CrystalFontz 635 LCD with drive bay kit and add-on SCAB card
Posted by Chris Leckness on 06/28/05 in Mobilitysite Reviews
Developer/Vendor: CrystalFontz www.CrystalFontz.com
Price: $85.00 for 635 with drive bay kit, SCAB card is special order
Rating (out of 5): 
This has to be one of my most fun items to review so far. After being contacted by CrystalFontz, I was extremely excited to get my hands on a sample to try out. (Remember to click on pictures to enlarge them).
As from their website, "Crystalfontz designs, manufactures, and sells high-quality LCD modules. Our technical expertise, innovative designs, and direct distribution allow us to offer the highest quality LCDs at the lowest cost. " Unlike other companies, CrystalFontz actually manufactures their own LCDs and even writes their own software for them right here in the USA. They are an OEM type company, yet are extremely helpful over the phone and in their online forums. Finding help is just a few clicks away at any time. It is also nice that if you are a company wanting to implement their products into your products and/or business, bulk discounts are very well outlined.
The LCDs made by CrystalFontz are made to show different information via their software (CrystalControl 2 (still in beta)) or via other LCD software such as LCD Smartie. These software programs can show everything from simple text to small graphics. In the text they can show and update vital information such as New Email Messages, CPU Usage, Temperatures, Weather, News, Free Memory, Currently Playing Audio Track, and much much more. What you can display is really endless as it all depends on the software. These LCD units will display anything that is sent to them.
The 635, CrystalFontz’s latest LCD, combines a full 20×4 character LCD with a keypad and four two color LEDs. With the drive bay kit, the 635 is intended to be placed in one of your computers 5.25" drive bays. Unlike past LCDs, the 635 is powered and controlled via USB, while ordering you can specify internal or external USB cable. You also specify the color of the faceplate you want (black, beige, or silver (at the time of this review the silver are still being worked on for public release) For this review I choose an external version of the USB (plugs into any of your normal USB ports) but for some people the internal may be a better option (the internal connects to a open USB header on a main board). I also had a beige and prototype silver faceplate (I received the yellow backlit LCD).
Here is my PC before I added the LCD to it:
Here is my PC after I added the LCD to it:
Once I received the package from CrystalFontz, I immediately opened it up to look at the LCD. Everything came in a small white box well packed. Inside I found the 635 LCD mounted to its bracket with a beige faceplate, the USB cable, four screws for mounting the bracket, a business card from CrystalFontz, and silver metal faceplate (ordered special).
After unpacking everything, I began the process of planning where in my machine I wanted to mount the LCD, and then opening up my PC. I had no open 5.25" bays as I had three different optical drives. But I decided to replace one of the drives with the LCD, so I removed the drive and began to line up the LCD. One thing I would definitely recommend is plugging the USB cable into the back of the LCD before mounting it. It can be hard to plug the cable into the LCD once it is mounted inside your case. Mounting is fairly easy. Two screws go on each side of the bracket, but do be aware that you need to line up the LCD more then when you are usually putting in a normal optical drive. This is because the LCD is just a vertical plate that sits at the front of the bay instead of filling the whole drive bay. This is a good thing though as you can use the open space to put extra cable length. Once mounted you are ready to plug the LCD into your computer. You can plug it in either on the main board if you ordered the internal USB cable or, if you ordered the external USB cable, you can run the cable out the back of your case (this is what I did) and plug it into an external USB port.
Drives Removed:
Back of 635 before install:
Front of 635 before install:
635 mounted in drive bay:
USB Cable running out of the back of the case:
Installing the LCD on my Windows XP system went very smoothly. First you will need to install the USB Driver (http://www.crystalfontz.com/software/usb/index.html). Next you will probably want to install the test program (http://www.crystalfontz.com/software/index.html). The test program lets you test all the different features of the LCD to make sure everything is working properly. It also gives you a good idea of what the LCD is able to do. You also can play with the bi-color LEDs in the test program. The four LEDs can make a variety of colors anywhere between red and green. (Each LED can have its own color between red and green). To start using your LCD, you will want to download CrystalControl 2 from the Tech Forum on CrystalFontz website.
