Has anyone tried a QVGA color display with a PIC?

[TomM]

I have a couple of applications that are using a 240 x 128 mono LCD display, that I would like to add a little color capability to.

The Nokia displays are just a little to small.

There are a lot of 5.7" 320x240 (QVGA) color displays out there that are available for under $100. Unfortunately, it appears that
they are all controllerless.

I have seen a couple of $400 solutions from Earth and Reach,

http://www.reachtech.com/display/display.html

http://store.earthlcd.com/ezLCD-004-ezLCD004?sc=7&category=297

but they are just a bit too pricey and full featured. All I need is the ability to do some line drawings and text in color.

Epson makes some nice looking controller chips,

http://vdc.epson.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=291&Itemid=99

but they require a bunch of address lines to talk to them, so they would probably need a dedicated PIC as a co-processor. Before I
embark on a month(or more)-long development project, I thought I would check and see if any of you guys had been down this path
already and knew of a better way.

[Brock]

Optrex has a sweet TFT that can be controlled by an SPI interface:

http://www.optrex.com/products/partdetail.asp?PartNumber=T-55149GD030J-MLW-AJN

[TomM]

Thanks for the quick reply.

There seem to be a few 3.5" and smaller displays, with 320x240, or even better resolution. It would seem that it would be not much harder to make a 5.7" version. I guess there is just not a large application out there demanding one yet?

I might consider getting one of these to fool around with, but to replace my existing display, I'll need something larger. The 5.7" is just about right, and there seem to be about a half dozen or so manufacturers offering them, in both TFT and CSTN, just none with an interface that I'm comfortable with.

[Brock]

People tend to use graphics controllers or standard video with the larger screens.
The Optrex 3" is the biggest one I know of that can be used with just an SPI
interface to control it (and write image data).

[TomM]

I found a display for around $200 that looks like it might be the Holy Grail for 8-bit Pic applications. We're going to order a couple to play with. I'll let you know how it turns out.

"Utilizing Human-Machine Interface (HMI) experience, the LMR67802 is created to reduce hardware and software re-design efforts. It lets users drive a TFT display with the well known 8051 bus. The 5.6” TFT module is particularly suitable for low-to-mid volume industrial applications and for companies considering an upgrade from monochrome to TFT as the HMI of LMR67802 is compatible with controllers of monochrome displays. Touch screen version of the display is also available (model no. TSR67802)."


http://www.densitron.com/Displays/content.aspx?Id=1376

http://www.densitron.com/Displays/content.aspx?id=638

http://www.densitron.com/Displays/content.aspx?id=230

http://www.densitron.com/Displays/touch_screen_displays.aspx

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/92519.pdf