Reverse Engineering A Sony Automotive Stereo LCD

For his personal causes, [Jose Luis Monteiro] (aka [emsyscode]) determined he wanted to drive the LCD on a Sony CDX-A250 automotive stereo’s entrance panel utilizing an Arduino. There’s in all probability a candy undertaking within the works, or maybe he simply needed to see if it might be executed. Either manner, extra energy to [Jose], as a result of he completely pulled it off and put the results up on GitHub for all to enjoy. There’s additionally a project video displaying how he did the reverse-engineering, which you’ll see beneath.

The driver for this diminutive LCD is a chip clearly labeled LC75826W, and that’s what the Arduino finally ends up speaking to. Thankfully, there was a datasheet obtainable for that half, which gave [Jose] an awesome place to begin for determining methods to use it. While [Jose] is working with the LC75826W driver, he’s fairly specific in his GitHub repo that this repository just isn’t a driver library for that chip. The code solely targets the precise LCD on the CDX-A250 head unit. Still, in the event you’ve received a unique oddball LCD that makes use of this driver, [Jose]’s code is a good place to start out, and because it’s underneath an MIT license, you’ll be able to fork to your coronary heart’s content material.

Kudos to Sony for not obfuscating the half or utilizing a chip-on-board black blob — you’ll be able to reverse-engineer an LCD driven by a type of, nevertheless it’s much more work. If you’re questioning how and why these black blobs come to be, we’ve got you covered.