Games and Screens

Oops. Never pasted link. :frowning:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-LCD-Screen-Display-for-HP-iPAQ-3115-rx3115-3715-rx3715-/230806027313?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35bd1c7c31

Oh, and it’s sun readable…

Pain is that it needs -5.5V and 10V, but at under 0.1mA each.

Datasheet: MassIntegrated.com is for sale | HugeDomains

Datasheet is for TD035STED2, Display is TD035STEB2 i think, don’t know that the difference might be…

Edit: Ahh, probably the connector…

LCD displays always require weird voltages; it comes with the technology. Displays that only have one supply have the voltages generated internally.

Yes, I know, but most bigger pannels, and most(that I have worked with) smaller monocrome pannels have it built in.

I hooked a 10.4" LCD up to an EMX Dev kit. It only required 3V3.

I have a 6" LCD that I will be hooking up to an G120HDR, which also only requires 3V3.

How about this one?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SAMSUNG-3-5-TFT-LCD-with-touch-panel-LTV350QV-F05-/320735500078?pt=US_Ham_Radio_Transmitters&hash=item4aad53572e

Not bad.

Quite nice. I’d say just about perfect, in fact. 24-bit RGB plus SPI, which means you’d need an MCU with an LCD driver, or an external driver IC, I assume? Is this a ā€œnormalā€ TFT interface?

Pretty standard yes. I’m looking for a display for the Hydra, which has an LCD driver built into the CPU. But no Gadgeteer board can do 24 bit color, only 16 bit. The SPI interface is only to config parameters on the LCD, not for display data. I think the original Cobra display was also like this and the display PCB had a small CPU on just to load the config into the display.

There are plenty of pure SPI displays, but that might be too slow for Skewworks’ game engine…

I think that you can drive a 24-bit display at 16-bits by simply leaving the lowest bits of each channel unconnected, is that accurate? In that case, this could work with Hydra and Spider.

What are our options for an external driver for Cerberus and USBizi?

You have to connect the unused pins to ground, or you can connect the lowest pins together. Technically this is the best.

Cerberus and USBizi does not have enough ram. We have trouble using the OLED display with Cerberus, which has double the memory of the USBizi. And the OLED is 128x128. You will have lots of pain using a 320x240 display with Cerberus.

But if you are adventurious then this display does have SPI:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/170908050784?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Right; I was thinking that one could use an additional MCU+RAM to act as a display driver. Clever firmware could be created that would parallel the old ā€œWindows Acceleratorā€ graphics cards of back in the day. They took simple commands (draw a line here, a circle there, fill in this polygon with that color) that made drawing much faster. You could even implement Glide in the firmware, and just send your XML over to it to have it drawn.

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Having a command language and ability to upload bitmaps upfront would be a great feature for a display.

4D Systems has a bunch of LCD and OLEDs that do just that. I have one here that I originally considered for making games with the Arduino.

But, from what I remember, they cost as much as a Hydra…

The ā€œcontrollersā€ themselves are in the $10-$15 range. If my DigiKey-fu was better, I might be able to figure out how to search for microcontrollers which include TFT control hardware, but I can’t, sadly.

Yes, basic controllers, like the ones from Epson, but the 4D Systems displays are EXPENSIVE.

RS Components sells 4D Systems stuff. Just the graphics engine module is $110. A 1.5" OLED display is $135. A 2.4" OLED is $300. You get the picture. And I know that RS is expensive…

And the basic controllers do not have any acceleration. Then you can just as well look at a display like the one that used to be on the Panda Touch…

Right. I think it would be necessary to track down the cheapest MCU that can drive the TFT directly, and a bit of DRAM to go with it. From there, it’s all firmware.

Hmm, One cheap CPU that can drive an LCD, add some DRAM. Doesn’t that add up to a Hydra? :slight_smile:

There are three chips on a Hydra, the CPU, the DRAM, and a small flash chip.

Well, kinda, but the ARM9 on the Hydra is massive overkill. I’m thinking a Cortex-M of some sort has to exist, that can be had for $2-$5 that can drive an LCD. The SRAM can be had for $5 or so, I believe?

I might be wrong, but Cortex-M does not have TFT interface, and neither does it have DRAM interface. SRAM takes way too many pins.

At least some of ST’s Cortex-M3 chips have an ā€œFSMCā€ (Flexible Static Memory Controller). ST even has an app note on driving LCDs with it, though they do say it’s not ā€œdedicated TFT hardwareā€.