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Hi I am working on a proposal for a small embedded device. I have worked with several microcontrollers in the past, but it is the first time I need an LCD display. Money is the biggest constraint right now for the project. I am looking for a 4 digit LCD display with a microcontroller solution that could be produced for less than $2 for a 500K quantity. It turns out LCDs are more expensive that what I have thought. The cheapest one I found (which includes the electronic drivers) costs $1.39. I am looking for 8 bit microcontrollers solutions that could drive a small 4 digit LCD display.

Any pointers on where to look?

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feels like a superuser.com question to me. – Chopper3 Sep 24 '09 at 14:31
feels more like a hardwarehacker.com question (if such a site exists). – sybreon Sep 24 '09 at 15:05
I wonder where a good place to ask this kind of question is? I'm interested in a mobile (vibration tolerant) VGA display, but in small quantities. I don't need it to be dirt cheap. One idea I had was to buy add-on mobile DVD player displays from retail or surplus outlets... – DigitalRoss Nov 8 '09 at 2:13
@DigitalRoss: Not here, at any rate. There might well be a stackexchange site for hardware design, but it certainly doesn't fit within the remit of a systems administrator. – womble Jan 4 '10 at 0:59
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closed as off topic by Mark Henderson♦, Zypher♦, John Gardeniers, womble, Sam♦ Jan 4 '10 at 11:16

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3 Answers

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How big? Backlit?

With backlight $1.39 seems close to the limit - same goes for larger format LCDs that aren't produced in large quantities.

If you only need a small LCD with no backlight, do some research to find out which supplier actually produced some of the watches you find at the dollar store or Walmart. Those 4 digit LCDs are about as cheap as you can possibly get.

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No backlight. I checked some of those watches, but they are produced in insane (5M-10M) quantities, which make the price go very low. – freddy Sep 25 '09 at 16:27
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Alternatively, you may want to consider using the kind of graphical LCD displays that are used on mobile-phones. As they are commodity parts, you might be able to source a generic part at a fairly low price for the kind of quantities that you are talking about. These graphical LCD are usually controlled via SPI, which is usually a feature found on most modern 8-bit micro-controllers.

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Microchip makes an extensive line of 8-bit microcontrollers, including ones that can drive an LCD directly. A display without electronics is going to be the cheapest you can find. What you are trading cost for is, of course, programming time. The PIC line also includes many different peripherals, so that whatever you display is going to be part of, it might be able to be done by the micro as well, further eliminating parts.

Just be careful that you really get 4 digits. Some displays are 3-1/2, meaning they go to 1999 and not 9999.

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