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Electronics => Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff => Topic started by: Fixup on March 15, 2016, 11:12:32 pm

Title: CPU and LCD suggestion for a simple project.
Post by: Fixup on March 15, 2016, 11:12:32 pm

Hi,

I am planning to make a small project with a 5x5cm graphical LCD.
Before I used microchip PIC (8bit) + character displays for most of my projects but now I'm considering NXP cortex M3 or some similar (LPCXpresso).

What microcontroller and LCD would you recommend for a quite simple project that only needs to show some objects on the display?
I am not so familiar with programming so I would like to keep it as simple as possible.

Title: Re: CPU and LCD suggestion for a simple project.
Post by: Rob Morley on March 16, 2016, 12:24:15 am

If your trying to keep it simple any micro with a SPI bus and sufficient flash memory (> 32KB) will do. In the past I've used a Texas Instruments MSP430 and OLED display (160px x 128px), like the NHD-1.69-160128UGC3 on projects that required a small display.

As far as the programming goes, all you need to do is set up the SPI bus and write start position, and the dimensions of the object to the screen controller and then write the bitmap data from flash to the graphics memory in the screen controller.

I've attached a small program that converts bitmaps to RGB 16it, C array file, that should make to easy to display objects and run tests on your code.  It's simple to use just find the bitmap you want to display in a folder, select it an then press the "Export to C" button and a c file is created in the same directory the bitmap is in. Use that C file to display the data.

Title: Re: CPU and LCD suggestion for a simple project.
Post by: Fixup on March 16, 2016, 09:05:30 pm

Thx for the reply.  :)

I considered the MSP430. That microcontroller would definitely be a good choice.
However in search for a suitable display i found on ebay a very cheap display and it lead me to Arduino.
I have never used any Arduino so I now ordered a    "UNO R3 2.0" ' inch TFT LCD PCB Adapter" and will give it a try. The hole package with a display costed £ 12,99. And when I checked I found that the displays can be bought separately at a very low price about (16€/10pcs).

Here is a link to the display http://www.inhaos.com/product_info.php?products_id=77 (http://www.inhaos.com/product_info.php?products_id=77)
I think this will do for my small project. Besides this display type will keep down the cost if this project turns out to be a good product and I end up selling it.

Title: Re: CPU and LCD suggestion for a simple project.
Post by: Cloud on March 16, 2016, 09:32:43 pm

Probably arduino would be the best, if you are not familiar with programming. Especially because you have many examples and libraries on the internet :)