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Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 2:57 pm
by Tabulous
Does this driver support TFT direct drive, i.e. directly driving TFT with out using a GDC ?

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 3:09 pm
by Tectu
What do you mean by this driver? If you provide a driver to the GDISP module which is able to handle setPixel() calls, then you can use it without any problems.


~ Tectu

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:36 am
by Tabulous
See this application note from ST, basically directly driviny a TFT without a controller chip.

http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/acti ... 278141.pdf

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 2:41 pm
by Tectu
ChibiOS/GFX does not care about how you write to the display. If you can provide a driver which does handle this function call, it will work:

Code: Select all

void gdisp_lld_draw_pixel(coord_t x, coord_t y, color_t color);

What you'd have to do is simply manipulate the registers inside the STM32 to drive the direct LCD drive peripheral, instead of sending some SPI commands to an external controller like other drivers do.

TL;DR -> yes, it will work.


~ Tectu

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 5:52 pm
by mobyfab
To drive a TFT panel directly, you have to generate 3 clocks: VSYNC, HSYNC and the pixel clock. Also you need a parrallel port to write the data.

You'd have to write a driver to work with STM32 as you will have to use the timers and DMA controller.
As long as you have an FSMC and some SRAM it's possible.

Also the new F4x9 devices have an integrated TFT driver and DDR controller, it would be much easier/cheaper to make it work and performance would be best.

To write data to the screen you just need to write to the frame buffer.

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2013 12:06 pm
by Tabulous
mobyfab wrote:To drive a TFT panel directly, you have to generate 3 clocks: VSYNC, HSYNC and the pixel clock. Also you need a parrallel port to write the data.

You'd have to write a driver to work with STM32 as you will have to use the timers and DMA controller.
As long as you have an FSMC and some SRAM it's possible.

Also the new F4x9 devices have an integrated TFT driver and DDR controller, it would be much easier/cheaper to make it work and performance would be best.

To write data to the screen you just need to write to the frame buffer.


As per my post link to STM Appnote on Direct Driving :-)

PS F4x9 devices are not currently available, they are not released to mass market. Also this will not be the cheapest solution, i dont need 180Mhz with DSP.

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2013 12:10 pm
by Tabulous
Tectu wrote:ChibiOS/GFX does not care about how you write to the display. If you can provide a driver which does handle this function call, it will work:

Code: Select all

void gdisp_lld_draw_pixel(coord_t x, coord_t y, color_t color);

What you'd have to do is simply manipulate the registers inside the STM32 to drive the direct LCD drive peripheral, instead of sending some SPI commands to an external controller like other drivers do.

TL;DR -> yes, it will work.


~ Tectu


Mmmmm as the direct drive implementation DMA's display buffer from SRAM to the Display, all that should be needed is to get

void gdisp_lld_draw_pixel(coord_t x, coord_t y, color_t color);

writing to the correct SRAM locations. Could be very simple this :-)

Re: Direct LCD Drive

Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2013 12:13 pm
by Tectu
That's correct :)


~ Tectu