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Re: (hardware,hmd)help me,is this correct,Kopin cheap mono320 complete hmd unit

From: Doug Sutherland <>
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 01:55:05 +0000

J.D. Bakker wrote:

> Do you know any modules (LCD or otherwise) that are available for <$1000 ?

I'm not sure what you are asking here. If you are referring to microdisplays,
the actual display modules appear to be cheap, at lest the kopin ones are:

http://www.kopin.com/html/cyberdisplay_pricing.html

CyberDisplay 320 Model 290 Monochrome Optical Engine    $105
(Display/Backlight, and focusing mechanism)                  

CyberDisplay 320 Color Video Optical Engine             $135
(Display/Backlight, and focusing mechanism)

But these are just the display and backlight, optics and hardware driver
are needed, neither of these are trivial. Micro-Optical has extremely 
small optics, would be hard to come even close building your own. And 
Ed tells us that its a lot of work to build a driver, requires custom 
circuitry and writing a framebuffer driver.

The above displays are only QVGA (320x240) and I wouldn't want to bother
with custom drivers unless it was double that to VGA (640x480). Kopin 
has a VGA CyberDisplay but they don't list prices. Kopin doesn't seem 
to have what I want (VGA mono), but they have a 1280x1024 CyberDisplay.
They have a 1280 Mono eval kit, and it includes a complete PC (give me
a break ... don't sell me something I don't need) 

The MicroDisplay VGA mono eval kit looks very interesting, but I don't 
thing these are easily obtainable. The driver board is 2.75" diagonal
and presumably it runs a lot leaner than the Cy-Visor which uses the 
MicroDisplay field sequential color displays.

http://www.microdisplay.com/products/monokit2.html

Prices on the eval kits from MicroDisplay used to be $1200 for the 
VGA mono and $2500 for the SVGA color. The optics are large though,
so custom optics would be needed to get anywhere close to micro-
optical radical packaging. Somebody also mentioned a while ago that
the MicroDisplay kits were no longer available. I assume that this
company also sells just the displays, but I doubt that they will 
sell them unless you buy an eval kit.

Colorado Micro has some interesting stuff too, but I think that 
eval kit prices are steep, and custom drivers will be needed to 
make them feasible for wearing. Their analog SVGA kit looks to 
have a nice eyepeice, but the driver is big, and I don't think
these kits are cheap.

http://www.comicro.com/product/product_eval/index.html (SVGA analog)
http://www.comicro.com/product/8x6d_evalkit.html (SVGA digital)
http://www.comicro.com/product/qvga/qvga_eval.html (QVGA)

InViso also has some eval kits. The OptiScape eval board is an
SA-1110 CPU board! Interesting but annoying at the same time. I
wonder if you can use the board AS your wearable. Whoa, pricing 
on these kits are $6,500 and $18,000. I find it hard to believe
that they will sell e-Glasses for $600.

http://www.inviso.com/eval_kits.html
http://www.inviso.com/order.html

DisplayTech has a QVGA kit that allows input from NTSC, PAL, 
or VGA. No idea on pricing or size of driver etc.

http://www.displaytech.com/products/personalview.html

These are all of the microdisplay eval kits that I am aware of.
Anybody know of others?

If you are referring to LCDs in general, you can do QVGA with the
Seiko Vitrium chip-on-glass, but you'll probably need to build a 
driver because the eval kit boards are big, and its a parallel 
port interface that requires custom software driver. You can do 
TFT VGA panels in the size range of 4 to 7 inches digonal for 
around $500-$800, and many SBCs have the video driver hardware 
to support these directly. On the low end you can interface to 
text/graphics LCDs through RS232 port. I am about to start working
on a PS/2 interface to microcontroller along with text/graphics 
LCD, and make it a serial terminal (just run getty on linux). I 
will start with a small 4x20 character LCD for testing then move
to something bigger like these:

http://www.noritake-elec.com/graphic.htm

The GU256x128 in particular does 16 lines of 42 characters text,
this would make a nice serial terminal, and it would be bright,
good for outdoor viewing.

http://www.noritake-elec.com/v6a.gif 

The CCFL displays at NCD might also make good serial terminals.
http://www.controlanything.com/html/lcdlist.htm

Take a look here for an extensive but out of date collection
of mobile display sources.

http://home.earthlink.net/~wearable/#Displays

  -- Doug

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