Project: LogiNoki Logitech G5 Laser Mouse and Nokia 6610 Mobile Phone LCD Screen Hybrid

Author: Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö Published: 25.07.2006 How difficult: Time to finish: Two to three days Cost: Mouse: 45 euros LCD+driver: 30 euros In English Suomeksi

From the start it was clear that the mouse should not be a wireless model. Wired ones have more free space inside them and also have a better power source via USB connection. G5 Laser Mouse from Logitech seemed ideal and when I had green light from the manufacturer I didn't have to look any further and I was set to start the next step of the build.

Taken apart

First thing to do was to check how much free space there would be to work with. G5 has a rather interesting system that allows one to place weights inside the mouse to increase its mass. Mechanics that allow this to happen eats away some of that precious space that we need for everything to fit inside. Still, this should not cause any major problems as we can always hack away quite a lot plastics involved in this design.

LCD screen

Nokia 6610 color LCD + driver board

At first I was planning on doing all the wiring and electronics myself for the display. I'm a big fan of Henri's webiste that deals with LCDs and LCDInfo software that he has written. From the forum one can find topics that talk about how to connect various LCD and VFD products with computers and different controllers.

From the site I learned about a webshop that offers Nokia 6610 Color LCDs and a driver board that the shop owner had created for them. I contacted the person behind the Jelu Web-Shop as he had knowledge on how to control the display via software. In the end he agreed to help me with my project and the rest is history. ;) Thanks Jesper.

Controller Leadis LDS176 Dimensions 35 x 40 x 4 mm (wxhxd) Resolution 132 * 132 pixels Colors User selectable 256 and 4096 color modes Data 8-bit (332 with Look-up table) 12-bit (444 direct) 16-bit (565 with dithering) Interface Low level active SPI

Testing

Perhaps not the best picture but shows you my test setup for the screen. On the top left corner we have a movie Air Force One running and the LCD screen on the left is showing the action. As we are bit banging the data to the LCDs SPI port via computer's parallel port, the frame speed is somewhere around 1 screen per second. Not that fast for showing movies but should still offer many possibilities.

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