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    EZIO Driver for LCDproc

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    • F
      fmertz
      last edited by

      Could you post a picture of your device? I took a look at mine a couple nights ago and could not really see the programming header, etc. you are talking about. My device has a sticker on the micro-controller that says "02A", which I think refers to the more recent firmware version. This is also referred to in the documentation. I acquired my display stand alone off of eBay. I do not have the appliance it was installed in. I'll post pictures of mine, too.

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Mmm, wondering if this was customised for the Smoothwall boxes. That display is used in a number of other firewalls as well as Portwell's own gear.

        Steve

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        • F
          fmertz
          last edited by

          @stephenw10:

          In other news I have an EZIO-G500 but can find zero documentation for it. It does seem like you can just write to the serial port and it displays stuff but no formatting etc.

          I would encourage you to start another thread for this. Also, post pictures. I actually reached out to Portwell for this, but I am told that initiating the effort of finding documentation requires an invoice number. Another avenue would be to reach out to whomever made the appliance this LCD came with and see if they are willing to help.

          If it is serial, there is likely some form of a micro-controller involved. I assume the code could possibly be extracted and looked over to find out the commands. Alternatively, maybe there is some code in whatever distribution this LCD came bundled with. Sometimes researching into this leads to other key words that can be thrown in a search engine…

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          • F
            fmertz
            last edited by

            Pictures attached.

            IMG_20171004_083854.png
            IMG_20171004_083854.png_thumb
            IMG_20171004_083923.png
            IMG_20171004_083923.png_thumb
            IMG_20171004_083907.png
            IMG_20171004_083907.png_thumb

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            • E
              evilgoat76
              last edited by

              Thats a MUCH older board.

              When I left the firmware had not been customised despite my insistance. Sadly my unit how now gone off to its new home complete with non working display (Vmware passthrough issues).

              Take the unit out, separate the controller from the display (careful its fragile) and flip it over. Theres a programming header position marked with 5 pins as per the circuit diagram.

              The chip should be a PIC 16F628A SOIC rather than a through hole. I seem to recall the very early caswell box we had to play with which was a 1st gen LGA775 Celeron D had a 16F84 through hole and four silver buttons, no matrix but tactile switches.

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              • E
                evilgoat76
                last edited by

                Another appliance ordered soleley for me to muck about with, so once thats here and I verify I have ESXI doing passthrough right I'll have a play.

                The Developer never replied :( Sadly from what I know of him thats not THAT unexpected.

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                • E
                  evilgoat76
                  last edited by

                  Well my new one arrived. FUll of bad joints in the PSU, so whipped apart, soldered up, and out of curiosity 8GB of ram popped in. Shouldnt work and didnt on the last, this board is happy with it AND I've allocated all 8GB and used it in ESXI6, 4GB allocated to PF and 4Gb to Freepbx so its stable. So as an aside, there's a newer BIOS out there for these that lifts the 4Gb limit.

                  The display is a version of the board. This one with a lot of unpopulated options. I set up the simulator as per my diagram and booted the firmware and got the two '*'s so the firmware hasnt changed, a diff confirms this.

                  Watching the simulator the display IS initalised by the firmware and those two *'s are sent by the PIC as an inialisation test.

                  ![DSC_0180 (Small).jpg](/public/imported_attachments/1/DSC_0180 (Small).jpg)
                  ![DSC_0180 (Small).jpg_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/DSC_0180 (Small).jpg_thumb)
                  ![DSC_0181 (Small).jpg](/public/imported_attachments/1/DSC_0181 (Small).jpg)
                  ![DSC_0181 (Small).jpg_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/DSC_0181 (Small).jpg_thumb)

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                  • E
                    evilgoat76
                    last edited by

                    Attached modified firmware simply changes the ** to a more friendly 'OK'
                    You'll need MPLAB and a PICKit2 or better. Chip is a 16F628A
                    BACKUP THE FIRMWARE FIRST!

                    ![DSC_0182 (Large).jpg](/public/imported_attachments/1/DSC_0182 (Large).jpg)
                    ![DSC_0182 (Large).jpg_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/DSC_0182 (Large).jpg_thumb)
                    FW.zip

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                    • F
                      fmertz
                      last edited by

                      Pretty neat!

                      Is there a human-readable version of this firmware you could share? Maybe there is some neat undocumented feature we could add to the driver… Thanks.

