Connecting a phone's LCD screen to the Raspberry Pi

[Sharkfin]

I have an LCD screen that I recovered from a dead Asus Zenfone 5 phone. I want to be able to play videos (in colour) on the screen, and I have no need for any other features such as touch, etc. Just plain old video playing/streaming.

I was wondering if this could be done with a Pi (I have a Pi 2 B on hand), and if so, what are the steps to do it? Or is there perhaps some other alternative to the Pi?

Eventually, I want to be able to link the Pi to a computer wirelessly. On my computer, I'll choose a video, and it'll be sent over to the Pi which plays/streams it on the screen.

I also happen to be a beginner when it comes to coding/circuitry and I've never used the Pi before, though I've tried the Arduino a little (are those two even in the same category?), so I apologise if I sound dumb. Haha. But I am willing to learn so constructive feedback would be appreciated. Thank you!

Also asked on RPi Stack: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... spberry-pi

[scotty101]

Your odds of being able to connect a random LCD to a Raspberry Pi are next to zero.

Buy an LCD that is known to work with the Pi.

[RST8]

There are a number of things you're going to need to do and depending on your time and expertise, might conclude that there are other solutions that are a lot less hassle.

In short you'd need to
Find a data sheet for the LCD panel from your phone
Hope that the interface is voltage level compatible for the Pi GPIO (3.3v)
Find a Pi driver library for it, or another that you can modify
Write or modify a video decode library to talk to the LCD driver library
Or find a HDMI to LCD driver board for your model.

For laptop LCD panels, you can sometimes find a Chinese supplier that will be able to provide a HDMI-> LCD panel driver board, but I doubt you'd find one for a phone LCD panel and the cost wouldn't be worth it.

That leaves you with driving it from GPIO, which means finding a library that someone has written for the Pi (again doubtful) or writing your own, no small undertaking, especially for a colour display. To give you an idea, have a look the Adafruit OLED library, you'll see it's a fair chunk of work and that is for text / bitmaps only, let alone displaying video.

Whilst I can appreciate the desire make the Pi and your screen work together, it's a non trivial task and the niche nature of the panel means you're not likely to find much help.

There are LCD /TFT panels available that have Pi support, which would serve you better.

Joe

[Sharkfin]

Thank you for your answers.

Due to time constraints, I'll be going with Pi-compatible LCD screens then. Do you have any decent ones to recommend?