I couldn't see the max resolution, as with it blinking away on the wrong cable, it wouldn't show up in Windows. The iPad display works fine though. I'll know more tonight.

As for the LCD frame, the only downside is that it makes the display more fragile. For a native backlight setup it shouldn't be a big deal as the LCD will be fully supported by the mounting plate that I will make. If I go about modifying it for use with an external backlight, I may have to mount it to glass or acrylic to provide additional support.

 

Looks like neither laptop has a video card capable of 4K (NV3100m on one, Quadro FX3800m on the other). That's ok, that's why I bought the USB adapter. Oh wait! No it's not, because there was NOTHING IN THE ******* BOX!!!!! I was so pissed last night when I saw that. I bought it at Microcenter. It was shrink wrapped. Looks like it was a return and no one checked to see if there was actually anything in the box. Fortunately they were cool about it (just got back from there) and gave me a full refund.

Now, off to Amazon I go!

 

It's like a low power GPU. It doesn't do the bulk of the work (the CPU and GPU on the PC does most of the heavy lifting as a "virtual graphics card"), but it spits out delicious 4k video. I haven't looked too deep into it, but there are a few different models out there, and they all seem to be pretty well reviewed. I think most of them are using a chip developed by Displaylink, who seem to be the king of video over USB (and other non-traditional methods, like ethernet and wireless)

 

I was hoping to find an Expresscard solution just from a reliability standpoint, and the fact that the laptop I use for the printers doesn't have a USB 3.0 port, but didn't come up with anything. The USB 3.0 issue will be dealt with by the docking station that I just ordered. Apparently the Latitude e6410 has USB 3.0 through the dock connector, but not through the on board connectors.

Anyway, I ordered a unit from Plugable through Amazon. Should be here Friday. I'll be able to test it out on my other laptop that has USB 3.0 until the dock shows up.

 

You know, there is a point in time where you just need to shoot the engineer. My brain just won't stop on this whole LCD SLA concept.

So we have two high resolution options with the iPad display and the 4K laptop panel. What if you wanted better resolution than a typical FDM printer (assuming 0.4mm nozzle) on the X and Y, far better Z resolution, but a very large build area? 24" 1080p TV's are dime a dozen, have HDMI inputs (run everything with a Raspberry Pi and NanoDLP), and will have an X/Y resolution of about 0.27mm.

I just so happen to have an unused Vizio E241-B1 24" 1080p TV sitting around doing nothing. It may just get repurposed here in the not too distant future.

I hate myself

 

I know. It never ends. There's always some other derivative that comes up that could be useful. I don't plan on starting another build until I get the iPad and 4K versions built. As to which one comes first... Well that's to be seen

 

I'd say $1K is easy, providing that doesn't include the PC/Laptop to drive it (my C-Beam based FDM printer that I just finished was about $1K, and that's because of all the linear stages). Once the Udoo X86 platforms start shipping, then those will be a great way to make the system standalone for under $1K.

 

I've been looking closely at the Udoo X86 these last few days, and seeing if there were any alternatives that would fit the bill. I even looked at barebones PCs to see if that was semi cost effective. The PC's aren't, but they have a lot more available power depending on the components you stuff in there. Asrock has their Beebox line that is pretty affordable, but you are still looking at over $200 once you put memory and a drive in there, and that's not counting the cost of the OS.

The Udoo X86 looks very affordable at first blush, until you find out that the e.MMC storage that's on board for the higher end units isn't big enough for a Windows installation. There is an M.2 SSD slot, and a SATA port, but it just means it's not as cheap as it looks.

I was also somewhat excited about the Arduino 101 compatible hardware. It would be dead simple to stick something like a Protoneer CNC shield on it and have a fully integrated controller, but it seems that support for the Intel Curie module that powers it and the Arduino/Genuino 101 isn't going to be supported by Marlin. Not sure about Repetier or Sailfish firmwares though. I still need to dig into whether the common stepper drivers like the DRV8825 can support 3.3v logic. Anyway, might be worth a try.

I didn't have much luck finding alternatives either. Most don't support 4K resolutions, even if they did have a Displayport.

 

Interesting. There could be some serious time and detail improvements with that.

 

So, good news and bad news.

Good news, I got the display working!!!

Bad news, I don't think that the n3100 series Celeron CPU's are going to cut the mustard with these displays. I picked up a Zotac CI323 barebones PC and stuffed a 120GB SSD and 8gb or RAM in there. No matter what I did as far as BIOS, chipset drivers, or display drivers, I could not get the LCD to recognize properly in Windows 10. I knew that the LCD was working after plugging it into a powerful Lenovo CAD workstation laptop that has a native 4K display. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work, and Zotac wasn't of much help.

The next step was to kick the power level up a notch. Yesterday I grabbed an Intel NUC with an i3 6100U (more powerful GPU in addition to the increased CPU power). It's the lowest version that has a displayport (mini in this case), but it fired up the LCD without complaining one bit.

What makes this unfortunate is that these displays may not play nice with SBC's like the UDOO x86 seeing as it's using the same n3100 series CPUs. It's possible that the Ultra version that's sporting the Pentium version of the CPU may work, but it has the same pricetag as the i3 based NUC, but without wifi and bluetooth. Sure, it comes with 8gb of RAM installed, but that's only $50 for the NUC.

Anyway, I managed to get a somewhat in focus picture of the pixel structure showing the white pixels. As expected, it's a white sub-pixel every 4 sub-pixels. Not sure if I'm willing to tear this one up just yet, but maybe in the future.

 

Not sure what you mean there. Can you clarify?

 

Oh, right. Of course.

I'll see about ordering a second LCD so that I'm not dead in the water if this doesn't go well. May be a few weeks out though.

 

Most likely same supplier, but I'll see what I can find. I'll be using one of the three LCDs that I posted about earlier, with another LG being the most likely, but the Sharp RGB might be a possibility, just to see what difference the change in the sub-pixel arrangement makes in terms of print quality.

I really wish I didn't have a bathroom that I need to renovate so that I could tinker with this some more.

 

Go big or go home