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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : an interesting display...

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robert.rozee
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Joined: 31/12/2012
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Posted: 03:13pm 13 May 2025
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just spotted a link to this:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/1005005199455421.html?gatewayAdapt=4itemAdapt

480x272 IPS with touch, but would require being fed a digital video signal. the display was linked to from this thread over on the eevblog forums:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/keysight-34465a-reliability/msg5912890/#msg5912890
and is as used in the HP34461 et al bench meters.

price is a tad under nz$16 (us$9.50)


cheers,
rob   :-)
Edited 2025-05-14 01:16 by robert.rozee
 
zeitfest
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Posted: 07:03am 14 May 2025
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Looks like this   (adafruit)  but less expensive.

I think it requires a driver board to keep the pixels going, at some cost.

Tft's in general seem to have become expensive lately    . Been trying to find
one for a calculator type display, even considering the old 16x2 or 20x4 lcd  
 
matherp
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Posted: 07:36am 14 May 2025
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The place for displays is here. Importantly, they have all the necessary documentation to actually use them unlike Aliexpress
 
dddns
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Posted: 09:15am 14 May 2025
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and you can trust their sayings like IPS

These are IMHO the best you can buy. Agree? Thoughts?
Edited 2025-05-14 19:26 by dddns
 
dddns
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Posted: 09:29am 14 May 2025
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If you didn't see yet a ssd1963 together with a Pico work then you won't believe it!

If you use the 9" variant you have a console experience you cannot imagine ..purely nice and beautiful writing code on it

I'm using such since it it supported with 16-bit. It is already with 8-bit somewhat of lightning fast. But with 16 bit it will fly. And you can switch to OPTION LCD 320 or so and you can even use a framebuffer with a RP2040 and can achieve amazing graphical results
Edited 2025-05-14 19:44 by dddns
 
Mixtel90

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Posted: 09:40am 14 May 2025
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You lose a lot of GPIO pins in parallel mode though! Otherwise it's a great combination.

The RP2350B would be nice with the SSD1963.
Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs
 
dddns
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Posted: 09:45am 14 May 2025
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True - and with the RP2350B and PSRAM its a rocket and the most fun to use!!!

This combination you can call the best "Basic Computer" of the world I think
Edited 2025-05-14 19:50 by dddns
 
dddns
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Posted: 09:56am 14 May 2025
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Please do not comment it but this was my approach to lite the fire in you but I did not succeed ;)
 
Mixtel90

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Posted: 10:28am 14 May 2025
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(This is not a comment: "Yes! A lovely job indeed!")

I did start a PCB design for the PGA2350 and SSD1963. They don't pair together too well mechanically, but I made quite a bit of progress at getting a 16-bit interface. I might try carrying on with it. The design was for the 5in version IIRC, but the pinout is near enough the same if not identical.
Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
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dddns
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Posted: 10:39am 14 May 2025
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Please don't get me wrong because I respect your worlk in full extend!

But in this case it would be better, because of the well known electrical issues, to use one of the REF designs as base.

..the DIL40 or was it 32
Edited 2025-05-14 20:41 by dddns
 
dddns
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Posted: 10:55am 14 May 2025
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  Mixtel90 said  (This is not a comment: "Yes! A lovely job indeed!")


..the display is stand alone usable with a desktop stand. There is enough place to add 2 18650 and the mainboard itself. This is just a Prototype and showcase and could be done much nicer. And ready would be the PicoMite Computer
 
Mixtel90

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Posted: 10:59am 14 May 2025
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That's one of the reasons that I stopped development. At the time there were complaints about the PSRAM, but to be honest that doesn't bother me. It's a "nice to have" but not all that important because it's slow. PSRAM on the PGA2350 does work, but not if you are overclocking. You have to keep to the RPi spec. That rules out the clever DVI modes.

I almost certainly won't be redesigning for the DIL version. I'll leave that up to someone else. :)
Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs
 
dddns
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Posted: 11:13am 14 May 2025
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That not quite true due to my findings.

If you save a BLIT of the whole screen it takes 1,3Mb in memory and takes IIRC 600ms to write and 200ms to load it back to screen. You can store about 5 of these Photo quality pictures in Ram and that is more than enough to realize a wonderful "PicoPaint" in true color or a digital picture frame with nice effects or an mp3 player with true covers display or whatever ..a photo jigsaw game. Its the best you can think of in the World of MCU! IMHO


I'm lucky and using a PGA2350 @378MHz but I would never suggest that to somebody
Edited 2025-05-14 21:17 by dddns
 
dddns
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Posted: 11:29am 14 May 2025
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A "smartphone" could be easily realized with the 4,3" e.g. and I'm really curious why I haven't seen such an idea pop up here


one last one: A ILI9341 is also damn fast with PicoMite even though its usually SPI!
Edited 2025-05-14 21:58 by dddns
 
dddns
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Posted: 12:11pm 14 May 2025
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And I learned that VGA/HDMI runs on both cores which makes it much more complex and it take a lot more to support(screenbuffer). So LCD is a wonderful alternative as experience
 
Mixtel90

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Posted: 12:51pm 14 May 2025
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I'm not sure about the DVI side, but VGA uses a PIO to create the sync signals. One of the CPU cores squirts out the video from the framebuffer in synchronism with  the signals created by the PIO. The other CPU core is running MMBasic independently. That just writes data to the framebuffer and the video magically appears on the screen with no other intervention.

The DVI version may well be something similar, but with the video core loading the HSTX from the framebuffer with the PIO producing the clock. Only a guess though.
Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs
 
dddns
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Posted: 01:30pm 14 May 2025
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I think to explain it easy: You loose one core and the memory for the screenbuffer
 
Mixtel90

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Posted: 02:02pm 14 May 2025
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Yes. One core, one PIO and the framebuffer RAM. It's a clever system. A bit like having a GPU.
Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs
 
robert.rozee
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Posted: 02:05pm 14 May 2025
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the display i linked to has no controller as such onboard. it is designed to be fed with 8-bits each of R, G, and B, along with DE, Hsync, Vsync, and a dot-clock. this is easy enough converted to RRGGBB (6 bits total) by paralleling up (for each respective colour) even bits for the LSB and odd bits for the MSB. so 10 I/O pins in total. the RP2350 then has to set aside a 130k frame buffer which is being permanently scanned (same as VGA and DVI/HDMI).

i was just impressed with the low cost (us$9.50) compared to small VGA and HDMI displays, and saw it as something that could be shoehorned into an HP-95LX sized housing.


cheers,
rob   :-)


addendum: it looks like it does NOT have touch.
Edited 2025-05-15 00:08 by robert.rozee
 
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