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Any interest in a graphics chip board for 3.5" or 4.3" touchscreens? — Parallax Forums

Any interest in a graphics chip board for 3.5" or 4.3" touchscreens?

RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
edited 2012-03-01 03:07 in Propeller 1
I'm contemplating making a new board that uses a Solomon ssd1926 to do some better graphics with my 3.5" and 4.3" touchscreens...

There's a lot of info around on the ssd1926 because there's a couple Microchip demo boards that use it. It's also for sale on the microchipdirect web site.

One interesting feature is that it can read and show jpg files directly from a SD card.

I did notice that there's also an ssd1928 that adds cmos camera input. But, I can't find any source for that chip...

Comments

  • wjsteelewjsteele Posts: 697
    edited 2010-10-06 18:06
    Not only am I interested, I'll help you on it! I just ordered a few of them last week so I can play around with them!

    Bill
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2010-10-06 18:38
    Item description SSD1928QL9 Image Processor
    Part number SSD1928QL9
    Price US$7.00
    Freight charge US$6.00 for registered air parcel email us to order if you want to ship by EMS Speedpost

    http://www.techtoys.com.hk/Components/SSD1928QL9/SSD1928QL9.htm

    http://www.techtoys.com.hk/Displays/LVC75Z779%20Eval/SSD1928_1.2.pdf

    http://www.solomon-systech.com/products/ssd1928.htm
  • GameHackerGameHacker Posts: 15
    edited 2010-10-07 05:51
    Wow, that chip looks like it would be great! That should free up some program space!
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-07 06:10
    Bob,

    Thanks for the link! Price looks great. They even sell a CMOS camera that works with that chip. And they have a demo board of their own for a 3.5" LCD. I was leaning toward the simpler chip until I looked at this link.

    Bill,

    I might need help!

    This chip could allow for really, really cool applications. Now, I'm trying to think of how to implement it... I could do some kind of Prop Platform shield. I kinda like how Microchip made one board that different displays could just plug into.

    My only problem doing some kind of generic board is that somebody from Hong Kong probably already sells one for a fraction of what I could do...

    My other thought is to see if there's enough room on the PSB board to drop this chip in...
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-07 06:14
    The other dilema is how best to use the SD card. I'd need the SD attached to the graphics chip in order to do jpg decode/encode. But, that would mean I'd have to rewrite the low level FSRW code if we want the Prop to take to the SD card.

    Still, this chip uses all 4 data lines to the SD card so it may be possible to improve throughput beyond what FSRW can do.

    The other question is how many pins to use on the data bus to the chip.
    I'm leaning toward an 8-bit interface so that there's plenty of Prop pins free. But, a 16 or more bit interface would be a lot faster...
  • KaosKiddKaosKidd Posts: 296
    edited 2010-10-07 07:08
    Rayman;
    Just an idea here. Do you think that the boards could be mounted close enough to create a larger display? For example, 3 across and 2 down, 6 displays mounted close enough that a end user wouldn't notice a gap between them? Then someone could build bigger displays / controls.

    KK
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-07 09:17
    KK,

    I'm not sure that'd be a good way to go... You can buy large touchscreen panels that you can just mount on VGA monitor screens, if you need a bigger screen...
  • Jack BuffingtonJack Buffington Posts: 115
    edited 2010-10-07 14:45
    I think that I might be interested in playing around with this chip too. It sounds interesting. Rayman, are you interested in collaborating? I have personal projects that could use pretty much all of the features on the chip. What LCD are you thinking of using?

    I'm fairly good in many areas of embedded programming and hardware but have a special interest in graphics and vision stuff.

    What parts of the chip are you guys interested in? I would be most interested in working on the LCD portion and the camera interface. I guess that they are all sort of interrelated though.

    -Jack
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-07 16:01
    Sure, we can all collaborate through this forum... We can talk about ideas here and then when I have an actual board design, I'll post it in a new thread.

    I actually don't think this will be very hard. There's plenty of demo boards with schematics and code out there...

    I think SSD1928 is much better suited for my 3.5" touchscreen than the 4.3" one... There is just enough RAM for a full screen 16 bit photo on the 4.3" screen, but that wouldn't leave any RAM for other things...

    I'm leaning towards copying Microchip and have one board that can drive different LCDs by having a generic port with adapters for the different LCDs.

