lcd display design quotation

Liquid crystal display (LCD) is a flat panel display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals do not produce light directly, instead using a backlight or reflector to produce images in colour or monochrome.

If you like collecting quotations like I do, then this instructable is for you. This instructable will show you how to put together a way to display your quotes for all to see, using things you probably already have around the house.

Any kind of quote will do, but because the picture frame scrolls through the images that will contain the quotes it works best if you keep the quotes short. Longer quotes, although interesting, may not remain on screen long enough to be read. If you have a number of longer quotations, see "Some Final Notes" at the end of this instructable for tips that you can consider for longer display times.

Look at the sample images stored on your LCD picture frame. For my frame, all of the sample images were 856x480 pixels. To determine this, right click on the image file, and select Properties. You should see a number of tabs, one of which should be called “Details.” Click on the details tab; under Image you should see a width and height. Write this down or keep the window open, because we will use it to set up PowerPoint.

Take the smaller of the two numbers (usually the height), and divide that by the larger number. In my case, 480/856=0.5607. Checking the table below (which shows common screen image ratios), I can see that the native images on my LCD picture frame are just about in 16:9 format.

Open PowerPoint, and start a new presentation. On the ribbon, click Design, Page Setup. In the setup dialog box, select the image format that matches the native format of your LCD picture frame. We do this because it helps prevent the software driving the frame from cropping or stretching the images unnecessarily. Click Home on the ribbon.

At this point, your presentation should have two slides: The initial default title slide, and your newly inserted blank slide. Click on the first slide (the title slide), click your right mouse button, and select delete. You should be left with a single blank slide in your presentation, sized to the native image size of your LCD picture frame.

In many cases, the picture won’t fill the slide because it’s in a different format than the native format for the LCD picture frame. Thus, we’ll need to resize the image to fit. At the same time, we don’t want to distort the image either. Here’s the most straightforward approach:

4. My LCD picture frame doesn’t let you change the display time for pictures, and some of the transitions happen too quickly to allow you to read the entire quote. You can do what I did, which was to make two copies of every slide. PowerPoint is creative in its naming; the slides are called Slide1.jpg, Slide2.jpg, et cetera. I named my copies Slide1a.jpg, Slide2a.jpg. The file system sorts the original and the copy together when the files are named this way, so every quote is displayed twice with an intervening transition.

5. If you don’t have a lot slides suitable for quotes, consider visiting a site like Interface Lift, which has a wide range of images in a variety of formats for desktop wallpapers. Chances are, you’ll be able to find images in a format suitable for the native format of your LCD picture frame.

Liquid Crystal Displays or more commonly known as LCDs are one of the most common electronic components which help us interact with an equipment or a device. Most personal portable equipment and even gigantic industrial equipment utilize a custom segment display to display data. For many portable consumer electronics, a segment LCD display is one of the biggest contributors to the overall cost of the device, hence designing a custom segment display can drive the cost down while also utilizing the display area in the most optimum manner. These displays have the lowest cost per piece, low power requirements, and a low tooling fee too.

At first thought, designing a custom segment LCD might look like a Herculean task, but trust me that it is easier than it seems. In this article, we have summarised and compared the display types and available technologies which are required to construct a custom segment LCD. We have also provided a flowchart that can act as a step-by-step guide while you design your own custom LCD. We have also provided the process we followed, a require gathering sheet we used for communicating our needs to the manufacturer, and a few other data and the quotation we received from the manufacturer.

Icons: A silhouette of any shape can be placed on the glass which enhances the ability to display data. For example, a symbol of a heart can be made to denote heart rate or an icon for a low battery to show that the battery needs to be charged. Icons are counted as a single pixel or segment and can give a lot more details than similar-sized text.

LCD Bias– It denotes the number of different voltage levels used in driving the segments, static drives (explained later in this article) only have 2 voltage levels or 2 bias voltage while multiplex drives have multiple voltage levels. For example, 1/3 will have 4 bias voltages.

LCDs utilizes the light modulating properties of liquid crystals which can be observed by using polarizing filters. Polarizing filters are special materials that have their molecules aligned in the same direction. If the light waves passing through polarisers have the same orientation as the filter, then the molecules of lights are absorbed by the filter, hence reducing the intensity of light passing through it, making it visible.

