I need a laptop sized touch screen with drivers & example code for ARMs. It would be a great start for many industrial-control type applications, where I’m willing to spend $100 on a nice user interface.
Andy
RecycledElectrons:
I need a laptop sized touch screen with drivers & example code for ARMs. It would be a great start for many industrial-control type applications, where I’m willing to spend $100 on a nice user interface.Andy
We’d all like a laptop sized touch screen for $100 for industrial applications :lol: I doubt we’ll see one in our lifetime (non-surplus).
The closest I’ve come are the Demmel iLCD (www.demmel.com) whose black and white 5.7" 320x240 screen is around $200 and is driven from either a serial, USB or i2c port.
Another 5.7" display (in color) is the SLCD by Reach Technology (www.reachtech.com), which starts at $300. Again this is driven from an RS232 serial interface and has intelligence on board.
The advantage of these two devices is that the hard work driving the LCD, handling graphic primirives and the touch screen controls is offloaded onto the display module.
The only way to get down close to $100 total is to find a surplus LCD panel with a corresponding touch panel and build the custom hardware to drive it on the base ARM board.
If you ever find such a $100 touch LCD please let me know, as I’m looking for such as device too.
Regards,
PJE
Thanks for the links.
I’m willing to spend over $100…that price point was just a guess.
Andy
EarthLCD also have some devices…
They even have a $99 7.8" VGA touchscreen LCD (non-TFT). This would require a full driver circuit…
http://store.earthlcd.com/s.nl/sc.5/category.222/.f
They also sell the same display with a serial touchscreen output and a VGA input… so if you can generate a VGA output and accept a serial input this might be of interest at $300 including the enclosure.
Regards,
PJE
If the touch screen is out of the question…how about a chip (PDIP, please) that gives an embedded processor a video output.
The chip addresses the frame buffer in the chip directly.
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Even at 1024x1024 resolution, we only need 20 address lines.
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Add in 8 data lines (256 colors.)
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We need a few configuration lines to set the resolution, number of colors, etc.
The chip could spit out video directly to VGA. If you need S-Video, DVI, or something else, adapters are available.
I see simple systems that allow some video output, but nothing that allows me to directly address the frame buffer unless I custom-build an entire video card. In the same way that I can buy GPS-on-a-chip, I would like to see VGA-on-a-chip.
Andy Out!
RecycledElectrons:
If the touch screen is out of the question…how about a chip (PDIP, please) that gives an embedded processor a video output.
There are a few products such as BOB-3 - http://www.decadenet.com/ which put low res images on a composite monitor - but they get costly when full VGA resolution is required.
One product I’m interested in is the TS-7KV from Technologic Systems - http://www.embeddedarm.com which is a $99 PC/104 card that goes with it’s ARM PC/104 cards ($150). This device will drive a 640x480 resolution display and is intended to be upgraded via a flat panel interface card to drive a standard LCD panel with touchscreen.
I think the main problem is that there are so many different LCDs available, that making a general purpose device to handle a lot of different varieties of display would be too complex.
Also check out the Thunderbolt GC at http://www.ptgroupinc.com/ I was interested in it a couple of years ago, but it seemed to take forever to become available, and I have no real information on it.
Regards,
PJE
Andy,
Check out: http://www.dontronics.com/micro-vga.html
This module takes serial in and generates a VGA output (up to around 640x480 256 colors)…
PJE
RecycledElectrons:
If the touch screen is out of the question…how about a chip (PDIP, please) that gives an embedded processor a video output.…
The chip could spit out video directly to VGA. If you need S-Video, DVI, or something else, adapters are available.
…
Andy Out!
If you feel like living dangerously, you might consider rolling your own controller with a FPGA. For a short tutorial see:
The fpga screen is fun to play with and not to hard(if you know vhdl or verilog) to get working
Jean provides most of the code in verilog
A laptop-sized touchscreen tft might be out of the question, but a nice 7.8 or 8.4 inch color touchscreen STN is definitely a reasonable buy at approx. $100 in quantity.
If you want to talk to the display over a serial link, then yes, forget about it. Otherwise, they should be more than appropriate for an industrial application unless you need to show video. You can also get some pretty nice ARMs with built-in LCD hardware such as the Freescale iMX series, so that eliminates the FPGA requirement.
If you understand discrete logic and have VHDL or VERILOG experience, FPGAs make very good VGA display drivers. For instance, I use a Digilent Spartan-3 board (only $100) which comes with 1MB of dual port SRAM. An 8 bit 1024x768 image buffer fits nicely into it. Because a FPGA is programmable discrete logic, it is perfect for generating the timing signals that a monitor needs.
In addition, I use additional resources on the FPGA to provide an interface to the SRAM for my microcontrollers. Right now I’m using a parallel interface but the FPGA can be reprogrammed to use any type of serial connection you want. Built into the Spartan 3 are a number of block RAM areas which I use for character generation.
All of these resources consume only about 1/4 of the available logic in the 200K gate Spartan 3 that I use so there is plenty of room for more advanced designs. Digilent also has higher density Spartan 3 boards with up to 1M gates for $150.
The only thing you have to be careful of is the I/O pins of the Spartan 3 are not as robust as the PIC so you have to be careful to protect them. I’m anxiously awaiting the availability of dsPIC33F devices which run at 3.3V and 40MIPS so I can directly interface with the board’s I/O.
http://www.digilent.us/Products/Detail. … od=S3BOARD
-Bill