With the release of slugos 3.10 this is obsolete. Refer to InstallPertelianLCD instead

How to add a Pertelian X2040 LCD display

Note: This is tested on the openslug head of may 20, 2006.

Introduction

This page describes how to add a Pertelian X2040 LCD display to your slug.
This is a 4 line, 20 character, green backlit LCD display with a USB connector.
Why this specific device: simple: it is the only LCD display that I could find that does not require fiddling with hardware, and more-over it comes in a nice cabinet. (and yes, I would have preferred something graphical and/or with OLED technology, but I could not find any pre-assembled hardware and I am not really good at soldering).

Steps

1. build and install the kernel from the head
2. connect your display to the slug
3. install kernel-module-usbserial_2.6.16-r6.2_ixp4xxbe.ipk and kernel-module-ftdi-sio_2.6.16-r6.2_ixp4xxbe.ipk on your slug (these are in tmp/deploy/ipk on your development system)
4. do an insmod for usbserial.ko and ftdi_sio.ko; then do a modprobe ftdi_sio followed by a depmod -a. You should now have a /dev/ttyUSB0 (assuming you do not have other USB serial devices)
5. if you want to automatically load the module upon bootup create /etc/modutils/modules if it does not exist.
   Add a line containing only ftdi_sio to that file. After saving the file run update-modules
6. on your dvelopment system build lcdproc (using bitbake).
7. install the newly created modules lcdd_0.5.0-r0_armeb.ipk and lcdproc_0.5.0-r0_armeb.ipk
8. edit /etc/LCDd?.conf to your liking. Note that as the pacakge can also be used for a lot of other displays, I could not modify it to my needs.
9. start LCDd? by issueing the command (as root): /etc/init.d/lcdd start
10. edit /etc/lcdproc.conf to your liking. The screens that you can display are listed using by running lcdproc --help.
11. start lcdproc by issueing the command: /etc/init.d/lcdproc start

That's it. You should now have a running display. Note that the backlight is not working. There is a patch for that on http://pertelian.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=332, but I did not add it yet (with backlight in an always on situation I feel the display is too prominently present).

changing LCDd?.conf

In order to get your display working you need the review and change LCDd?.conf to your needs. I ahd to make the following changes:

• enable the hd44780 driver (around line 35) (just put a # before the line Driver=CFontzPacket? and remove the # before the lineDriver=CFontzPacket?)
• correct the DriverPath? (around line 79) (in the conf file it is server/drivers/ but it needs to become /usr/lib/lcdproc/ (do not forget the trailing backslash)
• change the device settings (around line 348). Comment the line Port=0x378 by preceding it with a # and add two lines saying:
  Device=/dev/ttyUSB0
  DelayMult?=25
• change the connection type from 4bit to lcdserializer (around line 351)

Enjoy!