Teaser Pics of New USB LCD

[pHaestus]

I received a new MX212 LCD from www.matrixorbital.com today. I plugged it into my notebook to take a few pictures and to get familiar with the unit tonight. Check it out:

Winamp Visualization


DOW temps


Network traffic


Pics don't do the LCD justice; the blue and white combo is really really nice looking in person. This unit shares a lot of features with the CF 633 I have had for a while (Dallas One Wire temperature sensors, PWM-based fan control) but it differs in that it is USB rather than serial, it has more than one DOW header on the back presoldered, and it uses different software with different features and strengths.

Crystalfontz now offers a USB 633 too; it will be interesting to see how these LCDs compare to one another. My initial impression is that it will come down to the software support and the things people really want their LCDs to do. So far I am pretty impressed by the Matrix Orbital unit and the LCDC software it comes bundled with.

I have to go out of town this weekend but I'll be back Monday night when I'll start really putting this unit through the wringer.

[pHaestus]

Ok I spent the last two evenings playing with the matrix orbital MX212 and the newer revision CF 633-usb from crystalfontz. It is interesting to me that two companies take similar specs and go in very different directions with them to create two very different final products. It's also great when you have two companies that are both extremely confident that their product is the best on the market. Anyway, here's another teaser pic:

[TerraMex]

Looking good.
But the Crystalfontz ones don't look as good as the Matrix Orbital one because of those "crap looking" buttons. And well, it matters.

I also liked the screen of the Matrix better. It looks more diffused, it doesnt show the "cells". But that might just be from the camera angle.

(PS: Here in Europe they're sold at 100$US+ , so there isn't much demand. You can get a LIS (Lost In Space) for less. Or a Digidoc5+. Doesn't pay, imo. Or http://www.usblcd.de/ , for 50 $US, you get a 20x4 blue one with USB connections. )

How's the software for the USB one ? Until recently , there wasn't any really good support for USB versions for what i've seen. Most programs only worked with serial/parallel versions.

And while we're at it :

http://www.aqua-computer-systeme.de/content/aquaero.htm

http://clientes.netvisao.pt/carlo001/aquaero_pv_0.jpg
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/carlo001/aquaero_pv_1.jpg
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/carlo001/aquaero_pv_2.jpg

[pHaestus]

Digidoc5+ is not even in same class as these. Dallas One Wire setups are really wonderful for this application, and the PWM/0.5C accuracy/32 probes possible design is a huge improvement over other simpler units. It's expensive for either of these but worth the money. Software for both is very good:

Matric Orbital uses LCDC. It is the slickest lcd software I have ever seen; install and immediately it pulls all the local weather, your internal and external ip, mbm data, etc. Very intuitive to set up the temperature based fan control too. The big selling points for the MO unit are its larger lcd, its ease of use, and its overall polish.

CF uses a WinNT service to interface between their crystalcontrol software and the CF 633. Not as intuitive (there is some bugginess in the GUI and I had to manually edit the .ini file to get it to work) but very powerful. The big selling points for this unit are the fact that the NT service lets you dump everything to MBM5 and the fact you can use the CF633 as a hardware shutdown device (you reroute power and reset switches through the 633).

Both units have USB to serial adapters on them I am guessing because when you install their USB driver it gets allocated a com port. I know that's the case for the CF; you can see where they've piggybacked the USB adapter on top of where a serial port used to be.

The Aquacomputer one also looks pretty nice, but more like a beefed up digidoc it seems than either of these are. Thermistors are nice for some applications though. Is that a $150 euro pricetag on it? That's over 2x the price of these, yes?

[TerraMex]

>The Aquacomputer one also looks pretty nice, but more like a
>beefed up digidoc it seems than either of these are. Thermistors
>are nice for some applications though. Is that a $150 euro
>pricetag on it? That's over 2x the price of these, yes?

Well ... no.

The Aquaero has about the same pricetag as the Matrix Orbital (about 140/150 depending on the country) but it's not yet available to the general public ( they have delayed shipping for a few weeks , so it can change) , and the MO is difficult to come across in the european online stores. It has, however , a few advantages over the CF and MO. The flow monitor , pump control (fill and bleed settings, that's a modified 1046 to run at 12v) , and motherboard connection (Besides the USB one) for alarms (for what i could tell).

Importing things from the US is extremely expensive. You usually pay more for the shipping and handling than for the product itself.
Inside the EU it's dirty cheap, for a small package <2kg, about 10 bucks. From the US, it's about 80.

So, it's not uncommon to find 140-160$ price tags on those products. I'm not saying they're not worth it (and they do seem very good) , but I am saying they are very expensive compared to a few other ones. A Coolermaster Aerogate II is about 50'ish or less . The Digidoc5+ about 70'ish , but you can get a used one (but in good condition) for less than 50 . Just for a price comparison , even if they are in a different class.

[pHaestus]

hmm those are some interesting features. I assume that the flowmeter is just like the one Joe has (swissflow) and that they then just used the pulse from it plus an equation to get the result in LPM or GPM or whatever. Still it's a nice feature.

So for the filling and bleeding they use solenoids to open and close rather than the more typical ball valves? That's also pretty cool. I could set that up with the Matrix Orbital using their extra GPOs as long as I found solenoids of the proper voltage. I'd be scared I would screw something up in the configuration though

[TerraMex]

The flowmeter... it's in the second picture, next to the aquaero. It's not a Swissflow . At least not any on the Swissflow page. I'll check the manufacturer tomorrow if i have time , i think there's one in the loop of one of the process simulators. But innovatek used them alot until recently.

(http://www.oc4you.at/index.php?site=shop&produktid=123)

Solenoids... as in mechanical actuators?

No, nothing that fancy. It just regulates the flow of the 12v pump to predefined levels for filling and bleeding. To avoid ar mixtures mainly in filling.

Althou it would be interesting to use such a system. I've worked with small actuators, but i had a Siemens PLC to poke around with , that made things painless. Well, almost. The scalable analog exits for one of the control loops were done more by ... well, instinct . Dont you just hate manuals and PDF's in german ... ?

[pHaestus]

Ooooh. I see. When you said "fill and bleed" and "automated" then I immediately imagined a Swiftech style 3 valve kit where the ball valves were replaced with solenoid-controlled valves:

http://solenoid-valves.globalspec.com/

I think we are both thinking of the same thing. Upon further reflection though it would probably be a bad idea to set something like that up. I mean I dont usually fill and bleed my cooling system with the PC running

I have seen the flowmeters that innovatek uses in my VWR scientific catalog. No RPM sensing on those though. They are pretty restrictive, but the germans use much smaller ID tubing anyway.