CrystalControl 2 is CrystalFontz in house program to control their LCDs. It is still in beta, but is a major improvement over their first software, CrystalControl. For the 635, the first CrystalControl program will not work, you will need to use CrystalControl 2. Setup of CrystalControl 2 goes very smoothly and it adds a service to windows. Once installed you can select from pre-made screens to display on the LCD. These include CPU Usage, New Emails, Memory Usage, Winamp Now Playing, Speed Fan Display, and more. You also can make your own screens and plug-ins, but right now you have to do it via code, in the future, it will be a complete interface in the software to make your own screens. There are still a few bugs in CrystalControl 2 beta and that is the reason I am using LCD Smartie until the official release of CrystalControl 2. LCD Smartie is a free piece of software that is made to run CrystalFontz and other companies LCD displays. LCD Smartie lets you design each screen easily by selecting items from a large list of items you can show on the LCD. There also are plug-ins available to add additional functions (I use the itunes plug-in). Another neat feature in LCD Smartie is support for the buttons next to the LCD without having to do coding like with CrystalControl 2 beta (in the full version, CC2 should have full support of the buttons also). In my setup I use the buttons to switch screens and turn the backlight on and off.
After all setup and running on CC2 or LCD Smartie, the 635 LCD worked beautifully. To badly there is no support for the LEDs in LCD Smartie and the support in CrystalControl 2 is still limited, but in the future it will likely be expanded. The 635 is easy to read and has a very large viewing angle. Using the buttons is easy and they seem to be very responsive. The yellow backlight looked good behind the buttons and the LCD, it is a bit hard to read the LCD without the backlight on, but you can turn the backlight down and up easily through the software to suit your needs. I also liked that the LCD was built solid and did not feel fragile at all in use.
Now, after using the 635 LCD for a week or so and looking around on CrystalFontz forums, I found out about an add-on card called a SCAB. After talking to CrystalFontz, I received a sample SCAB for review. The SCAB is a small circuit board that connects to the 631 and 635 LCDs to add fan control and temperature probe support to the LCDs. The SCAB can be screwed to the back of the LCD drive bay mount, or it can be free standing somewhere in your case. It has the ability to monitor up to 32 temp sensors and control 4 fans.
The SCAB board came with quite a few wires and cables for getting everything setup and working. The main two cables are the cables to interface the SCAB with your LCD. There are two and you choose one depending on how you will mount the SCAB. The first cable is for if you are going to mount the SCAB on the drive bay mount behind the LCD. This is a shorter cable so you do not have a lot of extra cable needing to be coiled behind the LCD. Then there is the longer cable. This cable is silver and covered in a clear jacket for a professional look. It is also much longer then the first cable so you can put the SCAB where ever you want to in your case. For my setup I choose the longer cable and ended up putting the SCAB on the bottom area of my case as this is where most of my fans are. This main link cable easily plugs into the SCAB and then into the back of your LCD.
SCAB board in the bottom of my case:
Mounting holes to mount SCAB to LCD drive bay mount:
Cord going from SCAB to LCD:
The next thing you will want to look at is the power for the SCAB. Unlike the LCD that can be powered via the USB cable, the SCAB draws more power as it is powering up to 4 fans. This means that it needs its own power tap via a floppy drive power plug. If you do not have any open floppy drive power plugs in your case, CrystalFontz includes a 4pin Molex to floppy drive power plug adapter (part #WRPWRY12). For me, I had a free floppy drive power plug to use. Now there is one other twist to using the SCAB. The SCAB also sends power up to the LCD so you do not need to power the LCD through USB. To make sure that you do not send extra power back through the USB port from the SCAB, you need to open a jumper on the LCD. If you order the SCAB and LCD at the same time, CrystalFontz will do this for you, but since I ordered them separate I had to do this myself. Unlike standard pin jumpers, this is a solder jumper. That means the jumper is closed when there is a dot of solder connecting the two points and it is open when there is no connection. So in my case I needed to take the dot of solder off the two points to open the jumper, this was a bit of a task as the jumper points are VERY small, but I was able to get it with a steady hand a a solder gun.
