Having acquired a load of quite nice controllerless 320*240 monochrome LCD displays i'm looking at possible ways to drive them
The units in question are hantronix HDM3224-1
http://www.hantronix.com/files/data/127848613432241.pdfThere appear to be three main options for making these and presumably pretty much all other controllerless LCDs of this type do useful stuff
a) Buy a controller chip such as the Epson SED1335 and suitable SRAM and build a controller, thus making it like any other LCD. there is an appnote on this on the hantronix site:
http://www.hantronix.com/files/data/12784822273224app.pdf Pros:
High performance
Somewhat easy to drive with established code libraries
Cons:
Have to build the hardware
May not work as expected. Unclear if any programming of the controller chip its self is required
b) Build a 'poor mans' controller with some logic and ram chip, controlled with a standard MCU as done here:
http://www.pcbheaven.com/exppages/Reverse-Engineering_an_LCD_Display/?p=0 Pros:
Cheap
High performance
Cons:
Harder to build
More coding required
May end up being a project in its self
c) Acquire the fastest MCU possible with as much ram as possible and use it directly. This has been done here:
http://www.cafelogic.com/articles-2/driving-a-controllerless-graphic-lcd-with-a-pic32/2/ The resolution of the display was rather less than my one.
Pros:
Easy! example code exists
Cons:
May not even work with large LCDs
Poor performance
d) Do it in an FPGA. If I ever win the lottery and don't have to work full time... I'll learn how to do FPGAs :/
Comments and suggestions welcome!