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                      • E
                        evilgoat76
                        last edited by

                        Documenting it as we speak. Its prettu horrible and from memory not a lot changed from the inital version, spends a hell of a lot of time in un-necessary register saves and generally odd code…

                        
                        											Save CPU State
                            31   01E     00A0  MOVWF wsave                             	Save W reg
                            32   01F     0803  MOVF STATUS, W                            	Copy Status to W
                            33   020     00A1  MOVWF ssave                             	Save Status
                        
                            34   021     2175  CALL 0x175 					Init Display                            
                        											Restore CPU State
                            35   022     0821  MOVF ssave, W      				Load old Status into W                     
                            36   023     0083  MOVWF STATUS                              	Reload Status register from W
                            37   024     0820  MOVF wsave, W                           	Reload W 
                        
                            38   025     1303  BCF STATUS, 0x6                           	BANK0
                            39   026     1283  BCF STATUS, 0x5                              BANK0
                            40   027     0803  MOVF STATUS, W 				Copy Status to W     			                      
                            41   028     00A1  MOVWF ssave        				Save Status         
                            42   029     304F  MOVLW 0x4f                             	Load 4Fh into W ('O')
                            43   02A     2199  CALL 0x199                             		Call display char routine
                            44   02B     0821  MOVF ssave, W                           	Copy old status into W
                            45   02C     0083  MOVWF STATUS                              	Reload Status register from W
                        
                        

                        At least 10 lines of that are un-needed register/context saving.

                        The serial handling looks simple enough and I'm about to start on that. There is a very simple code block which is pretty much one character in and a huge switch statement based on the character. I should have it mapped out by the end of the evening if my brain hasn't died by then.

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                        • E
                          evilgoat76
                          last edited by

                          Well its 23:19 and I'm sick of this.

                          Its overly complicated and silly, theres some nasty code in here and thi HAS to be compiler generated, no human could make such a mess of this without help!

                          The long and short seems to be that as per what I already knew from the older version, there arent really any fun features in here. For some reason someone went to a lot of trouble to add support for several dozen ASCII control codes only to have them all return an error!

                          The only returncodes I see are for the buttons, errors and what looks like an ID (That may be useful for autodetection)

                          The PIC does have control over the display power but its not exposed to the user in any way I can see. It's also power not backlight so to make it work you'd need to sleep the display, then on waking re-init and send the data again. From a firmware point of view thats doable, LCDPROC would need to know what to do.

                          I'll trace out the protocol tomorrow and I propose rather than a new firmware that I get this into MPLAB, compiling and cleaned up. Once thats done I can bash up a quick Delphi app to excercise and test it, I should be able to generate some init codes/strings although I suspect they will match what fmertz has.

                          Once thats done I can take a look at these 'stubs'…

                             193   0C0     28F9  GOTO 0xf9                              		Yes, goto F9h (Error routine)
                             194   0C1     3002  MOVLW 0x2                              		Load W with 02h (STX)
                             195   0C2     0223  SUBWF temp, W                          		Subtract W from temp                          
                             196   0C3     1903  BTFSC STATUS, Z  	                       	Was it zero?                        
                             197   0C4     28F9  GOTO 0xf9                              		Yes, goto F9h (Error routine)	
                             198   0C5     3006  MOVLW 0x06                              		Load W with 06h (ACK)
                             199   0C6     0223  SUBWF temp, W                          		Subtract W from temp                          
                             200   0C7     1903  BTFSC STATUS, Z  	                       	Was it zero?                         
                             201   0C8     28FE  GOTO 0xfe                              		Yes, goto FEh
                             202   0C9     3008  MOVLW 0x8                              		Load W with 08h (BACKSPACE)
                             203   0CA     0223  SUBWF temp, W                          		Subtract W from temp                          
                             204   0CB     1903  BTFSC STATUS, Z  	                       	Was it zero?                        
                             205   0CC     28F9  GOTO 0xf9                              		Yes, goto F9h (Error routine)
                             206   0CD     300C  MOVLW 0x0C                             		Load W with 0Ch	(LF)
                             207   0CE     0223  SUBWF temp, W                          		Subtract W from temp                           
                             208   0CF     1903  BTFSC STATUS, Z  	                       	Was it zero?                          
                             209   0D0     28F9  GOTO 0xf9                              		Yes, goto F9h (Error routine)
                             210   0D1     300D  MOVLW 0xd                              		Load W with 0Dh
                             211   0D2     0223  SUBWF temp, W                          		Subtract W from temp                           
                             212   0D3     1903  BTFSC STATUS, Z  	                       	Was it zero?                          
                             213   0D4     28F9  GOTO 0xf9                              		Yes, goto F9h (Error routine)
                          

                          And see about using them for other things, primarilly turning the display on and off for now.
                          In doing so I'll change the ID code it returns so it's detectable.

                          A keypad read returns two bytes :
                          0xFD - this is always the same.
                          The next byte should be one of 4 possible bytes, however the code breaks if you try to be clever with the buttons, it factos in the individual buttons but not combinations, when it hits something it doesnt know it just passes the bitmap through, making about 20 lines of assembler redundant but gives us the following:

                          The return is always 0xBn. The B can be masked off, its not used
                          The N represents a bitmap containing the status of all the buttons. Its inversed but starting from the right as lsb:
                          bit 0 - Top Left
                          bit 1 - Bottom Left
                          bit 2 - Bottom Right
                          bit 3 - Top Right

                          Of course this means we can use a modifier key and get 6 keys for the price of 4!

