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Sparkfun LCD's For $1.00 Each! — Parallax Forums

Sparkfun LCD's For $1.00 Each!

Mike HuseltonMike Huselton Posts: 746
edited 2008-09-16 15:37 in Propeller 1
These items appeared today on SparkFun Electronics:

Color QVGA 1.1" 128x96 sku: LCD-08844
Color QVGA Backlight and Frame sku: LCD-08842
Color QVGA 2.3" 320x240 sku: LCD-08843

Now, get this: these items are selling for $1.00 apiece and lower than a dollar in quantity.
That is not a miss print: $1.00 for one unit.

Check it out...

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JMH

Post Edited (Quantum) : 8/23/2008 5:58:26 AM GMT

Comments

  • simonlsimonl Posts: 866
    edited 2008-08-23 17:22
    Yeah, I saw them too - ridiculous price! Now all we need is a breakout board and an object in obex... (Wish I was up to the task.)

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    Cheers,

    Simon
    www.norfolkhelicopterclub.co.uk
    You'll always have as many take-offs as landings, the trick is to be sure you can take-off again ;-)
    BTW: I type as I'm thinking, so please don't take any offense at my writing style smile.gif
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,825
    edited 2008-08-25 01:44
    So it looks like the display from my cellphone with one double-sided backlight, a QVGA display on one side and a smaller display on the other side (not QVGA, despite what they say).

    The price is definitely right.· I don't think I'd want to dedicate 18+ prop pins to it, but I'd bet it has an 8-bit interface mode, although I didn't read the datasheet.

    My main concern would be finding a·connector for the flex ribbon cables.· I bet you could just solder to them, but I'd rather have a connnector.

    I may have to look into the Sparkfun minimum order again.· As I recall, they don't have one...
  • Ken PetersonKen Peterson Posts: 806
    edited 2008-08-25 13:38
    One could theoretically drive a parallel RGB display with fewer pins, and have less color depth. I had thought about modifying the VGA driver to drive one of those, but the difficulty of connecting one would require a custom PCB. That was enough to have me put it on the back burner for a while.

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    ·"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.· My wish has come true.· I no longer know how to use my telephone."

    - Bjarne Stroustrup
  • Timothy D. SwieterTimothy D. Swieter Posts: 1,613
    edited 2008-08-25 14:26
    That is a good deal for those displays. The hard part with the larger 320x240 display isn't the pin count, but the memory needed for the doing any video/animation buffers. Doing text would be fairly easy, but doing the graphics takes memory. Some of the parallel pins maybe be able to do done with an I/O expander, therefore reducing pin count, but may also reduce frame rate.

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    Timothy D. Swieter, E.I.

    www.brilldea.com·- Prop Blade, LED Painter, RGB LEDs, uOLED-IOC, eProto fo SunSPOT, BitScope
    www.sxmicro.com - a blog·exploring the SX micro
    www.tdswieter.com
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2008-08-25 14:43
    If you use them at 2 bit per color, like VGA is currently done... no problem. Of course you lose 60 out of the possible 64 colors... but without trade-off... you do no get anything wink.gif
  • Spork FrogSpork Frog Posts: 212
    edited 2008-08-25 14:54
    Ale: More like losing 262080 colors out of 262144.
  • Timothy D. SwieterTimothy D. Swieter Posts: 1,613
    edited 2008-08-25 15:16
    Exactly. Let's do some math. Maybe I did this once or twice before in other cogs.

    For now, assume a single video buffer. Usually you want two buffers to prevent jitter in animation. I am assuming a full screen buffer for bitmap graphics. Of course there are tricks we can do for just text or text and a smaller "video" window.

    240x320 pixels is 76,800 pixels total

    Assume 8 bits per pixel for now. 8 bits gives you 256 color per pixel, which is really low, maybe a pallete could be implemented. So, 1 byte (8 bits) per pixel is 76,800 bytes or 19,200 longs. This won't fit in the Prop's ram.

    I know there are some graphics gurus out there that could come up with some work around or nice compromises though where say a couple lines of text are done and a smaller video window, but still the Prop's ram is mostly used for graphics/text and it ends up being a graphics processor of sorts.

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    Timothy D. Swieter, E.I.

    www.brilldea.com·- Prop Blade, LED Painter, RGB LEDs, uOLED-IOC, eProto fo SunSPOT, BitScope
    www.sxmicro.com - a blog·exploring the SX micro
    www.tdswieter.com
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2008-08-25 15:46
    If you use 2 bits per pixel per color you have 4 luma values per color. I should have named them that insted of color. But I'm still right, for 6 bits per color you have 64 luma values, for 2 bits only 4 so you lose 60 of 64 possible luma values.

    For a tiled driver 320x240 and 16 colors or so with 16x16 pixel tiles. That will fit in HUB RAM, ugly, blocky but possible, like VGA.
  • BaggersBaggers Posts: 3,019
    edited 2008-08-25 16:03
    like Tim says, charmaps would be easier to handle, with smaller video area.
    The image could be scaled realtime as it outputs it to the display, ie 120x160 fat ( although hardly fat at 2.5" or however small the display is ) pixels, you could even have sprites over it, at 240x320 resolution, almost like our GFX Lite.
    You could even have DXT1 for images, but not at 240x320 as that'll be 28KB, and requires at least a couple of cogs for decompression realtime.
    also, with a scan line render buffer, you could have paletted images, so you could make use of as many colours as the pins you give it access to [noparse]:)[/noparse]

    Just a thought, as I'm also tempted to buy one of these [noparse]:)[/noparse]

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    http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite

    ·
  • HarleyHarley Posts: 997
    edited 2008-08-25 17:01
    These SparkFun LCDs are attractive, but....

    My old 5" b/w monitor (CRT type) crapped out a few days ago. That was my main debugging tool, using TV_out object; worked great for about 4-5 years. Dang analog electronics; possibly a simple repair, if I even had a schematic of it..

    Now my project is halted due to loss of all the debugging info.

    If only I had the time to dicker around with getting the small 2.3" LCD working. But then there are not enough I/Os left on my 2-Prop project, and the screen size (and the characters displayable) would be quite small for these old eyes to read.

    No clean way to go. Thinking of a DVD player with Video-IN. Anyone know of a decent model, under $75? yeah.gif

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    Harley Shanko
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,825
    edited 2008-09-16 00:21
    Cr*p! I had 10 of these things in my cart last Friday when we lost internet... Today the backlights are sold out [noparse]:([/noparse]
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    edited 2008-09-16 01:26
    @Harley - can you use the serial port to your pc for debugging ? It is easy to substitute the fdx object for the tv object and use PST. - Just a thought as that is what I do.
  • HarleyHarley Posts: 997
    edited 2008-09-16 15:37
    Cluso99 said...
    @Harley - can you use the serial port to your pc for debugging ? It is easy to substitute the fdx object for the tv object and use PST. - Just a thought as that is what I do.
    Well, my setup is this: my 'pc' is a iMac, new of Nov 07, which has only 3 USB ports (well, also two others for Ethernet) and mostly one USB gets used for either ViewPort (logic analyzer mode) for viewing I/O signalling or PASD for assembly debug. The board under test has a video output for TV_text via Full Duplex Serial. This latter was for checking the board without needing a 'pc', just a monitor. Prop#1 is displayed on the upper half, and Prop#2 on the lower, of the monitor. So the 'pc' is in use already with ViewPort or PASD. Thanks for the suggestion.

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    Harley Shanko
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