A custom LCD is important for maximizing the efficiency of the display area by adding custom symbols and characters. It also helps in reducing the cost and improving energy efficiency of the product. A higher number of custom symbols and specified placement of numerical and alphanumerical characters make the display more informative and readable for the user. This makes it look better than the plain old boring displays we get in the market. Furthermore, we can specify the viewing angle, contrast, and other specifications which can increase durability or give a better value for money for our intended usage.  A typical Custom Segment display is shown below, we will also show you how to design and fabricate the same further in the article.

The LCD display doesn’t emit any light of its own, therefore it requires an external source of illumination or reflector to be readable in dark environments.

While designing a custom segment LCD display, we have the leverage of choosing a lot of parameters that affect the final product. From the color of the display to the illumination technique and color of illumination as well as the type of input pins. Some important considerations we need to take while designing a custom 7 segment display are - the type of display, i.e. positive or negative, illumination method, driving technique, polarising type, and connection method. All these design criteria are explained below:

Positive and negative displays can be easily distinguished by the colour of the background and characters. Some common differences between the positive and negative displays are:

So, which one should you choose? When the displays are to be used in areas with higher ambient light, we should select positive segment LCD display as it has better visibility than negative segment LCD displays without using a backlight.

As we know that LED displays don’t emit any light, hence to illuminate it and make it visible in a dark environment, we can use different methods of illumination. The most common LCD Illumination methods are compared below:

For displays that need to be used for budget-friendly devices that should be small and rugged, LED lights are preferred for the displays due to the high durability and low cost of operations. For high brightness, CCFL and Incandescent lights can be used.

A polarizer film is the most important component of an LCD display, which makes it possible to display characters by controlling the light. There are 3 types of polarizers that can be used in the LCD display, the properties and difference are given below:

Displays can be categorized into two types, passive displays, and active display, passive displays are simpler to construct as they have 2 connections at each segment, the conductors comprise of an Indium Tin Oxide to create an image, whereas the active displays use thin-film transistors (TFT) arranged in a grid. The name is due to its ability to control each pixel individually.

If your displays have fewer segments, then static LCD drive is preferred as it is easier to control and cheaper to construct, and has a better contrast ratio. But let’s say that if the number of segments in the display are more than 30-40 then a multiplex LCD drive should be preferred as it has multiple common pins, hence reducing the total number of pins required to drive the display.

Choosing a connector type!!! For the prototyping phase or if you need to connect your LCD display on a Microcontroller directly, a pin type connector is the best and most economical option you have. If you need to connect your LCD display in a final product with a high volume of production which also requires to be extremely durable, but at the same time should not take up a lot of space, a Flex type LCD Connector will work best for you

LCDs have limited viewing angles and when seen from an angle they lose contrast and are difficult to be observed.  The viewing angle is defined by the angles perpendicular to the center of the display towards its right, left, up, and down which are denoted by the notations 3:00, 9:00, 12:00, and 6:00 respectively. The viewing angle of LCD can be defined as the angle w.r.t. to the bias angle at which the contrast of segments is legible.

To improve the viewing angle in an LCD, a Bias is incorporated in the design which shifts the nominal viewing angle with an offset. Another technique is to increase the Voltage, it affects the bias angle, making the display crisper when viewed from a direction.

For example, the viewing angle of a TN type TFT LCD is 45-65 degrees. Extra-wide polarising film (EWP) can increase the viewing angle by 10 degrees, using an O film polariser can make the viewing angles 75 degrees but these come at a cost of reduced contrast.

LCD Control chip or LCD driver chips can be mounted on the flex cable, display, or externally on a PCB. The placement of LCD control chip can affect the cost and size of the display. The 2 most common methods of chip placement are-Chip of Board (COB)and Chip on Glass(COG) which are described below:

We planned to design an air quality monitoring system for which we needed a custom segment LCD panel for an air quality monitoring device. Our product needs to display the following data: 2.5-micron and 10-micron particulate matter (PM) suspended in the air; the units should be in parts per million (PPM). CO2 in the air in PPM along with total volatile organic compounds present in the air in parts per billion (PPB). To make the product more usable, we included time in 24-hour format, Temperature in ºC, Battery status, loudspeaker status, Bluetooth status, and Wi-Fi status. And for some personal touch, we also added how good the air quality in the room is by using 3 different smileys.

We realized that it was impossible to provide all these data in a generic LCD available in the market, thus decided to build a custom LCD for our project.

A step-by-step flowchart is shown below to walk you through each and every step of selecting components and getting your custom segment LCD manufactured.

