how to increase brightness of lcd display price

How does the song go?My future’s so bright I need to wear shadesI"ve got a job waiting for my graduationFifty thou a year, buys a lot of . . . coffee??????

This article is limited to monochrome since they perform better in direct sunlight and can still be read when the back light is off. Also, the tooling cost, if necessary, is much lower.

Swap out the transflective polarizer with a transmissive polarizer. This increases the brightness without increasing the amount of power necessary or decreasing the half-life of the LEDs. The one downside is the display will be a bit more difficult to read when the back light is off, but it is still readable.

Every monochrome display with a LED back light contains a current limiting resistor. The lower the resistor value, the higher the current draw. Hence the brighter the back light. The down side is the back light draws more power (not always good for battery powered products) and it reduces the half-life of the LED back light.

Once the design is done and your customers see the light, the good people at Masterelectronics.comcan hold your inventory so you have more time to ship shades to your customers.

For the video display developer LCD panels are available in many sizes and resolutions, they are also available with many choices of maximum brightness. The following considers the topic of LCD panel brightness, the choices, the methods for adjusting brightness and some brightness adjustment scenarios.

LCD panels are generally rated as to their maximum brightness level which is expressed in Nits, it is equal to Candela/sqm (cd/m2), and this will be at a particular color temperature as noted in the specification, usually 10,000 K. In terms of a practical understanding, the following is a rough guide:

Outdoor displays range from a low end of 700 nits to typically 1,000 or 1,500nits and up with 2,000~2,500nits and even up to 5,000nits seen with some models. This may include standard LCD panels, custom LCD panels as well as custom cut LCD panels.

Virtually all LCD panels have a LED backlight these days, these are powered by an LED driver board. Brightness control via the driver board will be by one of two methods:

PWM (Pulse Width Modulation): This varies the duty cycle of the backlight “on time” – it is predominant in modern LCD panel LED backlight designs to enable support for digital brightness controls.

Analog: Uses a simple variable voltage to adjust brightness, for example this might be a dial or slider type potentiometer / variable resistor. To see how to enable analog backlight adjustment visit: https://www.digitalview.com/blog/brightness-adjustment/

One of the advantages of LED for the backlight is the range of adjustment that is possible, however it is important to note that the range varies significantly from model to model. Some industrial panels can be turned to very low light levels making them suitable for use in special environments such as at night. Lower cost panels limit the range of brightness to what might be required for typical usage, whereas panels with full range dimming from full off to full on require more complex backlight drivers.

Backlight lifetime: Many LCD panels have a backlight lifetime rating of 50,000 hours (typically measured to half brightness), this can be extended by running the LED backlight at a lower brightness level. Some panels may only offer 30,000 hours as a lower cost solution while other panels may offer up to 100,000 hours for high end applications.

An LCD panel backlight may be constructed so the LED’s are mounted directly behind a light guide diffuser, or they may be mounted along one or more edges of the light guide.

Active backlight: This is a function of some LCD panel backlights to automatically adjust the backlight brightness in response to the image. For more advanced systems there is an LED array making up the LED backlight, this adjusts the brightness in areas localized to the image being shown. This can greatly enhance the brightness across the display and is being used primarily with video, for example on consumer TV sets. It is not useful to all image types, for example a spreadsheet or content like maps or data is not likely to benefit.

Local dimming: Some LCD panels with direct LED may support local dimming so the LED’s are dimmed in response to the image close to them. This will not be at the same resolution as the LCD panel itself but will help greater contrast over the display by enhancing the brightness in bright areas of the image and darkening the image in dark parts of the image.

Both of the above techniques are likely to be more beneficial to certain types of content than others. For example a movie is likely to benefit more than a spreadsheet.

For the LCD monitor manufacturer it is important to consider that any covering over the LCD panel will reduce the brightness. For example the protective glass over a digital signage display, or a touch screen, or a semi-silvered mirror. So if a specific brightness is required the measurement should be taken with these in place.