Connection I had to unsolder (circled):
Once I opened the jumper, the LCD is now powered via the SCAB and you cannot use the LCD without the SCAB (you could always close the jumper again with a bit of solder). But this does not mean you do not need the USB connection anymore, the USB still controls the LCD like it always did.
Now onto the connection of temperature probes. The SCAB board works with small 3-pin temperature probes that are very accurate. Then the SCAB can report these temperatures to the software application where it can display these numbers on the LCD or use the readings to control the fan speeds. There is only one 3-pin header on the SCAB board, but this is because you can "daisy chain" up to 32 sensors by connecting the same wires on each sensor to each other to make a chain. You can make your own temp sensors, or you can use some of CrystalFontz pre-made ones (part #WRDOWY17). For review I received 4 of the pre-made WRDOWY17 cables. These cables are pre-made all ready to use. The WRDOWY17 cables consist of 3 parts. One end is a female connector that connects to the SCAB board or the previous WRDOWY17 cable. Then there is a male end that the next WRDOWY17 cable connects to. Finally there is the end that has the DS18B20 temp sensor on the end. Using these cables, you can quickly daisy chain them together and place the sensors in the areas you want to monitor. The following is a picture of the WRDOWY17 cable from CrystalFontz.
I found that the best way to run the cables was on the backside of my case and then drape them over the top of the main board tray and put them in their proper positions. This made for a clean look without having to see cables running everywhere across my main board.
Cords on backside of my PC (behind main board tray):
I ended up putting sensors on my Northbridge, Ram, top of my optical drive stack, and one in the middle of the case to record the ambient temperature. The DS18B20 sensor may look large in pictures, but in reality it is very small and offers amazing accuracy. You can see how small it is in the following picture:
Ambient temperature sensor in position:
Now onto connecting fans to the SCAB. The SCAB has 4 standard 3-pin fan connectors to connect your fans to. If you have fans far away from the placement of the SCAB board, you can buy 16" 3-pin extenders from CrystalFontz (part #WRFANX01). These cords work great and offer more flexibility in the placement of the SCAB board and fans you want to control.
Once you have the fans connected, the SCAB supports changing the speed of the fans to conserve energy and lessen noise. The SCAB can also report the RPM of the fan if the fan has the 3rd RPM monitoring cable. All these functions are controlled and viewed via the LCD control software. The readings can also be displayed on the LCD via the software. Another very neat feature in CrystalControl 2 is the ability to change the fan speed automatically based on the readings from the temp sensors. You link a temp sensor with a fan and then you can specify a graph that the software consults to set the RPM depending on the temperature. This is a great way to reduce noise and only have additional noise when you need to (when extra cooling is needed). Really the only minor issue I have found with the fan control in the SCAB is that it controls the speed of the fan by pulsing the fan with energy. This means that if you have a lighted fan, your lights will flash/blink very fast and this can be very distracting. That is why it is best to use the SCAB fan control only with non-lighted fans. Besides that minor issue, the SCAB works great to receive temperature readings and control/monitor your fans.
Overall the combination of the 635 LCD with the SCAB is an amazing addition to any PC. Once CrystalControl 2 comes out of beta, I feel that this will be one of the most functional LCD systems for your PC. Everything works flawlessly, but you must remember that these parts are OEM and at times not always intended to work without a bit of computer knowledge.
Thanks to CrystalFontz for the support and samples!
More pictures of my completed setup with the 635 LCD:
Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under Mobilitysite Reviews
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