We started by listing down our requirements and drew a mock-up of the display on paper. After finalizing the placement of all the segments and icons on the prototype sketch of the display, we then decided which all icons and segments have to be kept on for the whole time and which needs to be driven. Realizing that there are too many segments, characters and icons, hence we selected a multiplex drive with 8 common pins which helped us bring down the total pins from an estimated 180 pins to less than 40 pins.

Since the device was meant to be used inside houses and offices, which are more often than not well lit and protected from environmental conditions, we opted for a positive mode display. For superior contrast ratio and better viewing angle, we chose a Film Super Twisted Nematic Display (FSTN) with a drive condition of 1/8 Duty and bias of 1/4.

Usually, the displays are mounted at a height of 4.5 feet from the ground, thus the viewing direction was selected to be 12"O clock with an operating frequency of 64Hz. We selected a Transmissive polarizer for the front glass and a reflective polarizer for the rear glass so that the natural light can pass through the front panel and the display can achieve the maximum contrast without the need for backlighting and we opted for the pin type connectors as they are easy for prototyping and are suitable for harsh environment with a lot of vibrations and shocks which best suited our purpose.

In the above image of a custom display design, we sent to the manufacturer, the red lines over multiple characters indicate that all these are considered as a single segment. For the sake of simplicity, we added test like T, S, U, B to denote Text, Symbols, Units, and Battery respectively. These characters were followed by numbers to simplify communication between us and the manufacturer. For example, if we needed any particular text or symbol to remain on, we can easily specify that to the manufacturer by using the corresponding text for that segment.

We mailed our requirements to multiple LCD manufacturers, (you will find a lot of LCD manufacturers on the Internet). Most LCD manufacturers have competitive pricing, and reply within a week. A sample requirement sheet is shown above which a customer needs to fill to specify all the details to the manufacturer.

This is a sample Custom Segment LCD quotation we got from one of the manufacturers. As you can see, the cost is based on the quantity. Higher the quantity, lower the cost. Apart from the cost per quantity, there is one more component called tooling fees. Tooling fee is a one-time fee charged by the manufacturer. It is for the technical design, support, and customization of the product. Customization of PCB or tooling of LCD can drive the tooling price higher or lower.

The tooling time and cost depend on how detailed and accurate designs you sent to the manufacturer. They then send the exact dimensions and technical details of the product they will be manufacturing. Once you confirm the design, they manufacture and ship the product which might take 4-8 weeks to arrive depending on the size of the order and mode of transportation selected.

A custom segment LCD can help you personalize your product while also saving the overall cost of your product. The whole process will take you around 2-3 months, which will include the designing phase, prototyping phase, and getting your custom segment LCDs delivered to your doorstep. Higher ordering quantity will reduce the cost per piece of each unit, thus driving down the cost of your final product.

Please complete the quote response form with as much information as you have readily available. If your LCD display is based on an existing design you can skip this step and attach any documentation that you may have, or simply list the manufacturers part number of the display that you are currently using. Either way, our engineering design team will quickly evaluate your information, help to fill any holes, and quickly get you an accurate quote for your specific display needs.

Custom Segment Liquid Crystal Displays are seen in products that measure the PH level of swimming pools, monitors used to measure specific gases in a mine, or in thermometers used to see if a child is running a fever. They are one of the oldest display technologies, but still one of the most popular.

Segment LCDs, also called static displays or glass-only displays, are constructed of two pieces of ITO (Indium tin oxide) glass with a twisted nematic fluid sandwiched in between. A static display is a segment display with one pin for every one segment.

These displays are still one of the most popular technologies in use and the majority of them are custom. Many people think the process of designing a custom segment liquid crystal display is complicated and too complex to be understood except for a few experienced people. But after designing custom LCDs for over 14 years, it can be said that just about anyone can select the best options for their product.

In other words, you don’t have to be an engineer, or have a PHD from MIT to design a custom LCD for your application. So instead of offering a list of technical terms and equations, these are the different options available.

Although Segment displays are an older technology, it is still one of the most popular. After all, they cannot display all the colors of a TFT or OLED like what can be seen on a cell phone and tablet.

The tooling fee for a custom display is the lowest of all the technologies and allows the customer to receive a LCD that is manufactured to the exact dimensions requested, including custom icons and segments.