    I saw a camera module at Sparkfun that should work for ~$10. Not exactly sure how to solder it though...

    I also want to go through the datasheet again and see exactly what kind of graphics this thing can do. I'm hoping I can store a font in RAM and then bitblit it to the screen.

    The link that Bob posted above also has a different chip with a lot more RAM but no camera or SD card.

    I'm hoping that all the Solomon chips are similar enough that whatever we do for one with carry over to the whole line...
  • koehlerkoehler Posts: 598
    edited 2010-10-13 02:45
    Hi Rayman,

    Tried to google a video of your boards, not finding any. I need something exactly like this to do realtime monitoring of several environmental traces.
    Do your boards just take a bitmap from SD or flash and paste it on the LCD, or can you actually plot to it like a normal bitmapped PC screen?
    I read your PDF on the PSM, and on page 15 I think you said it runs the Graphics Demo, which I guess means I could write to it and do normal graphics writes to it at x frames per second?

    Doh, something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHSK65OTfHI
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-13 04:30
    Ok, the 2.4" PSM display has an integrated "brain" display controller with memory, so it can do full color photos.

    What I'm refering to here is the "dumb" 4.3" and 3.5" touchscreens that don't have any memory and work a lot like a DVI monitor. It's these displays that I want to add a display controller too.
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-13 06:11
    I think I have an idea that would let current PSB and PTP owners splice in this new board...

    If I can find a supply of 60-pos ffc jumper cables, I may be able to use the existing LCD connector as the output to this new board that will have the 60-pos fpc connectors as both inputs from PSB and PTP and outputs to the LCDs. Unfortunately the PSB doesn't have enough connected Prop pins for this to work directly. But, I have an idea to combine the WR# and RD# signals...
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-14 08:23
    Had a heck of a time finding a supplier for the ffc cable jumper! Was starting to think about making them myself... But, finally I found some. The price is steep, but if I can pull this off, it'll be an easy, low cost way to add first rate graphics to PSB or PTP...
  • jaegjaeg Posts: 156
    edited 2010-10-19 08:56
    Will this board be like the current breakout board available for the 4.3" touch screen?
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-10-19 19:03
    So here's the current status:

    I'm very dissappointed to learn that the SSD1928 (with camera and SD card interface) won't work with my LCDs.

    So, I'm looking at either the SSD1926 with SD card interface but no camera or the SSD1963 will a lot more memory.

    I'm still on the fence, but leaning toward the SSD1963.

    I'm 99% confident that I can make this work with the PTP and the 3.5" displays. I'm less confident about the 4.3" displays as it will take a couple tricks to make up for using less Prop pins... (But, I'll give it a go anyway).

    So, I think it will work with the 4.3" breakouts, but don't know for suree yet.
  • velocityxlrgvelocityxlrg Posts: 18
    edited 2010-12-31 11:49
    Rayman, what is the status of this graphics chip board? I have one of your PTP's but there is no way I can make it do what I need with the limits of hub ram.
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2010-12-31 12:21
    Thanks for asking about this... I have sample chips but got distracted by other projects...
    I've still got a couple small fires to put out and then I'll work on this with top priority.

    Getting the 3.5" screens working with a Solomon chip is a major goal for me.
    I've already secured a large quantity of the 3.5" screens and have found sources for
    the Solomon chips.

    Some of the Solomon chips also support a camera and SD card.
    But, first I'll start just getting the chip working do do full screen, 24 bit graphics.
    I may ask for help on the software side getting JPEG encode/decode, SD card and camera interfaces working...
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,844
    edited 2012-03-01 03:07
    This has been a long, long time coming... But, I've finally worked up the drive to get into the Solomon chips...

    To get started, I cheated and bought this SSD1963 controller board from Newhaven for their 4.3" displays.
    They have a similar board for 5.7" and 7" panels..

    It took me a few days, but I finally have a basic driver working:

    Finally.jpg


    I still have projects in mind for Solomon chips with 2.4" and 3.5" touchscreens.
    But, I'm going to start with a smart-panel board (PSB2) for the Newhaven 4.3" touchscreen.

    (Actually, I'm going to start by seeing if I can connect the SSD1963 to a DVI monitor, but that's another story...)
    Finally.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 110K
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