New VGA conroller

Now hook that big screen up to your Fez.

[url]http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10329[/url]

Correct me if I’m wrong. Using this board we can do something like this:

LCD screen <-- VGA --> Graphics controller <-- UART --> FEZ

The datasheet says that the maximum resolution is 800x600. Now from FEZ point of view we can create a class (driver) that sends commands to SerialPort. This way we can get someting similiar to regular .NET Framework Canvas?

Yes but it won’t be very fast, would it? This is UART :frowning:

By the way FEZ Cobra (EMX) can be connected to VGA with minimal work. It gives you 480x480 pixels

Oh I forgot about the speed. So sending a 800x600 bitmap with 256 colors using maximum speed (256k) it would take:

800x600x8 / 256000 = 15 [s] // Correct ?

An if I were to connect Cobra to VGA how long would it take to update a 480x480 bitmap? Also could you give us a hint how to do this ?

It is instant! The documentation already gives you the numbes you need to plug into get VGA timing right then you need to connect things like this schematics

http://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/EmbeddedMaster/EM-VGAEXP_sch.pdf

This is a simple resistor divider so colors will not be perfect but the image will still be clear and stable. If you want perfect colors then use an DAC chip instead of the resistors

[quote]Oh I forgot about the speed. So sending a 800x600 bitmap with 256 colors using maximum speed (256k) it would take:

800x600x8 / 256000 = 15 [s] // Correct ?
[/quote]

As far as I see, they’ve included a uSD memory card slot. So I guess you’ll need to store your images on the SD card and then just send serial commands in order to position the image on the screen. So no need to send the images over the serial link.

I would think a shield with HDMI-out and a lot of flash storage for images and fonts would be useful.

You are right Wouter. I took a look at command set and it is huge! Indeed you can load data from the sd card. Other than bitmap you can e.g. run macros. Writing a driver for this device would take a while comparing to using WPF and EMX supported display. I know that WPF is slow (Pyxis proved it) but rapid development is a big advantage of net mf.

Does anyone know about the gameduino project ? This is not directlty vga-related, but this looks great and powerfull… well, promising, since this is not out yet ?

http://www.excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/
or Gameduino | Hackaday

Yep, I even tried to contact the makers but I do not remember I got a response from them! If this is an interest to this community and you have their contacts then let them know about us.

That looks awesome, might order one if they become available.

You can pledge $53 and get it sooner:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2084212109/gameduino-an-arduino-game-adapter

$3K goal and 33K pledged. That was fast.

Check this one out, makes me think about creating a project there :slight_smile:

[url]http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-lunatik-multi-touch-watch-kits[/url]

wtf? I love that kind of design. Simple, functional, and clean. What an idea. Did you get one?

No I didn’t. Still use my shuffle. :-[