Focus LCDs offers a one-time NRE (Non-recurring engineering) or tooling fee. This includes all design, technical support, and samples. A PDF showing an overview of our tooling process can be found by clicking here: Custom LCD flowchart

Segment displays require less power than other display technology such as TFT, OLED, and UWVD. This makes these LCDs ideal for applications that are battery powered or solar powered. They require the lowest power to drive, an estimated 2uA per centimeter squared. Glass only displays (no backlight and no controller) require an estimated 10% of the power that is required for a LED backlight. In other words, a static display without a backlight will draw around 1mA; the same display with a LED backlight will demand from 10mA up to 25mA. Most displays can be driven at 3.3V or 5V since microprocessors can operate at both voltages. 3.3V is becoming more popular since two double ‘AA’ batteries can produce between 3.0V and 3.3V.

A segment is any line, dot or symbol that can be turned on and off independently. The photo below is of a segment LCD that contains numbers, a small clock symbol, the word ‘Jul’, and the letters ‘PM.’

There are four numbers in the above LCD (0 8 4 7) all are seven segments. In other words the ‘0’ has seven segments, the ‘8’ has seven segments and so on. Each number has seven independent segments. Each segment can be turned on and off independently to create other numbers and some letters such as E, F C and others. This is an example of a ‘seven’ segment. But there are some letters that a seven segment cannot display such as the letter ‘M’ or ‘V’. In this case a fourteen segment configuration can be used.

An icon is a small symbol or set of words that is only one segment. In other words, when the segment is ‘on,’ the full word or symbol turns on. When it is “off,” the word or symbol turns off. In the photo above: the clocksymbol is one segment, the word ‘JUL’ is one segment, the letters FOCUSLCDS.COM are one segment and the letters ‘PM’ are one segment.

It is possible to burn a segment into the glass so that it is always “on”. In this case, the ‘FOCUSLCDS.COM’ has been burned into the glass and can always be seen by the customer even when the power is “off”. Some customers will have their company name burned into the glass.

Hence the display is called a segment display because each segment can be turned “on” and “off” individually. You choose the number of seven or fourteen segments and which icons you want on your custom display.

Segment displays earn the name ‘glass only display’ because the majority of them are glass with small metal leads attached to both sides of the display. However, it is possible to add a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) or a controller driver chip (IC). The construction of the display is similar to that of a sandwich. You take two pieces of glass, glue one piece on top of the other, than inject a fluid between the two pieces of glass. In the drawing below you see a side view of a segment display. The glass on top is smaller than the glass on the bottom. This is to allow room for the pins.

Segment LCDs, like all LCD display technologies, operate best between specific temperature ranges. You choose the temperature ranges that it will operate in. There are two standard configurations: normal temperature and wide temperature. The wider the temperature range, the more expensive the display.

The standard operating temperature range for a segment LCD is 0C to 50C. It is possible to build the display with a different fluid that will allow it to operate from -30C to 80C (F). With the addition of a heater, the display can operate down to -50C.

When the display becomes too cold, the fluid between the two layers of glass starts to freeze; when the display does freeze, the segments that were “on” when it froze will stay on. The display will not change until the temperature increases. When the display becomes too hot, a black spot will develop in the center of the glass. Basically the fluid is boiling. When the temperate comes down, the display will operate normally.

VATN (BTN) – Vertically Aligned Twisted Nematic is only available in negative mode (light colored letters on a dark/black background). VATN displays produce very bright segments and can be easily read.

Aiyos Super Service☑15min (LOGO custom display) ☑4 hours (LOGO sample finished)☑8 hours (Delivered to express) ☑3-7days (Customer received)

In addition to custom LCD displays, we provide custom PCB assemblies and turnkey solutions for products that feature a Displaytech LCD. As a display manufacturer, our engineering and production staff are experienced in handling the design and manufacturing of printed circuit board assemblies for front panels, rack mount equipment, handheld devices and many other products.

Looking to take your project to the next level in terms of functionality and appearance? A custom LCD display might be the thing that gets you there, at least compared to the dot-matrix or seven-segment displays that anyone and their uncle can buy from the usual sources for pennies. But how does one create such a thing, and what are the costs involved? As is so often the case these days, it’s simpler and cheaper than you think, and [Dave Jones] has a great primer on designing and specifying custom LCDs.

The video below is part of an ongoing series; a previous video covered the design process, turning the design into a spec, and choosing a manufacturer; another discussed the manufacturer’s design document approval and developing a test plan for the module. This one shows the testing plan in action on the insanely cheap modules – [Dave] was able to have a small run of five modules made up for only $138, which included $33 shipping. The display is for a custom power supply and has over 200 segments, including four numeric sections, a clock display, a bar graph, and custom icons for volts, amps, millijoules, and watt-hours. It’s a big piece of glass and the quality is remarkable for the price. It’s not perfect – [Dave] noted a group of segments on the same common lines that were a bit dimmer than the rest, but was able to work around it by tweaking the supply voltage a bit.

