Hi
I am working on a read out system that displays some characters (alphanumeric & special characters) sent out by a PC application software.
RS485 / Ethernet is the preferred communication interface.
Gadgeteer boards will be ideal for this requirement.
But i would like to know if any one has used a 10.4" / 10.1" LCD display with gadgeteer boards.
Regards.
@ aavinan - Display itself isn’t a problem, but those larger 10" displays tend to have higher resolutions, and no Gadgeteer mainboard can handle more than 800x600 due to, I believe, limitations of the RGB interface itself. So, if you find a 800x600 10" display with RGB interface, it will work fine. If not, 7" displays may be your next option.
The big issue with larger LCD’s is the clock frequency and resolution support and trying to get the NETMF options from GHI to work at this.
The second issue is finding one with an RGB input as most are LVDS. No big issue as you can easily convert RGB to LVDS so as long as the clock frequency can be output by the CPU and the resolution supported, it is possible.
[REMOVED higher resolution stuff as GHI only support 800 x 600 max]
Last thing. There is nothing off the shelf so you are going to need to design this. 
Hi Simon, is that based on the RGB configuration that GHI chose as I see that the G400 can actually drive a 24 bit RGB display but the pins available only give a 565 output.
In that case, my post may be a little miss-leading as I was basing mine on the processor datasheets.
Yeah, I kind of remember seeing 800x600 limit in GHI datasheets. That was a while ago, though, so I’m not sure it is still the case…
800x600 is the max, correct
[quote=“Dave McLaughlin”] I see that the G400 can actually drive a 24 bit RGB display but the pins available only give a 565 output.
[/quote]
Does that mean that there are twice as many shades of green available to display, than red or blue, on gadgeteer displays?
Hi Gus,
Is this purely down to the driver within the GHI code and hardware design as the LCD interface on the G400 processor is capable of full 24 bit and 2048 x 2048 resolution.
Now, assuming the RGB 565 can drive a higher resolution, could the G400 drive a 1280 x 1024 display at RGB565? Does the system have enough RAM to support this?
No particular reason, except we always reserve a 1MB image buffer and this works well with 800x600 and lower resolutions. Plus higher resolutions usually have a different interface, adding a lot more complexity to the design. Plus smaller displays are more popular with NETMF anyway.
Hi All,
Thanks for your inputs.
I have worked with x86 boards w/ 18-bit LVDS that support 800 x 600, 262k colors.
And most legacy 10" TFT LCDs support upto 800 x 600 only.
My requirement is to just display alphanumeric characters only.
Display content refresh rate is also very slow.
So can live with 800 x 600 on a 10" TFT display.
Glad to hear GHI gadgeteer boards & GHI NETMF display drivers support 800 x 600.
Now, i am off to scout for a 10" TFT LCD w/ RGB.
Regards.