I was just giving the Mrs Roomster a hoover out after going to the tip & I noticed the instrument panel had a layer of dust on it. I wiped it over with a microfibre cloth & the lcd display went completely blank!!! 

Luckily it came straight back on with ignition, so I tried it again ( stupidly possibly)  & the same thing happened.

Again it came on with ignition.

I am assuming that with the cloth having a high content of  polyester it must have created a static charge.

Cotton dusters work fine.

Any ideas anyone? Just for the record I thought maybe I had pressed too hard on the panel, but the second time I did it I was really gentle.

When I worked at Philips Research Laboratory, a colleague told me something about these LCD's. In fact they use electric charge or magnetism to blank these displays, so there's nothing wrong, only most people never see this behaviour of LCD's.

 

Also slight pressure on top of the display can make the display unreadable for the time it is onder pressure. This is caused by the slight change of the angle you are looking at the liquid crystals (the angle changes slightly under pressure), and it is very sensitive for the right angle to read the display.

Edited 17 June, 20188 yr by Fabia-format