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Date: |
April
25th, 2001 |
Type: |
Review |
Supplier: |
CrystalFontz |
Author: |
mayhem |
Using /
Testing:
The following steps are how we decided to test that the LCD was
working and to see the features that LCDproc has to provide.
Linux:
You will need to firstly run the "server" of the LCDproc
program so that you can interface with the LCD, to run this server
simply type in LCDd -d CFontz
-b off which tells the daemon (server) to run using a CrystalFontz
driver and turn the backlight mode off (if you have a backlight
in your model then simply change the backlight option to on). If
you want to find out more information on the server program then
type LCDd -h.
Now its time
to try the program and get some display on the LCD. Before you try
and run the program it is advisable to read the information about
it and understand what the options provide before continuing, to
do this type lcdproc -h.
Now its time to run the program, in order to test it out we ran
the program with every single option enabled, this is done by lcdproc
-s <ip_address> C G T M X D B O K U A -p 13666. This
should cycle through and show all the information that LCDproc can
gather. (if you want this to run in the background then simply as
the & to the
end of the command line when executing it)
Once you happy
with the display working you will want to have LCDproc start when
the computer boots, so here's how to do it: Add lines to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local,
such as the following: echo
"Starting LCDproc..." /usr/local/bin/lcdproc C M X &,
of course you can modify this to display the information that you
want. (you may need to provide the -s
option here also if it give you an error message saying:
sock_connect:
connect failed: Connection refused
Error connecting to server localhost on port 13666.
The below photos
are of LCDProc for Linux, they were taken with the Backlight off
(sorry about the darkness but it was getting late, will update them
later). As you can see the output from the original LCDProc is much
better than that of its Win32 counterpart, and also it doesn't suffer
from the same uptime problem (see Windows section below pictures).
CrystalFontz
WinTest:
We recommend that you use the supplied WinTest program before you
start playing around with the LCDproc software. It is straight forward
to use and can be used to test that the LCD is functioning as it
should (plus you can find out the real capabilities of the LCD screen).
All you need to do is select what COM port the LCD is on, what the
communications baud speed is, and what type of LCD it is (i.e. 16x2
or 20x4), then just type in what you want displayed and click GO,
with any luck you should see what you typed on the LCD.
This is a
"Graph Demonstration" from the WinTest program.
This is a
"Oscilloscope Demonstration" from the WinTest program.
This is a
"Costum Message Demonstration" from the WinTest program.
Win9x/NT/2k:
During the installation LCDproc was already configured and should
work straight away. All you need to do is select what information
you want displayed, the cycle time and the communications options.
To get your LCD working you must remember to start the NT LCD service
so that the software can talk to the LCD daemon on the system, to
do this either in a command prompt type net
start "NT LCDd", or simply go into the Service list in your
Administrative Tools and right clicking on the NT LCDd service and
then start. (If you have restarted your computer since installing
the software then it should be already started as it is set to 'Automatic')
The following
pictures are of just a couple of the screens that the LCDproc program
can provide, and since the source is also available you can make
your own modifications to it (we are currently modifying it to include
bandwidth and network traffic information).
I seem to
have found a bug, my Win2k Uptime should actually be approx. 89
days, but this seems to think its -10, what's the deal? I posted
a message in the www.2morrow.com forum about this, will see what
happens. Update: Its to do with the way the program gets
the uptime from the system, the guy who wrote this program is going
to change it in the next version to be released.
NEXT:
Final Notes and Conclusion
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