Additional hardware - SPI B&W LCD?

One of the major disadvantages of the devo6 or devo8 is the readability, or lack thereof, of the colour LCD in sunlight. A quick browse through the devo7E and devo10 hardware docs indicates they use an SPI B&W LCD. So, I pose the question; could a secondary B&W LCD be hooked up via SPI to a devo6 / devo8, and could it be made usable without a complete rewrite and twice the code?

Obviously the majority of screens are completely different; perhaps some sort of interface where on long-pressing a certain button it would disable one screen and GUI style, and change over to the other screen and GUI? I've never looked at the source code so don't know if the two forks are completely and utterly separate, or whether there's common branch points where a switch could be made. The major screen of interest would be the main flying screen, and/or telemetry. They'd also need to store two sets of layout configuration I would guess.

Or even an on-boot choice; do your graphical/touch model configs at home, then use the non-touch simple B&W layout when flying.

Just hypothesising in case it sparks some offshoot thoughts.

How about just using a black and white or otherwise high contrast skin? There are a number of them in the skins section. I've put one on my six, but haven't had a chance to try it outsde yet.

I've been using my own high-contrast skin for some time (mostly yellow on dark blue) but it still suffers badly in even moderate sunlight. I got some matte screen protectors to try a while ago but never did get around to putting them on; don't think they are going to be overly effective.

I think for direct sunlight you'll never get anywhere near as effective as a plain old B&W, or better yet e-ink. As a side experiment I might see what happens if you pump in masses of light from the side; haven't checked out the physical structure of the LCD yet to see how the backlighting is achieved.

OK first I've never even seen a color devo in person so I have no idea however my first really involved electronics hobby was LED's and I've attempted to add back lighting to more than a handful of different types of displays (I've also played with the CF tube lamps from laptop backlights) and I definitely wouldn't put much stock in that option.

Now displays themselves weren't the hobby so maybe someone out there somewhere figured out how to make a TFT brighter but in my experimenting I never succeeded.

Just my $0.02 and all I've got to offer...

Got my black-on-white skin out today. Not quite as good as a 7E or 10, but still not really an issue reading it in sunlight. Was late afternoon, so earlier in the day may be an issue.

It came from here: www.deviationtx.com/forum/custom-skins/2...b-skin-thanks-to-fdr