Kent Displays on sale!

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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

leon_heller wrote:I'll get some of the Molex ones, then. I think I've sorted out the footprint problem, but I can check when I get them on Tuesday.
Sounds great - thanks Leon. Let me know. :-)


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Post by jonathan »

I've got the display driven in the "bright" state.

Now need to do a pile of coding on the SPI interface to better support variable length commands, implement the display's API and build a library of some useful functions like putting text somewhere on the display. As soon as there's something remotely usable by anyone else I'll post it.
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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

I probably won't be doing much more with the display until I've got a better way of interfacing to it - ie one of the boards Leon's offered to build. The cable is pretty unreliable - I've had to do an awful lot of resoldering etc and there are too many potential points of failure if something doesn't quite work.

Please to get it running, will spend the time in the meantime getting to code into shape.
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Post by leon_heller »

It's just as well that I found that Molex connector. The other one isn't a standard item (they tell me that have never sold any of them), it would take 8-10 weeks to make them and there is a large MOQ (1500 pieces)!
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Post by jonathan »

leon_heller wrote:It's just as well that I found that Molex connector. The other one isn't a standard item (they tell me that have never sold any of them), it would take 8-10 weeks to make them and there is a large MOQ (1500 pieces)!
Phew.

I think Kent did a great thing making the displays available. It's very tempting for companies to chicken out of putting their tech into public (hacker) hands. In many cases, they are simply too concerned about support.

The thing is - they need to realise that putting great tech in the hands of many thousands of people is way more likely to find them the volume vertical markets they seek - and at far lower risk - than spending years of investment in sales and marketing teams and eventually picking one vertical application.

XMOS seems well on the way to getting cutting edge technology into the hands of "the masses" too. I know there are other companies out there who would like to - I have spoken to representatives of three big name companies - but it represents such a shift in modus operandi that they need a slow transitional phase and a lot of hand-holding. Often they can see the benefits, but as they can't measure the risks they are loathe to do it.
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Post by leon_heller »

NXP is supporting hobbyists and students with their mbed and LPCXpresso kits for their new ARM Cortex-M0 and -M3 chips:

http://mbed.org/

http://ics.nxp.com/lpcxpresso/

The mbed costs £44.30 and the LPCXpresso is £18! I've got them both.
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Post by jonathan »

I seem to have driven the LCD into a state where the only command it will respond to is a software reset.

Not sure what to do. Have asked Kent. Anyone got any ideas?
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Post by otitov »

try to re-check your SPI implementation. try with other microchip.
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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

otitov wrote:try to re-check your SPI implementation. try with other microchip.
I mean, it was all working - I could drive the screen into various states using various different commands, and then I did a software reset - and now it won't accept any other commands EXCEPT software reset. :?
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Post by otitov »

re-check your wiring on display's side - may be you got a bad contact. if you have an access to logic analyzer - re-check that everything is fine. disconnect the display for 1-2 hours, re-connect.
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