On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 12:11 PM Ashhar Farhan <farhanbox@...> wrote:
peeps,
i am thinking of a graphics display for the bitx radios. here is the shopping list of ideas:
1, Ubiquitous : We should be able to source it from multiple sources and multiple countries with ease.
2. Low cost: The bitx40 costs 50 dollars to make. We can't tie it to a display alone that costs $20s.
3. RF friendly: Many of these display are very noisy.
4. Current consumption. We should be able to handle this with a few milliamps.
I have tried two options :
A) 128x64 LCD display. The common one uses the KS0108 display that needs about 11 pins. Which means, we will have to dedicate one ATMEGA328P as a 'display controller' that runs over a TTL serial line. That way, a single TTL line can be used to control the display. I have, at the moment, a display of this sort running where you can give send text message like "text 20,30, Hello world" or "rect 10,10,100,50". It seems to be a reasonable solution. It can even display the waterfall. The current consumotion is about 10 ma without the backlight. A 2N7000 turns the backlight on and off.
B) E-ink display. I have used modules from waveshare. The display is to die for. It does everything, costs a little more, however, alas, the display update time is lagging. You turn the knob and wait for the frequency to update. I haven't given up on it yet, I hope there is some breakthrough and we can get the frequency updated in real-time. If the frequency can be updated, then even the S meter would work.?