1
2 Driver for Asus OLED display present in some Asus laptops.
3
4 The code of this driver is based on 'asusoled' program taken from
5 <http://lapsus.berlios.de/asus_oled.html>. I just wanted to have a simple
6 kernel driver for controlling this device, but I didn't know how
7 to do that. Now I know ;) Also, that program can not be used
8 with usbhid loaded, which means no USB mouse/keyboard while
9 controlling OLED display :(
10
11 It has been tested on Asus G1 and didn't cause any problems,
12 but I don't guarantee that it won't do anything wrong :)
13
14 It can (and probably does) have errors. It is usable
15 in my case, and I hope others will find it useful too!
16
17*******
18
19Building the module
20
21 To build the module you need kernel 2.6 include files and some C compiler.
22
23 Just run:
24 make
25 make install (as a root)
26
27 It will build (hopefully) the module and install it in
28 /lib/modules/'uname -r'/extra/asus_oled.ko.
29
30 To load it just use:
31 modprobe asus_oled
32
33 You can check if it has detected your OLED display by looking into dmesg output.
34 There should be something like this:
35 asus-oled 2-7:1.0: Attached Asus OLED device
36
37 If it doesn't find your display, you can try removing usbhid module.
38 If you add asus_oled into the list of modules loaded during system boot
39 before usbhid, it will work even when usbhid is present.
40
41 If it still doesn't detect your hardware, check lsusb output.
42 There should be similar line:
43 Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0b05:1726 ASUSTek Computer, Inc.
44
45 If you don't see any lines with '0b05:1726' it means that you have different
46 type of hardware that is not detected (it may or may not work, but the driver
47 knows only '0b05:1726' device).
48
49*******
50
51Configuration
52
53 There is only one option: start_off.
54 You can use it by: 'modprobe asus_oled start_off=1', or by adding this
55 line to /etc/modprobe.d/asus_oled.conf:
56 options asus_oled start_off=1
57
58 With this option provided, asus_oled driver will switch off the display
59 when it is detected and attached. It is nice feature to just switch off the 'ASUS'
60 logo. If you don't use the display, it is probably the good idea to switch it off,
61 to protect OLEDs from "wearing off".
62
63*******
64
65Usage
66
67 This module can be controlled with two special files:
68 /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_N/enabled
69 /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_N/picture
70
71 (N is the device number, the first, and probably the only, has number 1,
72 so it is /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_1/enabled
73 and /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_1/picture)
74
75 'enabled' files is for reading and writing, 'picture' is writeable only.
76
77 You can write 0 or 1 to 'enabled' file, which will switch
78 on and off the display. Reading from this file will tell you the last
79 status set, either 0 or 1. By default it is 1, so if the device was set to 'off',
80 and the computer was rebooted without power-off, this file will contain wrong
81 value - because the device is off, but hasn't been disabled this time and is
82 assumed to be on...
83
84 To 'picture' file you write pictures to be displayed by the OLED device.
85 The format of the file:
86 <M:WxH>
87 00001110010111000
88 00010101010101010
89 ....
90
91 First line is a configuration parameter. Meaning of fields in <M:WxH>:
92 M - picture mode. It can be either 's' for static pictures,
93 'r' for rolling pictures, and 'f' for flashing pictures.
94 W - width of the picture. May be between 1 and 1792
95 H - height of the picture. May be between 1 and 32
96
97 For example <s:128x32> means static picture, 128 pixels long and 32 pixels high.
98
99 The physical size of the display is 128x32 pixels. Static and flashing pictures
100 can't be larger than that (actually they can, but only part of them will be displayed ;) )
101
102 If the picture is smaller than 128x32 it will be centered. Rolling pictures wider than
103 128 pixels will be centered too, unless their width = n*128. Vertically they will be
104 centered just like static pictures, if their height is smaller than 32.
105
106 Flashing pictures will be centered horizontally if their width < 128, but they were
107 centered vertically in a different way. If their height < 16, they will be centered
108 in the upper half of the display (rows 0-15). This is because only the first half
109 of flashing pictures is used for flashing. When the picture with heigh = 32 is
110 displayed in flashing mode, its upper 16 rows will be flashing in the upper half
111 of the display, and the lower half will be empty. After few seconds upper part will
112 stop flashing (but that part of the picture will remain there), and the lower
113 half of the display will start displayin the lower half of the picture
114 in rolling mode, unless it is empty, or the picture was small enough to fit in
115 upper part. It is not mine idea, this is just the way Asus' display work ;)
116 So if you need just flashing, use at most 128x16 picture. If you need flashing and
117 rolling, use whole size of the display.
118
119 Lines following the first, configuration, line are picture data. Each '1' means
120 that the pixel is lit, and '0' means that it is not. You can also use '#' as ON,
121 and ' ' (space) as OFF. Empty lines and all other characters are ignored.
122
123 It is possible to write everything in one line <M:WxH>01010101010101010...,
124 and W*H characters will be used. If there is not enough characters, nothing will be
125 displayed. However, the 'line mode' is easier to read (and write), and it also
126 lets to omit parts of data. Whenever End-Of-Line character is found, but
127 the line is not W characters long, it is assumed that all missing characters
128 are equal to the last character in the line.
129
130 Following line represents '0', '1' and a lots of '0's, dependng on the width of the picture
131 provided in configuration data:
132 010
133
134 So if you need empty line, it is sufficient to write line with only one '0' in it.
135 The same works with '1' (or ' ' and '#').
136
137 If there are too many data in the file, they will be ignored. If you are not sure
138 how many characters you are missing, you can add few lines with one zero in each of them.
139
140 There are some example pictures in .txt format, that can be used as follows:
141 cat foo.txt > /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_1/picture
142
143 If the display is switched off you also need to run:
144 echo 1 > /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_1/enabled
145 To switch it off, just use:
146 echo 0 > /sys/class/asus_oled/oled_1/enabled
147
148
149*******
150
151 For any additional info please have a look at http://lapsus.berlios.de/asus_oled.html
152
153
154
155 Jakub Schmidtke (sjakub@gmail.com)
156
157