Apologies for the total noobness. I bought a Cerberus main board, a power board, some other bits (joystick, pot, etc) and a TE35 LCD module. But I can’t figure out how to connect the TE35 to the Cerberus. If I go into Designer in the software it seems I need an extender module, in fact I need four of them. Is this correct? Or is there a better way to connect it?
I’m hoping to build and program my own encoder board for a radio control transmitter with a nice colour touch screen to program it. I was thinking I could develop it on the Cerberus than transfer it to a Cerb40 for final installation in the transmitter. Beginning to think I might have bitten off more than I can chew…
Thanks for the advice. Is there any kind of screen that can be connected to it? How about the Oled 128 x 128? Or the new N18 (128 x 160). They can connect to an S socket. Or the character display? Is it possible to connect two them (i.e. two N18s)?
How much memory does the TE35 need? I have read that the chip the Cerberus is based on has 1 meg of flash memory and 192K dram. Dunno, it seems to me that my project is not that complex. I just want to take some inputs from some pots and switches, apply a few algorigthms, generate a PPM output stream (which to my very limited understanding is not a lot different to PWM) and hand it to my 2.4 Gig RF module (an FrSky DHT) to send off to the receiver. Do I really need an ARM9 processor, that can run Linux, to do that? Seems like massive overkill to me. Seems like that power is just required to drive the screen. Is there a way of adding memory to the Cerberus (or Cerb40), or can I use the TE35 in serial mode or something? Or is there just no way to do it…
The main reason I looked at the Cerberus is because the Cerb40 exists. I thought it would be possible to develop on the Cerberus then use the Cerb40 in the actual device. Is there an equivalent board for the Hydra? I don’t have a huge problem with using the board(s) as they are for the final solution, but I’m a bit more comfortable with soldered wires rather than plugs. Plugs can come out, fail, break, whatever more than solder joints can. I also need to connect lots of pots and switches that are not Gadgeteer modules, so more soldering. Could I use the PulseInOut module to connect up my sticks and swiches? If I wanted 16 channels could I just hook up two of them?
The reason these devices need memory is because you need to keep the screen bitmap in memory - so that’s a X-pixels times y-pixels times bit-depth required kind of problem. If all you’re looking for is real simple stuff, then yes you can get away with a smaller OLED display. There’s some good code out there from Skewworks showing how to get some of that working at the optimum (it basically requires you to have small sections of the screen that you push out).
No there’s no easy way to add memory to a device externally that you can use in the same way as memory on the processor the Cerb uses. The Hydra is a different architecture and actually has the memory external to the chip.
Since you’re an Aussie (according to your profile) and because I have one spare, in country, if you want to borrow either a OLED 128x128 or N18 I can loan you one of mine until yours arrive - or even just to prove whether they’ll be effective for your purposes.
Brett, apologies I did not respond to your kind offer of a loan of the oled modules. I think my exploration of coding for the LCD is a ways off yet, so right now I’m happy to just try to get stuff printed out in the output screen. When I get to actually writing to the LCD I’ll come crawling back!
Ian, no worries ! I am sure they will still be here if you want them; in fact, if you have anything you might want to try out let me know as I have too many hardware bits for too many projects that aren’t started/finished
Okay, made an executive decision. The oleds are not big enough, and they don’t have touch. Gonna have to go with the TE35. If that means a Hydra, then so be it. A sledgehammer to crack a peanut, but, as the french say, sailor vee.
In the mean time, been having a play with the TE35 code in the IDE. There are functions for drawing things (ellipse, rectangle, text, text in a rectangle etc) which is all I really want to do. I’d like to have sort of a menu system to set the various parameters I need, so I don’t really need to draw an image. So all I really need is the parameters for the text, and the position on the screen. Maybe 20 bytes. Does the processor have to build the bitmap of that in memory then pass it to the LCD or is the LCD smart enough to accept a request to draw a text string at given x/y coordinates? Or any of the other drawing commands? If so I wouldn’t need massive amounts of memory, in fact I don’t see I’d need huge amounts anyway. But I still can’t hook it up to the Cerberus…
Also been reading about the D120HDR board, which says it can be used to connect a TE35 to a project. It isn’t very specific though, and the sockets on the other end are not terribly enlightening either. As far as I know SPI and USB are sequential communication protocols, so presumably the Cerberus could handle that. Moot point really as a) the board only has sockets for R/G/B, not touch, and b) it looks like the IDE won’t handle it. At least it doesn’t appear in the list of modules that can be added in the Designer.
G120 might be a good option. G120 HDR is essentially the G120 module, but in a form factor that has “HeaDeR"s at 0.1” that you can connect on. I believe you can get touch on G120HDR even though it doesn’t have an explicit T socket, because you just need to wire up the appropriate pins into the socket (which is what the “user” socket is meant for).
That sounds a bit hard. I just want to plug and play.
Been having another look at the Hydra, and to my untrained eye it has only two A sockets. My understanding is that A is for Analog input, and each one can handle three, i.e. I can have a total of 6 analog inputs. I’d like at least 8 and preferably 12. Not absolutely essential, but 6 is a bit limiting. Is it possible to use other inputs as analog inputs?
Andre, wouldn’t that be good! That would make for some really interesting projects! I bought a HT-280_262k ages ago, that came with an SD card slot. From memory it was about $20! Fantastic for a Gadgeteer module.
Maybe I’m the exception that proves the rule. But in general, Aussie, Össie, Beer all go together for harmony 