We’re amazed at how low the barrier to entry into custom electronics has become, and even if you don’t need a custom LCD, at these prices it’s tempting to order one just because you can. Of course, you can also build your own LCD display completely from scratch too.

PG Technologies supplies Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Technology to a variety of industries. Using the latest production processes, our manufacturing facility has developed a wide range of products capable of meeting today’s market demands.

We can assist with design and development of all types of custom LCD panels and modules, e.g. TFT, TN, HTN, STN, FSTN and COG types. All products are manufactured in a state of the art manufacturing facility with an annual output and volume now standing at 42,000,000 panels and 1,170,000 modules.  Diverse production processes provide flexibility to address all of your prototype, short runs to large production requirements.

Using the latest design software, our engineering team has developed a wide range of products suitable for various applications, including components servicing the utility and analytical instrumentation industries. Some of the advantages that we offer are as follows:

At PG Technologies, a sharp focus is placed on continuous product and process improvement. We are continually introducing new custom and standard LCD’s platforms for both the domestic and international markets. If you are interested in any of our products, or have a customized need to fill, please contact us. Our world-class pricing and flexible manufacturing lead-times are among the most competitive in the industry. We look forward to working with you on your LCD needs.

Dr Pan: Hello, Greg. Segment LCD screen can only be used for simple display content of numbers and characters at a specified position. For example, the display on clock, landline, calculator, etc.

It is supposed to be a replacement for LED segment display. If we compare it with LED segment display, it is more stylish and high class, but more expensive. If we compare it with dot matrix LCD, the display content is very simple and absence of variation, but much cheaper. It is widely used in monochrome LCD screen: TN, HTN, STN, FSTN and VA because of relatively low cost.

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a line of extreme and ultra-narrow bezel LCD displays that provides a video wall solution for demanding requirements of 24x7 mission-critical applications and high ambient light environments

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Generally speaking, let’s take an example with the same size, same thickness LCD. The price from cheap to expensive is TN, HTN, STN, VA, FSTN, DFSTN. Because the viewing angle will be wider from TN to DFSTN.

Generally speaking, there are 3 types of thicknesses of LCD. There are 1.7mm, 2.0mm, 2.8mm. And the price from low to high is 2.8mm, 2.0mm, 1.7mm. Because the thinner it is, the more difficult it is when producing.

First, making a new mold to make LCDs will change a whole production line for a new item. A production line includes more than 40 processes. And once it starts running. It will take a few minutes to adjust the whole production line and need to use raw materials to test the preciseness of the production line. It will cost a lot when starting production.

There will also be a huge difference in the price of the backlight. Under normal circumstances, we divide the backlight into three types. The first very commonly used backlight is directly connected to the LCD and soldered on the motherboard. This backlight does not require a specific structure, and its size only needs to be designed according to the size of the LCD and PCB board. The second is the backlight that is attached to the LCD. Generally, we will help it to design a wall, so that the LCD and the backlight can be better fixed together, so that the entire module structure can be more stable. The third is to add an iron frame to the second one, which can make the structure more stable and help protect the LCD screen.

The last but not the least point is some additional design. The most common is to add positioning columns. The function of the positioning column is to directly fix the backlight on the motherboard. In this way, soldering is not required, which can greatly reduce labor costs. Because the design of the positioning column is more complicated, because it involves the diameter and length of the positioning column, it will also affect the price of the backlight.

There are some other factors that will affect the price of the backlight. For example, the material of the diffuser film, the material of the light guide plate, and so on. Generally speaking, the materials of the diffusion film and light guide plate we use are better. So our backlight display effect is very good, the brightness is also very uniform. Some manufacturers may choose slightly inferior materials. The subtle differences in actual use are difficult to find, but the differences will be obvious after a long time of use. The backlight with slightly inferior materials will become dim and bright. It will not be so uniform. And the brightness of the lamp beads also decays quickly.

All custom designs for LCD displays will need to make a new mold for it. After the mold is confirmed, we will make samples and make mass production against it.

CreateXplay is a professional manufacturer that creates monochrome LCD screens. We provide custom designs for Segment LCD. These LCDs have different sizes, different shapes, and different backlights.