Linux 5.11 Adding New Driver For Another Budget-Friendly, LCD Character Display

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 13 December 2020 at 08:01 AM EST. 12 Comments
HARDWARE
Adding to the Linux 5.11 changes and set of new drivers is "lcd2s" as a driver for supporting a 20x4 LCD character display connected via SPI/I2C and with this support can serve as a kernel console output device.

The LCD2S driver is for supporting the Modtronix LCD2S character display. This is a single-color, 20x4 serial LCD display that can interface with the system via SPI/I2C.


With the 400+ lines of code that makes up the LCD2S Auxdisplay driver, this character display can serve as a console output device. The Modtronix display retails for about $30 USD.

This new driver was sent in as part of the Auxdisplay changes for this next kernel cycle. Modtronix offers a data sheet on this serial LCD display as well as example C code for interfacing with the device from user-space, so the Linux driver bring-up wasn't all that challenging but now allows the device to serve as a console output. More details on the display at Modtronix.com.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week