Hi all,
I´m searching for a SMALL Hitachi-compatible 2x40 LCD. After searching quite a lot of manufacturers, it seems that there is some kind of standard size with a viewing area of 154x16 mm. The application will be over some stop switches of a church organ console and these switches are only about 2.4 cm wide. If I put 4 switches beneath a standard display to have 2x9 characters for each, they´d have to be mounted with ugly gaps inbetween. So to avoid these gaps, a 2x40 display with around 100 mm display area width would be necessary. Does anyone have a hint for where to find such a display?
My second option (with higher programming effort) I came up with is to use a graphic LCD or VFD with matching dimensions and built-in character generator. I´ve found two acceptable VFDs from Noritake. One is 280x16 dots on 137mm, the other 254x32 on 115mm. But with the 280 VfD, I´d get only 2x8 characters for 5 switches and 7mm of unused pixels on each side, and the 254 would mean 4x8 quite small characters for 5 switches with the characters ending 3mm before the switch on each side. Both solutions are not really optimal. So another interesting hint would be a graphic LCD with e.g. 256 x max 32 pixels and a display area of around 120 or 100 mm. All graphic LCDs with high horizontal resolution I found so far have at least 64 pixels vertical.
As you might have guessed by now, the project has nothing to do with MIOS. It´s about a real church organ and the console will get around 30 user-assignable stop switches, so there will be a dedicated AVR controller driving around 6 to 8 displays ;D Anyway, the possible answers would probably be of interest for MidiBoxers as well, so I´m asking it here 
Any thoughts or hints are appreciated
Seppoman