                          diplay.zip

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                          • E
                            evilgoat76
                            last edited by

                            Right. First up, this is easy to get this stuck in odd states.

                            If the display stops responding

                            
                            0x00, 0xFE, 0xFE, 0x37 
                            

                            should reset the state machine. In most places 0x00 will put you back to needing to do an init.

                            Init is

                            0xFE, 0x28
                            

                            Then either:
                              Send chars as needed (You cant use 0x10 or 0xFE)
                            OR
                              Send 0x10 and the module will reply with the keystates, this means you HAVE to poll this (STUPID!). The Low baud rate and need to poll explains the issues people have had.
                            OR
                              Send 0xFE and one of the following commands…

                            
                            	5Ah - get ID, returns 0x02,0x05 so sending 0xFE, 0x28, 0xFE, 0x5A from cold will confirm the module is there and give the version (2.5)
                            	01h - clear display 
                            	02h - home - Sets Data pointer in LCD to 0
                            	06h - read keypad
                            	08h - Display off, Cursor Off, Blink off	
                            	0Ch - Display on, Cursor off, blink off
                            	0Dh - Display on, Cursor off, blink on
                            	0Eh - Display on, Cursor on, blink off
                            	10h - Cursor left 
                            	14h - Cursor Right
                            	18h - Display Left shift
                             	1Ch - Display Right shift
                            	40h - Set Char Gen ram address to 0
                            	C0h - Home line 2 - Set Data pointer to halfway through data ram
                            	37h - Reset command mode
                            
                            

                            I'm not sure what use 0x40 really is
                            That's all there is. Just going to bash together an app to test and play with now.

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                            • F
                              fmertz
                              last edited by

                              Ok, so that 0x5A version command is an undocumented feature…

                              0x40 is documented, it is the beginning code for downloading custom characters.

                              http://drivers.portwell.com/CA_Manual/EZIO/EZIO-FINAL.PDF

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                              • E
                                evilgoat76
                                last edited by

                                That sort of makes sense, looking at the code I really couldn't see how you could actually use it though.

                                The disasembled code now compiles and SORT of works, need to fix what looks like a config word issue.

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                                • L
                                  Lourensb
                                  last edited by

                                  Hi Guys

                                  I registered here, to see if I can get some help.

                                  I am a very basic user, with limited Skills.

                                  I have a CAR 3000 Portwell unit, that I installed pfSense on, the latest / Current Version.

                                  I followed, and tried about all the Steps, and for some time, all my Display  said, was pfSense Rules !

                                  I then Powered the Device down, and not it's back to **

                                  Can you please just give me a complete guide, as to what is needed, to get the Display to work please.

                                  I am willing to test for you also.

                                  System pfSense
                                  Netgate Device ID: 92f16f5ccf418fc9167a

                                  BIOS Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
                                  Version: 080015
                                  Release Date: Mon Dec 21 2009

                                  Version 2.4.2-RELEASE (amd64)
                                  built on Mon Nov 20 08:12:56 CST 2017
                                  FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE-p4

                                  The system is on the latest version.
                                  Version information updated at Sat Nov 25 13:29:23 -02 2017

                                  Thank You for your Help

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    This appears to be in the FreeBSD 11 stable package now. Wonder if we can get it pulled into our repo….

                                    Steve

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                                    • A
                                      andrew867
                                      last edited by

                                      @fmertz:

                                      OK, I rebuilt this driver with fewer dependencies:

                                      $ ldd server/drivers/hd44780.so
                                      server/drivers/hd44780.so:
                                              libkvm.so.6 => /lib/libkvm.so.6 (0x28205000)
                                              libc.so.7 => /lib/libc.so.7 (0x2806f000)
                                      
                                      

                                      File:

                                      $ file server/drivers/hd44780.so
                                      server/drivers/hd44780.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (FreeBSD), dynamically linked, not stripped
                                      
                                      

                                      Let me know…

                                      I've got an old IBM security appliance that will only run x86 and I had the same issue with libftdi1 not existing. The recompiled version works perfect, thanks!

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        The EZIO driver is now in the lcdproc package for 2.4.4 snapshots but not yet exposed by the GUI. Still easier to test though.

                                        Steve

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                                        • x2rlX
                                          x2rl
                                          last edited by

                                          would this work with pihole? my smoothwall box runs debian with pi-hole its the very same screen.

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                                          • stephenw10S
                                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                            last edited by

                                            The driver is in lcdproc upstream so if you install lcdptoc it should be available.

                                            Steve

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