There are various relatively low cost brightness meters available, typically in the couple of hundred dollars range. It is difficult to comment on the accuracy of these but we have found them to be within 5% of each other, though more importantly they do appear to be quite consistent in measurement so good for measurement comparisons. For more accurate measurement there are light meters from companies such as Minolta that can be calibrated, the cost may run into several thousand dollars.

Examples of light meters costing a few hundred dollars include SpyderX by Datacolor (needs a PC), a handheld meter is the SM208 by Sanpometer (search SM208 meter). Note: Many light meters, including smartphone apps, will be meters used for photography and not give readings in nits (or candelas). LCD panel specifications are typically measured using nits.

PWM and Analog: Most Digital View LCD controllers support PWM and Analog as a method for adjusting the backlight brightness level (this is noted in the column headed “Other” on the controller board summary table: https://www.digitalview.com/controllers/lcd-controllers-home.html. Also see https://www.digitalview.com/blog/brightness-adjustment/ for a guide to using a dial or slider type variable resistor to adjust the backlight.

DPMS (Display Power Management System): The backlight will be automatically turned off after a period if there is no valid video signal being received.

Ambient light sensor: The backlight is adjusted for brightness or powered off depending on ambient light conditions. This uses a light sensor attached to the LCD controller board, see https://www.digitalview.com/blog/light-sensor-app-note/ for more details.

The specifics of the backlight control are documented separately for each LCD controller model (product summary here) in the product manual available for download on the product page.

Note: There are two ways to adjust the perceived brightness of a LCD panel or LCD monitor, the backlight and the black-level. Very often, particularly in the past, the monitor brightness setting adjusted the black-level, this adjusts the LCD but not the backlight.

Color, color temperature etc: In addition to adjusting the brightness other settings may be adjusted as well. For example the color temperature or for example a switch to green monochrome for night vision.

Auto-dim if lights dimmed for a projector. This might be triggered by a command from a room sensor or automatically by an ambient light sensor (Autobrite+).

Night-safe lighting (update) : Dual-rail backlights can also be supported. These special backlight enable normal brightness and extreme low level brightness with custom night-safe lighting. Contact us for details.

Note: We have a blog on methods for implementing an ambient light sensor with Digital View LCD controller boards to automatically adjust the backlight or system power, see: Ambient Light Sensor

Update March 2019: Most of the above remains unchanged except for the increased availability of high bright LCD panels of around the 1,000 nit to 2,500 nit range. AUO for example has a number of large size LCD panels with 1,500 nit brightness for the digital signage market. Tianma has panels under 20″ with 1,000 nit to 1,500 nit brightness for various outdoor applications.

The other change is that high bright panels are now increasing edge-lit, this makes the panels thinner and these panels tend to use less power than the previous models. One of the benefits for monitor designers is easier heat management and reduced overall display system costs.

The contrast ratio (CR) is a property of a display system, defined as the ratio of the luminance of the brightest color (white) to that of the darkest color (black) that the system is capable of producing.

If the LCD contrast is too low, it is hard to read. Different applications have different contrast requirement. For normal reading, the contrast needs to be >2; for medical, the contrast needs to be >10, for welding helmet, contrast should be >1,000.

The higher the efficiency, the better of the LCD contrast . It is especially important for negative display. Change from 98% to 99.9% polarizer, the contrast can increase from 45 to over 1000 for negative LCD, but for positive LCD, the contrast increases from 7 to 10 for positive LCD.

Positive LCD to Negative LCD (When the LCD is used indoor or dark environment, The contrast will increase a lot, but it will not display well with ambient light only, it is also more expensive)

For negative display, black mask can block the light bleeding, the contrast can be improved. Black mask can be done either outside cell (low cost) and inside cell (high cost).

Do you have a Scriptel LCD tablet and need to adjust the brightness or contrast? Perhaps your work environment is dark (movie theater or warehouse), or has a lot of light (dental clinic, reception desk) and you need to adjust the brightness or contrast for better clarity?

You can alter the brightness or contrast on your Scriptel LCD tablet screen (ST1525, ST1526, ST1550, ST1551, ST1570, ST1571) using the ScripTouch Toolbox (except on the Desktop LCD models – ST1500/1B. On these models only, the backlight may be turned on or off, but cannot be dimmed). This is how you do it.

