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Has anyone had any luck using LCD screens reclaimed from old electronics with Arduino, such as camcorders etc?

My 8 yr old has an old sony handycam (dcr-trv103) in bits and now wants to use the LCD screen with the arduino. I'm not even sure how I would go about this. Any tips? How do I figure out 'what does what' in terms of the inputs? How would I drive this thing / what do I need to do to send visual images to it via an Arduino?

Here's the front and back panels of the LCD screen, and their hookups.

The Screen Screen

Screen hookup Screen hookup

I'm assuming this is the backlight I'm assuming this is the backlight

backlight hookup backlight hookup

Note: someone identified this as a duplicate of another question about reusing a cellphone LCD screen. This question is specifically about reusing an older camcorder LCD screen. Also that other question has very little answers. I found the answers below useful and educational. Thanks all.

Agent Zebra
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    Not trivial to say. You need a driver board for this, the signals in the flex cable won't be of much use to you in your Arduino, I think. Might be some parallel interface instead of an easy SPI interface. I would start by identifying where the signals in the flex cable go to on the original board, then identify chips and datasheets for them, and from there find out what protocol the display speaks. Also you might find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SOXMDb4cjI interesting. It's an interesting advanced project though, would like to see the results of that. – Maximilian Gerhardt Jan 28 '18 at 21:22
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    Possible duplicate of Can I control a cellphone's lcd (+touch screen)? – gre_gor Jan 28 '18 at 23:46
  • @gre_gor Not a cellphone lcd, it's from a camcorder. Different question. Anyhow that previous questions answers were not helpful. the answers below are educational. Thanks. – Agent Zebra Jan 29 '18 at 04:11
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about undocumented and unidentified displays, and not at all about Arduino. Only once you have full documentation of the display requirements could you possibly then have a valid Arduino question, but probably still not a practical one. – Chris Stratton Jan 29 '18 at 04:15
  • @AgentZebra doesn't matter what kind of unknown LCD it is. The answer is still the same. – gre_gor Jan 29 '18 at 04:27
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    @ChrisStratton well I'll just save the answers before you do then :D It was a valid arduino question as it involved arduino :) Anyhow, these are some useful answers for my son, so maybe they'll be useful for someone else too. It literally asks the question "Is this worth trying to do with an old LCD screen and an arduino?" The answer is no, which is a great answer, as it saves time :) – Agent Zebra Jan 29 '18 at 06:35
  • @gre_gor not according to Maximilian Gerhardt's answer above "Might be some parallel interface instead of an easy SPI interface", sounds like it does make a difference what kind it is. – Agent Zebra Jan 29 '18 at 06:40
  • @MaximilianGerhardt Thank you for your helpful answer. – Agent Zebra Jan 29 '18 at 06:41
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    @AgentZebra the same can also be said for that LCD. You can guess for both of them. That dupe gives you the same answer. And the answer would be the same, regardless if an Arduino is involved, so it is not about Arduino. – gre_gor Jan 29 '18 at 14:01
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    it's possible, just usually too complex. strip the case apart, google the inner part numbers. you might get lucky and it's a common interface, or one that someone else has made an arduino library for, or maybe an arduono lib for the base controller that will allow it to be mounted, even if the custom commands are unknown. if nothing, just buy a new LCD; they are under $10, and it could takes weeks to reverse-engineer an in-the-wild LCD – dandavis Jan 29 '18 at 21:31
  • @gre_gor Either which way, we have been helped by these answers. So I appreciate that. – Agent Zebra Feb 04 '18 at 19:56
  • Question locked cant figure out if DMing is a thing here so adding this as a comment for future peeps linked here from a search. Ok, so, I recently broke down my 103, and if you have not acquired the service manual yet I HIGHLY suggest you do. The schematics sections make reverse engineering dang near trivial. From what I have gathered there is some sort of I2C/SPI bus for the back LCD and a "Y/U" video pair from the main board. Also a 15v rail but I dont know if its vital. Basically its easier to go back a step and interface with the pcd it was connected to. The LCD itself is 12bit ... 1/2 – Tank R. Jun 24 '23 at 02:53
  • 2/2 12bit color in 4:4:4 format, IIRC. The service manual schematics lay out the signal paths pretty well, but I wouldn't know where to begin trying to bit bang an image to it. I believe the LCD uses that signaling format that is across like 4 or 6 lines and the R G and B bytes are sort of jumbled across them.....like I said, itd be easier to just interface with the PCB in the flip out bit that has the signal conversion IC on it. Also, fun fact, the eyepiece CRT (bw version) only takes 5v and a standard composite signal like the one that the RPi puts out...(rca plug or 4th pin on new boards) – Tank R. Jun 24 '23 at 03:02
  • 3/2 hit me up if you need more info or want the manual. How to hit me up through here.... I have no idea..... my desktop is off at the moment, but will edit/clarify those posts as needed when its back up. So.... Yeah. – Tank R. Jun 24 '23 at 03:05

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This is likely a type of TTL LCD interface. But it is nearly impossible to describe more as there are so many variations both in hardware and in timing. Likely a steady stream of Red Green & Blue binary data way faster than an Arduino Uno could possibly manage is required to create an image. For the necessary processing power, you would have to utilize one of the top end Arduino boards. Even then, software to create the steady stream of binary data for this particular LCD is still required. Also, there are hardly no standards beyond saying the LCD is a TTL or LVDS. Which means hours spent on developing software for this LCD will likely only work for this LCD.

It would be far easier to just buy an LCD and interface board known to work together. If you are using an Arduino Uno, there is not much processing power beyond saying "I want a circle here" or "I want a line there". Fortunately, there are such COTS parts available. Here is a tutorial describing such a device connected to an Arduino Uno.

st2000
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