start LCD in background or as a service

[rvencu]

Hi, I wonder is there a way to start the LCD in the background or as a service at boot? Running it in the foreground is a bit annoying...

[alexhorner]

Hey @rvencu

Apologies for the delay, I have indeed achieved this with a modified service file found at /usr/lib/systemd/system/LCDd.service. Here is how I have it set up:

[Unit]
Description=LCD display daemon
Documentation=man:LCDd(8) http://www.lcdproc.org/

[Service]
User=root
ExecStartPre=bash -c "echo \"255\" > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon1/pwm3"
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/LCDd -s 1 -f -c /etc/LCDd.conf
ExecStartPost=bash -c "sleep 5 && lcdproc C P M U S K"
ExecStop=bash -c "echo \"128\" > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon1/pwm3"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This will bring the LCD brightness to 100% and then start lcdproc with a slight delay of 5 seconds in order to allow LCDd to fully start.

When the service is stopped, LCDd stops which in turn kills lcdproc. In addition, it also sets the LCD brightness to 50% which is approx the default after boot.

Please see the lcdproc help menu for info on what lcdproc C P M U S K means, as the characters represent the rotating screens I have selected for display on my system

[rvencu]

Great !

[blairjj]

FYI if you are running Debian 11, you will need to make sure that you use: 'apt-get install lcdproc lcdproc-extra-drivers' to ensure that you have the extra drivers for hd44780