First you need to install the ScripTouch Toolbox to change the setting on your tablet. It is not installed by default with the driver. You can download the software here: https://scriptel.com/support/downloads/

Great! Now, using the arrows on the Brightness and Contrast sliders, move them to the right or left to adjust your LCD tablet screen to your own requirements. You will see the result on your LCD tablet screen instantly.

To help calibrate the contrast, you can also click the option, Show Contrast Pattern. It will provide you with a graded pattern on the screen to help you achieve the desired result.

When satisfied, simply close the application and your setup will be saved in the tablet"s flash memory. The setup will remain saved until you change it again with the ScripTouch Toolbox application, even if you unplug the tablet and move it to a new computer.

There are more and more TFT displays used in outdoor applications, such as automobile display, digital signage and kiosks. High ambient light in outdoor environment often causes wash-out image and renders the screen not readable. Readability & sustainability of TFT  display under direct sunlight is becoming vital. Topway Display has been developing sunlight readable LCD display solution for years. The company understands the ins and outs of sunlight readable TFT LCD.

For an LCD to be readable in outdoor environment with very bright ambient light, the LCD screen’s brightness needs to exceed the intensity of light that is reflected from the display surface. To be comfortably viewed by human eyes, the LCD’s brightness needs to exceed its reflected light by a factor of 2.5 at minimum. Naturally, to make an LCD sunlight readable, we can work on two areas, increasing brightness or reducing reflectance.

On a clear day in direct sunlight, the ambient brightness is about 6000 cd/m2. And a typical TFT LCD with touch screen reflects about 14% of ambient light, which is around 840 cd/m2. These days, most LCD displays use LED backlight as light source. It is not too difficult to increase an LCD’s brightness to 800 ~ 1000 Nits, to overpower the bright reflected sunlight. Thus, you have a sunlight readable TFT LCD.

However, this method requires more backlight LEDs and/or higher driving current. The drawbacks are high power consumption, more heat dissipation, increased product size and shorter LED backlight lifespan. Apparently, increasing backlight to make TFT LCD sunlight-readable is not a very good solution.

Transflective TFT LCD is a TFT LCD with both transmissive and reflective characteristics. A partially reflective mirror layer is added between LCD and backlight. This change turns part of the reflected ambient light into LCD’s light source, increasing the TFT display’s brightness. However, transflective TFT LCD is more expensive than transmissive one. At the same time, the partially reflective mirror layer will block some of the backlight, making it not ideal in indoor or low ambient light environment.

What causes light reflection? When light traveling in one transparent medium encounters a boundary with another transparent medium, a portion of the light bounces off the border. Through the simplest version of Fresnel’s equation, we can calculate the amount of reflected light.

The total reflectance on a TFT LCD with touch panel is the sum of reflected light on any interface where two materials meet. As an example, between polarizer and display glass, the difference in index of refractions for the two materials is very small, around 0.1. So the reflected light on this interface is only 0.1%. As Fresnel’s equation points out, we should focus reflection reduction on air interfaces. For air, its index of refraction is 1; for glass, it is 1.5. And that results in a reflectance of 4.5%. Therefore, the three air interfaces contribute majority of TFT LCD’s reflectance, at about 13%.

The quick and easiest thing we can do to reduce air-glass interface reflectance is to use an Anti-Reflection and Anti-Glare film or apply AR coating. An external film with AR properties not only reduces reflected light, but also brings other benefits.

For food industry application, shattered glass is a serious problem. An LCD screen with external film solves this issue nicely. As for automotive applications, in an accident, broken LCD with top AR film won’t produce sharp edge glass that could harms auto occupant. Nevertheless, a top film always reduces TFT LCD’s surface hardness. And it is susceptible to scratches. On the other hand, AR coating retains LCD’s hardness and touch performance. But it comes with a bigger price tag.

