Suggesion for LCD (Graphical or Charecter)

[mvadu]

Hi I am working on a digital Speedo project. I need to display speed reading in 3:1 digits (three digits and one decimal). Digits should be big enough to read from distance..(as Honda Civic has in its dashboard)

I am thinking about using PIC16F628A for communication. But I am not sure about type of LCD I should use either a character based (like 20x7) where by joining lot of black dots i can make a digit, or a graphical display..

As per my logic even text displays can be used to display big digits, if multiple character blocks are used to display a single digit. Like the one in my example image. Only thing is digits will not be sharp, there will be some white lines in-between two dots. So alternative is to use a graphical LCD, but my concern is I never worked with graphical LCD, I am not sure whether 16F628 is enough for that or not

So you need to suggest me now..

1. What kind of LCD should i use graphical or character
2. PIC16F628 is enough or not
Please note that I played only with this PIC till today in JAL, i never used a graphical LCD..
3. Availability and cost of the LCD you suggested

Please note that I am not bothered about temp. In India (that too in Bangalore) through out the year we have almost constant temp 

attached is a sample display which i am looking for..

View attachment 40269

 

[Ldanielrosa1]

Have you considered using LED?  Bright by day and dim by night.  If you don't mind committing a microcontroller to the display, then it should work nicely.

If you have already decided that it must be LCD, then one I can suggest for economic reasons is the screen from an older Nokia cellular telephone if you can rescue it from the garbage can.  The LCD is about 20*30mm- about the minimum size you would want.  It uses a 5 wire serial protocol.  The display will require some reworking to mount it, and 1-2k of program space (including font).

 

[mvadu]

Ya.. even LED is also fine, but the reason why I switched to LCD is other than displaying speed in big fonts, i planed to show up odometer readings also in say 1minute intervals in small fonts.

And using cellphone display is not possible because I need a font height of 1 inch, and 4-5 such characters. So display size is somewhere arround 1.5*3.5 inch. which is not there in old phones.

Is it possible to get a character LCD display in 20x15 range.. :-\