Can we please get support for the USB LCD displays? These connect to an internal USB slot rather than having to use the external serial cable.
Also, one thing that I would love to have is support for the graphical displays. Being able to display live traffic graphs on the LCD similar to the graphs on the web site would be just amazing. The text info looks OK, but nothing compares to watching the graphs.
Thanks for considering the above requests. If I could pick just one of the above, I would pick the USB connection. The serial cable just looks ridiculous and it doesn’t work when there is only 1 serial port. The second is just cosmetic, but it would give a completely new look to routers using MT’s OS software. It really would give a very high-end, professional look.
They have a cable option that would allow it to connect directly to the motherboard’s open USB port.
Personally I prefer te ability to use the scroll buttons. This way, when trying to monitor, you can select the item that you want and it stays there. No need to go into the software to change timeouts.
They have graphic displays too.
We use their text units now and they work well. The only downside has been the MT upgrades. We have to remember to add LCD back in afterwards.
Support for USB displays could be really neat for outdoor radios/routers:
there are waterproof USB connectors available for the case
makes the display demountable/removable after install/alignment
USB port supplies enough power (500mA) to power the display
put the display in a small box with USB cable
the module now very helpful for antenna alignment etc
if there are buttons too on the display, use them to turn the beeper on/off for alignment
A small amount of software for MT to write, make sure signal strength can be shown on display, there are nice displays available, easy to integrate into products.
I might be wrong but most installers would pay more than $60 for a “wireless installation module” with display and control of a beeper. It’s a lot cheaper than a laptop or PDA and easy to carry up/use on a tower. And fewer tears if it gets dropped …
Comments welcome -
Inbuilt support for the crystalfontz displays would be great!
I’ve thought about this on some of our other devices as it means a simple diagnostic can be performed simply by standing in front of the device and looking through what the display shows (this means that even the non-mikrotik people on site can have a quick look and see what is going on at the time [if we want them to be able to, of course])
We will look into this product and maybe we will add support for those USB LCDs. Till them maybe you all could write us what you would like to see on this LCD or what to change using those keypads
If you want to support the buttons, that’s great, and specifically for wireless installs:
change channel
change band and channel width
scan/view choice of visible SSIDs (and select which to connect to if possible) with signal levels of each
select frequency (assuming it’s an AP)
alter TX power
set max data rate to connect at
beeper on/off
Obviously some of that implies an interactive menu, rather than just scrolling through a list of readout items.
Not enough buttons I guess to enter wep, wpa keys or IP addresses without some drama, but those could be done at ground level with a laptop. The USB/LCD module would be useful up the tower, with the activities most likely to be needed up there.
I would be satisfied with possibilites to check statuses. I do not see point of setting MT through cursor buttons on external display.
Maybe the best approach would be if you could make any print command to be displayable on external display too, and then let us to “prepare” what we actually be displayed. Buttons would be simply used to select current display.
This command would create display item names internet link strength that would display graph of rx/tx signal strength on wireless interface number 0.
/display could have parent property to allow us to creste hierarchical menu of display items, so we could group them. These USB displays offer at least four buttons for one pair may be used to move through menu by depth and two to scroll menu items which are on the same level (the same group) in the menu.
We do use the Crystalfontz with our routers now. The problem is the serial interface. Some of our motherboards only have a single serial port and it is only an external port. MT currently only supports Serial and Parallel connectivity. Due to lack of demand, the parallel units aren’t made much anymore. The USB units have replaced them, but MT doesn’t support the USB units. Admittedly, this does seem to be a trend with MT. Not supporting currently available hardware that is.
The current MT LCD module scrolls and displays the configured info every X (user settable) seconds. This is nice except when you need to watch something. For example, say you just want to watch traffic on Ethernet 1. It is frustrating to watch it for the 10 seconds and then have to wait for it to get through everyting else. This is where the buttons come in.
For those who asked about what you could do with only 6 buttons, the answer is that you can configure quite a bit. The basic setup on the RAQ servers was done with 6 buttons. Programming most phones, faxes, and other is done with jst a couple of buttons.
If nothing else, for now I would just love to be able to plug in the USB version of the LCD and have it work.
Would I love to have the ability to use a graphic display to watch live graphs? Of course. We can look at the graphs from the web interface now. Getting them live and on the front of the router would be wonderful. You could even do overlays and such. But this is much more than a small add-on.
Anyway, please look into the USB option. You already have some of it with the Serial/Parallel version.
are the usb models simply using the prolific 2303 chip to give rs232? If so it would possibly be an easy add since 2303 chip already works on RouterOS for modems and gps. ( I think ).
What do you see when you plug in the usb in system resources pci ?
I don’t have any USB versions, but the serial versions are excellent.
Watch out for the height of them, are “tight” to fit in a 1U rack case should you want …
I'd say use a cut down version of the current winbox options (interface, wireless, ppp, ip, routing, queues, system, log) and set the keys to be able to go back and forwards through these.
This allows 90% of the functionalities listed above..
for example.. want to see who's logged into a hotspot? Push down to get to IP, left to open the next menu, down and push left to open hotspot sub-menu, left and right to go through active and hosts tab, down to find the username then let it scroll across to see ip, uptime etc.
Use the centre button to exit back to the beginning
You could add support for changing things via the lcd display, imho this would be a bad idea as you should be doing this via an authenticated means.
have the mikrotik team thought about this any further? Currently I also use the PoweRouter 732’s lcd display which means just outputting data via the serial port and no use of any buttons etc.
