Microcontroller to video

[jaRON]

Hi,
I working on a Microcontroller fan controller. It going to controll 15 fans. I like to have a lcd on it. I have foun a LCD Panel OSD070TN84 and I going to use the Digital View ALR-1400 for a driver board. What i need to know is how hard is to go from Microcontroller to video so it can come up on lcd and how.

[johnboxall]

Which microcontroller family are you going to use?
That ALR-1400 looks like mega-overkill. How about this:
http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=131
There are two versions. One has a serial interface, so you can drive it with almost any type of uC or even an Arduino.
There is also a different version:
http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=149
Which is programmed using its own language - with much more control over the graphics capabilties. The "4DGL" programming language is easy to use and well documented.
Food for thought.

[jaRON]

can that only run the lcd or can run the fans to

[joelby]

It's just a VGA generator. You'll still need to knock up a separate fan controller, since the dual combination of video controller and fan controller has limited appeal in the wider market.

To drive something like the ALR-1400, you'll need to look at the number of I/Os it requires, the bandwidth, and the voltage levels and see if all of these are compatible with the microcontroller you're planning to use. It seems like this is a very ambitious project for you - perhaps you could start off with a far simpler 16x2 LCD and then once that's working, work up to more complicated things.

Graphical displays and touch screens are difficult to use with cheap, simple microcontrollers and are often the domain of embedded computers, unless you can find an interface board that abstracts display operations into a simple command protocol. These are typically quite expensive.

[jaRON]

I'm looking it the 7'' TFT LCD Module +2AV Driver Board +Touch Screen +VGA Car Display


http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-TFT-LCD-Module-2AV-Driver-Board-Touch-Screen-VGA-Car-Display-/320750841302?pt=BI_Electrical_Equipment_Tools&hash=item4aae3d6dd6

[joelby]

What sort of microcontroller were you planning to use? To use that, you'll need to generate VGA at one of the supported resolutions and implement a USB host to interface with the touch screen.

[jaRON]

I going to use the microcontroller 80C58 and i find this wedside. I do not know if i going to use the touch screen


http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/eceprojectsland/STUDENTPROJ/2005to2006/aml66/colorVideo/colorVideo.htm

[Bored@Work]

I going to use the microcontroller 80C58

Not enough on-chip memory to hold the graphics elements you will need to fill your 7" 800x480 display with meaningful content.

[jaRON]

what microcontroller should i use or should i use memory chip

[Bored@Work]

You should rethink that whole thing. This is not LEGO, where you just select parts from a shiny colorful catalog and they will all magically fit.

Plan it. Run the numbers. Think it through. What you currently selected just does not make sense.

• An expensive but dumb 7" 800x480 graphics panel.
• An expensive LCD controller board with DVI and VGA inputs.
• A measly $1 8 bit micro with barely enough ompf to drive an intelligent display (that you don't have).
• Visions of adding a touchscreen.

What do you really want? What do you really need to display? Do you want to play it big? Wouldn't small do instead? Wouldn't buttons do for input? And anyhow, 15 fans? Where is the driver hardware?

[jaRON]

ok here is what i like to do is make one of a kind water cooling pc. That is why i need 14 fans. I have the driver hardware for the fans. I'm using IRFZ44 transistor and a Microcontroller. One transistor for 4 fans, One transistor for 4 fans, One transistor for 2 fans, One transistor for 2 fans, One transistor for 1 fan, and One transistor for 1 fan. Why I like to have the 7 in lcd so it can show the fans speed and the Temperature. I have new lcd for $72.00 and I not going to use a touchscreen. I looking it using the µVGA-II(GFX) or µVGA-II(SGC) and I get a new Microcontroller. I looking it the pic18f47j53 it has 120 kb flash on it .can you use a sd card on it?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-TFT-LED-LCD-Module-A-D-Board-VGA-2AV-Function-/190571437289?pt=BI_Electrical_Equipment_Tools&hash=item2c5ef15ce9#ht_4119wt_1037

[joelby]

Yes, you can use an SD card with most micro controllers including the PIC18F, as long as the voltage levels are compatible.

[jaRON]

Ok I know I need more memory to run a lcd. But if I use sd card can I save memory by using Images off the sd card. So what I meen is I have a background and only the fans speed and the Temperature will update

[DrGeoff]

You could use something like this to run your display: http://microvga.com/
And maybe a pic18 for the I/O.

