Back in late 2020 Twitter user @kakocom posted the first of a series of tweets outlining how to salvage an unusual 640x48 bar LCD from a kid's toy. There was a flurry of activity, with a few notable developments including @lovyan03 adding support to the LovyanGFX library, and @devemin releasing FBTFT support for the Raspberry Pi. Much of this development is logged on @pcjpnet's very helpful github repo. I heard about all of this via @bikerglen tweeting about the display stateside. 

At the time, I was thinking about how to make a less visually obnoxious Spotify player, and was looking at a lot of bar LCDs for a rack-mount status indicator project. This little bar LCD seemed like a great way to make a half-1U standalone player. I ordered Glen's featherwing design from OSHPark and breadboarded the basic setup.