I am working on a project at my job that involves a piece of electronic equipment with an LCD built-in. We currently use ridiculously expensive (many $100s of dollars) TFT-LCD displays with expensive and fragile custom LVDS cables.

I know for a fact that I can go to wal-mart or (fill-in your favorite toy store's name here) and get a portable DVD player with a similar display for $80. My question is:

Where can I get a 7" +/- TFT-LCD (or other type of LCD) that accepts a standard VGA input for around $100 or so?

Any suggestions or references would be much appreciated.

 

I realize that about two hours of Google searching would turn up a few options from China, but I figured that someone might've already gone through the trouble of finding one and may have a suggestion...

 

...or perhaps not.

 

I went to eBay, entered TFT VGA in search box, and this one was the first out of 11 pages of results:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-AV-Reve...905?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19c9e94719

Elapsed time, about 15 seconds.

 

As I said, I could've done that also. I had hoped to run into someone who has positive experience with a particular brand and display. The ones we bought years ago came with CFL inverters that seem to have dependability issues, along with the the lvds having weird (expensive) cabling.

I suppose I'll just have to give into china on this one. Maybe the best way is to use eBay as a search tool and filter through vendors and reviews indirectly.

Thanks for the response.

 

Nope, no experience.

You could look for something like an EeePC Display that has been converted to VGA In or similar, have you tried that road? It's a 10" screen instead of 7", though.

 

Unfortunately, the instrument has a height that won't allow 10". I actually contemplated buying a Eee PC to run the entire instrument instead of buying a microATX board and display separately. The enclosure is the limiting factor, and it can't change at this point. Perhaps I could simply buy the portable DVD player I spoke of at the beginning and gut it...but how many have VGA inputs?...sigh.

Sounds like my new thread is going to be "VGA to composite?" haha.

Thanks everyone.

 

If it is the screen dying, try replacing the backlight only?

How are they dying so often?

 

If it is the screen dying, try replacing the backlight only?

How are they dying so often?

"Often" = twice in about two years. For an instrument that costs roughly as much as a car, this is unacceptable (by my standards, anyway).

In one case, the LCD seemed bad. I hooked it all up and gave it power - no backlight. Shined bright light onto screen to see if pixels were being actuated - no picture.

In another case, replacing the backlight power supply solved the problem. Upon inspection, it seemed like the output pins may have arced. Always something.

Replacing the backlight would require disassembling the LCD module itself, which is too much trouble...and then finding the replacement CFL would be a challenge...

Thanks