[codeboy2k]

ok here is what i like to do is make one of a kind water cooling pc. That is why i need 14 fans. I have the driver hardware for the fans. I'm using IRFZ44 transistor and a Microcontroller. One transistor for 4 fans, One transistor for 4 fans, One transistor for 2 fans, One transistor for 2 fans, One transistor for 1 fan, and One transistor for 1 fan. Why I like to have the 7 in lcd so it can show the fans speed and the Temperature. I have new lcd for $72.00 and I not going to use a touchscreen. I looking it using the µVGA-II(GFX) or µVGA-II(SGC) and I get a new Microcontroller. I looking it the pic18f47j53 it has 120 kb flash on it .can you use a sd card on it?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-TFT-LED-LCD-Module-A-D-Board-VGA-2AV-Function-/190571437289?pt=BI_Electrical_Equipment_Tools&hash=item2c5ef15ce9#ht_4119wt_1037

Before you get started, I'd just like to say that your idea is ridiculous..  No matter how much "One-of-a-kind" it is, using 14 fans for any PC is totally stupid. 
A water cooled PC has two goals: better thermal transfer so you can perhaps overclock, and less fans for lower noise (just a pump and radiator cooling fan).
What you want is a bigger radiator, less fans, and the fans you do have should be big and slow. If your PC has 3-way SLI graphics or something like that, then
get rid of the fans, use GPU water coolers, water manifolds to spread the cool water to more hot parts, and like I said, a larger radiator.  Do the water flow and
 thermal calculations properly, and you'll see that you don't need 14 fans, but you need a good water distribution system and proper flow.

Also, a 7inch, $72,  800x400 color display is overkill to display fan speeds and temps.

[ivan747]

ok here is what i like to do is make one of a kind water cooling pc. That is why i need 14 fans. I have the driver hardware for the fans. I'm using IRFZ44 transistor and a Microcontroller. One transistor for 4 fans, One transistor for 4 fans, One transistor for 2 fans, One transistor for 2 fans, One transistor for 1 fan, and One transistor for 1 fan. Why I like to have the 7 in lcd so it can show the fans speed and the Temperature. I have new lcd for $72.00 and I not going to use a touchscreen. I looking it using the µVGA-II(GFX) or µVGA-II(SGC) and I get a new Microcontroller. I looking it the pic18f47j53 it has 120 kb flash on it .can you use a sd card on it?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-TFT-LED-LCD-Module-A-D-Board-VGA-2AV-Function-/190571437289?pt=BI_Electrical_Equipment_Tools&hash=item2c5ef15ce9#ht_4119wt_1037

14 fans!? Are you running NASA outer-space ballistic calculation software or something?  $100 is way too much for cooling your computer. Also it will make more noise than a construction site. An LCD like that is waaay overkill.  You are going from raster graphics MCU up to VGA down to raster graphics again.

If you really insist on doing a controller like this, then get huge low-RPM fans and use a text based screen. Mount it on a drive bay with all the controller circuits so it looks like this:



That commercial kit is designed to be used with the parallel port of the computer, but the display was intended to be used by an MCU. It is a HD47780 based LCD. You can easily replace that ribbon cable on the right with your own LCD control circuitry and fan controller, if you want to buy the kit. Otherwise, you can take a drive bay cover and cut it so the LCD can fit, then add any controls and buttons you need.

The kit also seems to have some sort of fan controller, take a look (it's a spanish forum with lots of abbreviations used for chatting so don't expect Google to translate it properly): http://foro.noticias3d.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=245118


Just curious, what are you using to sense the temperature on the case and how will you control those fans?
Nice and clean. You may want to get a big microcontroller with lots of pins (specially PWM pins) to shine some LEDs, if you are into case modding.

[ivan747]

Here are some eBay links to products similar to what you are trying to do, they may be useful for inspiration of for actually installing them:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-PC-CPU-HDD-4-Channel-Fan-Speed-Controller-Control-Led-Cooling-Front-Panel-/250910506092?_trksid=p4340.m1374&_trkparms=algo%3DPI.WATCH%26its%3DC%252BS%26itu%3DUCC%26otn%3D15%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D4382266224631597155#ht_3607wt_800


http://www.ebay.com/itm/CrystalFontz-633-LCD-DISPLAY-PC-BAY-Serial-Cable-NEW-/350355845263?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5192d5f08f#ht_1709wt_732
Information on that one:

http://www.crystalfontz.com/product/CFA633YYBKS

[Hypernova]

+1 For the Crystalfontz panels. I have used the 4x20 635 version and the UART interface takes away a lot of pain. Just set up printf and you are done.

[ivan747]

Here's a product selection tool from CrystalFontz. HyperNova is right: driving an HD47780 can be annoying sometimes, specially with line mapping. Serial should at least help in saving I/O lines. Also most MCUs come with hardware UARTs for driving serial lines, but only the high pin count devices come with parallel ports and it's an overkill to use them.

The ones that fit in modern 5.25" bays are the ones with buttons, they are nice but they can only be controlled with USB, so my suggestion is to get a 5.25" drive bay to 3.5" drive bay adapter and use the remaining space on it to add buttons and circuitry, but be careful not to short anything to the enclosure. The 3.5" drive bay LCDs are available in many colors and they include the mounting hardware.

https://www.crystalfontz.com/products/select_kit.html

If you ever finish this project, please let us know. It sounds like a cool mod, specially to me. I have done things similar to this in my quest to make a homebrew media center PC. It kinda worked, but in the end it was all done on a really tight budget (kind of a challenge) using parallel ports, serial ports, an old analog TV tuner card, Ubuntu and a media center software. I can show some of the stuff I have done, if you want to.

Best wishes,
Ivan