Another quick and easy way to tackle reflectance is to affix a linear polarizer on the top of TFT screen. When ambient light gets to the top polarizer, only half of the light passes through. Which results in reflection light cutting to half. This is a very low cost way to increase TFT LCD’s contrast, such that making it more sunlight readable.

Laminating a circular polarizer in TFT LCD will get rid of a lot of reflectance. That is because when ambient light passes through circular polarizer it gets circularly polarized. And when it is reflected, the polarization direction flips by 180 degrees. So when reflected light comes back to the circular polarizer, nothing goes through to viewer’s eyes.

This method is very effective for an LCD display with resistive touch panel. We know resistive touch LCD has two air gaps: air gap between two ITO layers and air gap between touch panel and LCD display. Reflectance caused by the two air gaps is very high. Applying circular polarizer blocks off most of the reflected light, and makes the LCD display sunlight readable.

The disadvantage of such solution is its cost. Since we need not only a circular polarizer, but also a retarder film on the top of LCD display, making sure light originates from within LCD is not blocked by external circular polarizer.

Add AR films on both interfaces of internal air gap. The add-ons can reduce this area’s reflection from 8.5% to 2%. And since the AR films are not outside facing, they are much cheaper than the one used outside. Keeping the air gap also retains the ease of service, in case either touch panel or LCD display needs to be repaired.

The most effective way is to eliminate air gap totally, by using optical bonding. In plain language, we fill air gap with special optical adhesive, to smooth out the area’s refraction index differences. Such that reflectance caused by internal air gap drops from 8.5% to 0.5%. Optical bonding is expensive but effective way to improve TFT LCD sunlight readability. It enhances durability and resistance to impact. Moreover, no air gap means no moisture condensation and fogging.

There are many ways to make TFT LCDsunlight readable. They all have their own pros and cons. With 20+ years" LCD design and manufacturing experience, Topway knows how to create the best sunlight readable TFT LCD for challenging environments. Leave us a message and let"s start the conversation of creating suitable sunlight readable TFT LCD for your project.

If you are having difficulty reading the information displayed on the LCD, try changing the contrast setting. Adjusting the contrast will give the information a sharper and more vivid appearance.

In this project we’re going to display the LED brightness on a LCD 16×2 with a progress bar. This is a good Arduino beginner project for getting started with the LCD display. We provide a list of the parts required, schematic diagram, and code.

The simplest and inexpensive way to display information is with an LCD (liquid crystal display). These are found in everyday electronics devices such as vending machines, calculators, parking meters, printers, and so on, and are ideal for displaying text or small icons. The figure below shows a 16×2 LCD front and the back view.

This LCD has 2 rows, and each row can display 16 characters. It also has LED backlight to adjust the contrast between the characters and the background.

Copy the following code and upload it to your Arduino board. The code is well commented so that you can easily understand how it works, and modify it to include in your own projects.

This post showed you a basic example on how to use the LCD display with the Arduino. Now, the idea is to modify the sketch and use the display in other projects.

If you are a beginner to the Arduino, we recommend following our Arduino Mini Course that will help you quickly getting started with this amazing board.

While we generally avoid going into deep detail when it comes to our display testing, in light of statements that seemingly contradict our testing it becomes important to contextualize our display tests. Many people are often confused by contradicting statements regarding the peak brightness of an AMOLED display, as we will state that the Samsung Galaxy Note 4’s display reaches a maximum of 462 cd/m^2, while other sites often state that the Note 4’s display reaches a maximum of 750 cd/m^2. Another commonly cited discrepancy is that we rate the Nexus 6’s display to reach a peak brightness of 258 nits, while others have rated the Nexus 6’s display to be as bright as 400 nits.

One might immediately assume that one measurement is right, and the other is false. In truth, both measurements are achievable, as we’ll soon see. Before we get into any discussion of testing methodology though, we must first understand how AMOLED and LCD displays work. Fundamentally, LCD and OLED displays are almost completely different from one another, but face similar issues and limitations. LCD is the older of the two technologies, and is fundamentally quite simple, although not quite as simple as OLED. In short, we can view an LCD display as made of a backlight, and a color filtering array which has liquid crystals that control the passage of light, along with polarizers to make sure that the filtering system works correctly.

