Don't you think, that our pixels are just too big?
CuriousOne
Posts: 931
While mobile devices and televisions going to 4K resolution, we still stuck with giant pixels, why?
average 8x8 led matrix, has HUUUGE dots (3mm is the smallest). While technology for long time already allows them to make at least 5 times smaller.
We use giant 2 inch displays with 128x96 resolution. There are a lot of smartphones on market with 4' inch screen and FullHD resolution. Scaled down to 2 inch, this means we should have 960x540 pixels !
Our 1602 displays have 5x7 matrix, while technology for at least 10 years, allows to have 10x14 in same physical dimensions.
Even if I decide to buy some color TFT, the best what I can get in terms of size vs resolution is 2.5/320x240, which is just funny.
Don't you feel ashamed?
Personally I do.
average 8x8 led matrix, has HUUUGE dots (3mm is the smallest). While technology for long time already allows them to make at least 5 times smaller.
We use giant 2 inch displays with 128x96 resolution. There are a lot of smartphones on market with 4' inch screen and FullHD resolution. Scaled down to 2 inch, this means we should have 960x540 pixels !
Our 1602 displays have 5x7 matrix, while technology for at least 10 years, allows to have 10x14 in same physical dimensions.
Even if I decide to buy some color TFT, the best what I can get in terms of size vs resolution is 2.5/320x240, which is just funny.
Don't you feel ashamed?
Personally I do.
Comments
Better let our dedicate GPU handle it ... ooops!
Wait, we're a microcontroller, not a cell phone or a tablet....cell phones don't have any I/O pins aren't they ashamed?
Horses can run fast and pull heavy loads, I don't feel ashamed!
Apples are red and oranges are orange, which should feel ashamed?
Now they are way ahead, and we're stuck.
This is why I'm ashamed.
Often I only use one pixel. If a LED lights up when it should the device is working else I have a bug somewhere:)
Are you referring to we as in Parallax and fans?
There is nothing stopping you to get a ARM4+ with external sram etc.
Parallax can not compete against an ARM9, their target audience is different anyway.
LED matrix, though they only cost 3cent each once you start having hires, the cost start showing.
240x200 = $1440 so that is the reason they don't use hundred of thousands of 0402 leds
Nope, not one little bit ashamed. They have their place, and are very useful in those applications.
The only thing you should be ashamed of of is not using the right tool for the job when it is laid before you.
10 years ago mobile phones were using monochrome 64x48 screens, so do we (by "we" I mean the diy/curiosity users). Now, we still playin' with 64x48s, but mobile phones (and other consumer devices), went far ahead, and we're stuck.
I think the point that others are making is that microcontroller projects may or may not need all of the bells & whistles of a modern smart phone. The features add expense & complexity of programming that many experimenters, developers and users may not need or want to pay for. If your project needs a lots of memory, high-res display, graphics, touch screen, web browser, etc... you may want to look at ARM-based (or other) micros that are designed to support those features (while less efficient or less usable in other capabilities). Then again, there are folks right here in the forums that are building Prop-based projects that are crossing the line in those areas (You go, smart forum posters!).
Microcontrollers such as the Prop, Atmel (Arduino), PIC, etc... are definitely fast for what they support in fairly high I/O performance, lots of I/O access and in the case of the Prop, "8 cogs" of multiprocessing. This is at a cost that can support hobbyists, developer prototyping, small-numbered product releases. ARM and the like, chips are becoming less expensive, but the orders of magnitude in sales support that (how many millions of iPhones and Android phones have been sold and are being replaced with new units, as we post?) feed them (feed their R&D efforts) is not practical for smaller companies like Parallax and organizations like Arduino.
I don't feel ashamed for the Prop and other somewhat equivalent microcontrollers! What Parallax and a few other companies are doing with their products & support puts great technology into the hands of folks that want to develop cool projects, without the need to work within a large corporation (although, I got involved with Arduino & the Prop while working for a large corporation:-)...
We're not stuck!
dgately
If you want a display and a micro that has the memory and interface to drive it you can have one any time. Get a Beagle or Olimex or whatever ARM board and a display for it. Easy, just lay down the 200 bucks it might all cost.
Might be cheaper to pick up a 100 dollar Android unit and use that as the interface though.
Meanwhile MCUs are certaily not "stuck" we have a greater variety available now than ever. In all shapes and sizes, with all kind of capabilities, and with costs ranging from almost negligible upwards.
If such MCUs don't suit the job you want to do you have many other options.
I see what you mean. Displays aren't as popular to the majority of the diy/curiosity crowd (yet?). My two cents is I'd rather use a simple 3 wire 4 line back lit LCD, or a few LEDs or EMIC2 hehe. In need for a larger matrix, I want to start out with something like a 10 year old display and have no shame at all in doing so. After that stage if I had an application for a device that required more pixels, I'd want something with much smaller pixels. Actually it depends on the application, sometimes blocky graphics are eye catching or add a unique style element that may never ever go away.
Really, it is all about cost and complexity. Perhaps there is a market for higher resolution displays that offer some on-board smarts to remain accessable.
Too much bandwidth (display resolution/color vs mono) for a small amount of data and you are wasting resources...too little bandwidth for a large amount of data and one cannot update the interface in a timely rate.
Yes...it would be nice to see higher res displays in small form factors...but the microtroller niche we are discussing is very cost sensitive and small production quantities which makes offering the higher res displays difficult. It will happen but it takes longer than anyone likes.
http://www.4tronix.co.uk/files/lcd1602.jpg
compare the active (usable) area with total area, and then took a look at any modern mobile phone and do the same comparison there.
You can have it lashed up to your Propeller or other MCU in half an hour and you can write the code to drive it from scratch in about the same time. It's also very cheap.
I'm sure that is not so for a mobile phone display.
You can in fact buy phone style displays, 4, 7, 10 inch. Check the Olimex web site for example. They might not be as common or cheap as we would like and they are certainly harder to use.
I'm seeing more and more nice displays turning up everywhere from POS advertising to bottle recycling machines in stores etc. Perhaps soon some of that supply will trickle down to us hobbyists in a cheap easy to use form.
Yes I know I can buy phone display, but it is hard to interface, because most modern ones use specific interface, and interfacing ICs aren't available directly - in phones it is implemented in the main MCU generally.
Ah, so what you are really complaining about is not pixel size but the lack of a small, simple to interface, and inexpensive hi rez display. I agree. It would be very nice to see several sub 10 inch displays with various screen sizes and resolutions in both 4x3 and 16x9.
Cost me 60 Euros. So these things are available, there must be more offerings out there by now.
Just now I'm tempted to go mad and get an Olimex ARM board with a 7 or 10 inch display: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/
What we need is much more compact 1602, with larger usable area and higher resolution. With switchable size fonts and so on.
The idea of putting linux/arm/android into everything, running huge clock speeds and large amounts of ram is not DIYish, I believe.
Or this? http://www.adafruit.com/products/358
They have several other displays that sound close to what you're looking for.