WAHOO! Yesterday, my PCB’s came from the farlands of Asia (Thank you PCBWing and ITeadStudio). In the finest of condition as per. I’ve only so far had time to assemble the neck PCB but after writing a quick test program for my STM32F0, I can safely confirm that IT WORKS! Along with every fret, with the Phobass Adaptive Neck Sensitivity Modulator ® (PANSM? PhANSeM? Close enough to a cool trademark… if Roland can get away with DBeam, I think I’m winning 😉 ).
The neck PCB itself! On my trusty testbench as per, plugged into my STM32F0.
The new Menu PCB! As you can see (FINALLY), the buttons are correctly aligned, the LCD slots directly into the board and the board now contains mounting holes!
And finally, the not so impressive motherboard. I rushed this one a bit to much and wired one of the pots wrong which sucks, regardless, I’m going to troop on and get on with the rest of the Phobass!
I’ve had a massive revelation with regards to body manufacture. I’ve been in contact with some Asian sellers with regards to custom bass guitars etc. and it seems that a well rounded price for a custom bass would be ~$60 in lots of 5+. Unfortunately, I’m only wanting one at the moment so this is quite hard to fulfill!
There are going to be some massive unfoldings in the Phobass market, keep tuned!
Harris' Electronics 
Hi
Love the idea of using the PCD8544s directly on the PCB instead of a shoddy chinese breakout.
Do you have a eagle footprint for it?
Where do you source the bare LCD and the conductive rubber insert behind it?
Peter
Okay found the bare frame ones on eBay
Footprint: Similar: http://cadsoft.de/downloads/file/lph-7366.lbr but seems to be missing the milled out slots for the tabs – easy to add in though so should suffice. Ordered some LCDs will see when they get here
Hi Peter,
Glad you like it! They’re an absolutely brilliant LCD for the price, you can buy the bare LCDs for <$1 in sets of 10 from places like aliexpress It's worth bearing in mind though, a few of the LCDs will have visual defects on, I have about a 30% defect rate for all the ones I've bought (around 7-8 LCDs now) so buy more than you'll need!
With Itead studio, they request you to put the milled parts on your dimension layer anyway. Make sure you choose a PCB of the correct thickness! 0.8mm is too thin and 1.6mm is too thick so I think the ample size is 1mm (clarify this off the cheapo PCB'd version of these LCDs).
Thanks!
Ahhhh! Pcb Thickness would have caught me indeed!
I use DirtyPCB. No problem with mill outs on the dimension layer (nor breakoff tabs, panelling with routed cutouts and all the pushing the envelope that seeed and itead would reject
Ps. I did check Aliexpress first but cheapest that i saw was $7 but on the pcb.
Ebay had but $23.90 for 10.
So your $1 seller sounds like a treat too…
I love these for their power consumption. Microamps!
If you’re actually wanting to buy in bulk, you can get them off Alibaba for peanuts: http://uk.alibaba.com/product/504921574-For-font-b-Nokia-b-font.html – that was just a brief search! The power consumption is actually exceptional, I used this LCD for the first and second iterations of my smartwatch and smartwatch 2 managed to live (with the display permanently on) for around 10 days! They can keep a static image up with a really low power consumption and the fact they have slots for any coloured LED’s is really cool too. Not forgetting the ease of interface! I wish Philips made a few more easily acquirable LCDs with controllers.