To break this system down further, we can look at the backlight. In the case of mobile devices, the only acceptable backlight system for thickness and power efficiency reasons is the edge-lit LED, which places a line of LEDs along an edge of the display, which is then diffused through a sheet of transparent material with strategically-placed bumps in the material to create points of light via total internal reflection. For the most part, LEDs in use today are blue LEDs with yellow phosphors in order to increase efficiency, although this means that the natural white point of such a backlight is higher than 6504k and requires filtering in order to reach a calibrated white point.

While the backlight is relatively simple, the actual color filtering is a bit more complicated, although we will avoid extensive depth in this case. In the case of IPS, the structure is generally quite simple in nature, with two electrodes in plane with each other, which is used to generate an electric field that rotates the orientation of the liquid crystals in plane with the display to dynamically alter the polarization of the light that can pass through the liquid crystal array. With a set of fixed polarizers before and after the liquid crystal array, by using the controlling TFTs to alter the voltage applied on the electrodes one can adjust individual color output on a per-pixel basis.

AMOLED is a fundamentally different approach to the problem, which uses organic emitters deposited upon a substrate. These emitters are designed to emit red, green, or blue when voltage is applied across two electrodes. Similarly, TFTs are needed to control each pixel. As one can see, AMOLED is a simpler solution, but in practice the issues with such an implementation can be quite complex.

In order to determine what picture content to use for a measurement of maximum brightness, we must turn to a measurement known as Average Picture Level (APL). This is best explained as the percentage of the display that is lit up compared to a full white display, so a display that is completely red, green, or blue would be 33% APL.

As one might already be able to guess, with AMOLED power consumption is highly dependent upon the content displayed. With a pure white image, every pixel must be lit, while with a pure black image every pixel is off. As the display typically has a maximum power use set for a mobile device, this opens up the capability for AMOLED displays to allocate more power per pixel (i.e. higher maximum luminance) when not displaying a full-white image. This is in contrast with the edge-lit LCDs used in mobile displays, which have relatively limited local-dimming capabilities. As a result, the maximum brightness of an LCD is relatively fixed, regardless of the displayed content.

In the case of the Nexus 6, we can clearly see dimishing returns after 40% APL as there is efficiency droop on AMOLED displays that are similar in nature to LED backlights. While now it’s easy to understand why it is that AMOLED can vary in maximum brightness, the question is which brightness is “correct”. While an AMOLED display can technically have a maximum brightness of 750 nits, it’s unlikely that people will look at images effectively equivalent to 1% of the display lit up with white.

In practice, it turns out that with Lollipop and almost all web pages, the average picture level is quite high. It’s increasingly rare to see cases where displayed content is below 50% APL. According to Motorola, 80% APL represents an average APL for light UIs and in light of this, it seems appropriate to test at similarly real-world APLs. Taking a look at some commonly used applications in Lollipop, we see that the APL is regularly at or above even Motorola"s 80% figure. I opened some of the applications on my Nexus 6"s homescreen to take screenshots of whatever they had open when they came up, and I"ve tabulated the results below.

As you can see, many of the screens in Android"s interface as well as web pages and third party apps have a high APL. There are exceptions, like the Calculator application and any application with a dark theme, but the overall trend is clear. Google"s new interface style also means that applications are more likely to adopt interfaces with large amounts of white than in the past.

As a result of this, we test at 100% APL in order to get an idea of perceived brightness. While there may be some need for lower APL testing, it’s important to also consider cases such as OLED aging which will lower peak brightness over time. It"s also important to consider that the delta between 80% APL and 100% APL in this case is around 44 nits. This makes for about an 18% delta in brightness, which ends up being around the noticeable difference in most cases. While our testing is subject to change, in the case of brightness we currently do not see much need to dramatically alter our methodology.

