Components Prototype

Week 4

• As mentioned previously, I'm planning to make an "Automatic GUI generator for small displays on machines".
• Below is a flow diagram of how that works:

• As shown, I'm currently plan to build the display (with some buttons) as a whole module, which comunicates with the rest of your machine over some protocol, by sending commands.
• The display module is told which "screens"/"slides" to show, and the machine is told what functionalities to invoke.
• This way the user will have less to worry about, and I get to make the hardware that suits perfectly, instead of having to do compatibility stuff which makes both parties miserable
• Whether this is a truly viable design, will be revealed as I continue development...

• So far I've made a hardware prototype with Sharp Memory LCD 128x128
• They look very nice, a bit like e-ink, but with much faster refresh rate. I've been meaning to try them out for a while.
• I designed my own PCB and ordered it at JLC. It has a FPC connector which connects to the bare screen I got from digikey, instead of buying some overpriced module from a certain fruit-related place...
• It is powered by an attiny1614, it also has an on board 1Mbit RAM, so it can buffer many frames.
• Proof that the RAM is working is given by the above images of Game of Life, which requires buffering the previous state, which the 2KB RAM builtin to attiny can't fit.
• I generated a font optimized for the way the screen displays stuff, it is based on the freeglut 8x13 bitmap font, commonly found in OpenGL/openFrameworks stuff.
• The codes are free of bloat from the graphic libraries made by some fruit.
• Currently the outgoing UART connection is missing so it can't really talk with your machine yet. I'll add that to the next version.
• I also plan to replace the two normal buttons with a five-way directional button.
• Other software and firmware stuff are yet to be written!