More goodies

Matrix Orbital MX232 and 233 LCD panels

In the early days of case modding, simply painting your case a different color from black or beige was already considered amazing. The truly exotic cases however would have serial controlled LCD displays. In the past, however, adding an LCD screen required deft control of your power tools and programming knowledge to display text on the screen. Often, these LCDs would programmed to display static text such as the system name or system specs.

Things have changed and today, installing a drive bay LCD is as easy as installing an optical drive. Moreover, today’s drive bay LCDs can be optimized for both home-user (gaming) and enterprise computing thanks to today’s LCD driver software.

For these flagship systems, we went with the Matrix Orbital MX2 LCD panels. While LCDs themselves have been around the block, the Matrix Orbital devices are the most feature-rich of the LCD drive bay systems.

View from the front

There are 4 temperature sensors on the left, 3 fan headers, and a floppy-drive style cable for additional power

The MX2 series from Matrix Orbital are USB-based 20 character x 2 line LCD displays. Cables are available for connecting directly to motherboard USB headers or for routing it to the back and plugging it into the standard rear-motherboard USB slots. In normal use, the LCD panel is powered from the USB port. The screen itself is available in a variety of colors, and the faceplates include silver and black anodized aluminum, and a black or beige version with a front keypad. The keypad interface can be programmed to switch the displayed information on the LCD, or to change system volume or change tracks in Winamp or start applications. The aluminum panel, which we are using, is keypad-less.

From the rear, you can tell that the Matrix Orbital MX2 is designed to do more than just be a simple LCD screen. In the current revision of the MX2, there are 3 fan headers and what appears to be 4 wake-on-lan headers. In addition, just to the right of the floppy power connector are connections for powering 3 LEDs.

The fan headers support a peak current of 1000 mA at +12V each. These can be used to power fans (obviously) but also provide adequate power for cold cathode lights. What makes these impressive is that they are smart connectors. With the MX2, you now have a smart fan controller. You can automate your system to only turn on fans when the case reaches a certain temperature, or to turn on internal case lighting to turn on in the evenings and turn off at your usual bedtime. Perhaps you want some LEDs to flash when you have email – you can do that to. With the keypad model, you can even manually control the power output.