Closer Look - Main Unit

  Matrix Orbital has always been known for their excellent products and the MX411 LCD carries on that fine tradition in MO. Everything came neatly packed in a white cardboard box with the main LCD unit covered in bubblewrap and also a layer of protective covering for the LCD screen itself. A Mini-CD was also included, which contains the excellent LCDC program and Online Manual for quick reference for the newbie.

   The MX411 version comes with a black bay insert with 15 keypads. These keypads, using with the LCDC program provided, can me mapped out to display any pre-configured or self-designed screen. It can even be mapped out to activate any application that you desire. At the back, a 3 feet A-B USB communications cable is attached to the unit. An internal USB cable is also available separately if you choose to run the display from the USB header on your motherboard. The connection for such a cable is located at the end of the USB connector on the LCD itself.

   Lower down on the back of the unit, you'll find the 6 x Dallas-1 temperature probe connections and also 4 x 3-pin fan connection. Each fan header provides up to 12Watts of power and controlled by the PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) circuitry built into the unit and also the LCDC software provided. The unit get it's power from the floppy-style power connector, right under the fan headers. Looking now at the right side, you see the ribbon cable that connects the unit to the 15 keypad interface on the front of the unit and also the GPO output, where you connect the MX Indicator LED Bus.

   All these components are located on a second tier PCB, separate from the main LCD screen itself, as shown on the right most picture above.

MX Indicator LED Bus

   Apart from the 4 x 3-pin fan header GPOs, there's also 3 more GPOs as I've mantioned above and this is where you connect the MX Indicator LED Bus. This tiny PCB includes 3 x 5mm superbright LEDs and acts as a visual display or warning devices since there's no audible warning device on the main unit itself. It comes with it's own instructions and also template just in case you wanna install it somewhere. Hank told me that the best place to install the bus is on your keyboard but considering the length of the cable included, which is just about 2 feet, it would difficult to achieve that unless a custom cable is made.

   The cable provided is like a narrower version of an IDE cable, with a single red cable visible on one end of it. One the bus itself, the red cable has to face the MO logo on the bus PCB and on the LCD unit, the red cable has to face the floppy power connector. Both connections are shown below. The last 2 pictures shows you the bus in action.

Dallas 1-Wire Temperature Probes/Sensors

   2 x Dallas 1-Wire sensors were also included with the unit. Unlike many temperature monitoring devices out there, the Dallas 1-Wire sensors have sensors shaped like a transistor instead of a flat head type. Doing some research on it, I found this webpage, giving details on the Dallas 1-Wire sensors. It has an accurary of ±0.5°C and a measuring range of -55°C to +125°C. This comes in handy for users who wants to measure sub-zero temperatures like with a peltier. The disadvantage is that the transistor type packaging is much larger than normal sensors, thus giving problems to users wanting to measure their CPU or GPU or other space-constrained areas.