Responsible for performing installations and repairs (motors, starters, fuses, electrical power to machine etc.) for industrial equipment and machines in order to support the achievement of Nelson-Miller’s business goals and objectives:

• Perform highly diversified duties to install and maintain electrical apparatus on production machines and any other facility equipment (Screen Print, Punch Press, Steel Rule Die, Automated Machines, Turret, Laser Cutting Machines, etc.).

• Provide electrical emergency/unscheduled diagnostics, repairs of production equipment during production and performs scheduled electrical maintenance repairs of production equipment during machine service.

Luminit’s Display Brightness Film is a light-management film that increases the brightness of LCD displays used in automotive, avionics and consumer electronics applications. This highly specialized display enhancement film utilizes the principles of refraction and total internal reflection to recycle and redirect light to manage the angular output from a back-light unit (BLU) and increase the brightness of a display. The standard version has a gloss finish on one side, and an optional diffuser is available to reduce common unwanted optical artifacts such as mura, sparkle and moiré. The result is display performance that is brighter and more efficient. Tests show Luminit LCD Display Brightness Film within 4% of the performance characteristics of similar film solutions (BEF-2).

Note: Ensure to set your LCD panel to factory settings at this point. Otherwise, you will not get the best results. To reset your LCD panel to factory conditions, use the buttons that are located on the front, side, or back. However, if your LCD panel lets you set the gamma, you should set it to 2.2 or as close as possible.

Next, use the slider to adjust the gamma. To do this, move the slider until the dots in the middle of the image appear less visible. This changes both the brightness and color of your screen.

Note: Do not worry if you cannot make the circles in the center completely disappear. If you want a better way of testing, you can also use this gamma correction test image. Try to make as many numbers appear on the top and bottom bars as possible. With better LCD panel s, you can see 6 numbers in each bar, while lower-grade LCD panel s will only be able to show 4 numbers.

Note: If you cannot adjust the slider, you might have to change the gamma settings by using your LCD panel ’s controls. You should still keep the display settings window and gamma correction image test open while you do this.

Next, adjust the brightness. To do this, use the control buttons on your LCD panel until you can see the shirt and suit in the image, but not so much that the X stands out from the background. You should still be able to see the "X," but the wall behind it should not be washed out.

Note: Your screen looks different depending on what angle you are looking at it. For the best results, you should step back and look at your LCD panel from far away.

Next, adjust the contrast. To do this, use the buttons on your LCD panel. You want to set your contrast so you can just see the wrinkles and buttons on the shirt of the man in the figure. The background of the image should not be bright white.

Then adjust your colors. To do this, use the sliders at the bottom of the window until all the bars are a neutral gray. If you find this difficult, you can also download an image of color bars and use that image to see when your colors are off.

Next, click Previous calibration and Current calibration to see if you like the changes you made. Doing this will not change your calibration. You can go back and change any settings by clicking the arrow in the top-left corner of the window.

If you are satisfied with the new calibration, click Finish. If not, click Cancel, and you can start all over. To get the best results, you can do the steps over again. For best results, you might want to go through the steps again, but backward this time. This is because each step affects the next one, so changing the order helps you fine-tune your calibration even more.

Note: You can check the "Start ClearType Tuner…" box to adjust the clarity of text on your screen. You will then be asked to do a quick test to calibrate the text on your screen.

Intel Display Power Saving Technology (DSPT) is a power-saving feature in Intel’s latest version of mobile graphics chips. These graphics chips reducing power consumption on the computer by altering the brightness and contrast of the display.

Intel DPST controls the LCD backlight, by reducing the backlight as needed they can save power. This can be important on mobile computers running off the battery. The aim is to automatically reduce the backlight brightness while maintaining good visuals on-screen. It analyzes the image to be shown, and it uses equations to change the chroma value and reduce the brightness of the backlight simultaneously. This means you should not see any distortion to the image on-screen. Intel says that 70% of the power that the backlight uses when watching media is saved.

This constant readjustment, however, is noticeable to some people, especially if they often change between different applications and media. The next section will take you through disabling the function. We only recommend doing this if you are seeing issues with this technology.

1. Download the latest utility program corresponding to your LCD Monitor model from ASUS Download Center, enter the model,and click on Driver & Tools.