
2 is 1, 1 is none.
Through the magic of buying two of them…
I understood that reference!
Why buy one, when you can buy two at twice the price.
Probably not but you can buy digital signage. You will pay upwards of $4k potentially based on your needs.
Remember when you didn’t need this shit to just watch a movie?
I 'member
Seriously. Go back to the 90s, do this about anything, and Kevin mitnick will vanish from everybody’s radar just about instantly.
Now we need to do this shit to fucking watch TV. I need complex filtering software, anonymization tools, and a signal bounced off three continents to watch a video of a cat climbing into a box. A video that was recorded five feet away from me.
If I want to do it on a TV, I need to start soldering.
Jeff Geerling did a whole video about you can just use a professional display. It has the option to install a raspberry pi because it’s meant to be a display for a store window. This would be a good alternative but $$$.
https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/m551
Note: the reason TVs are cheap now is because they collect data about you. Your data is subsidizing the cost. So if that’s the case how much money do they make off you that getting a non smart display costs 4k?
Less than 4k; I remember my last dumb TV cost like 700$.
and a signal bounced off three continents to watch a video of a cat climbing into a box. A video that was recorded five feet away from me.
are you talking about some proprietary camera that only syncs to the cloud?
