On 11/3/2019 7:34 PM, Dave wrote: Harvey,
? Thanks for explaining all of that to me. I guess the old say applies here too.
Question: How to eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time. :) NOTE: needs salt.....
Where there is a will, there is a way. You need to make some youtube videos on this. They would be very popular. Or even write a book. I guess like anything else though. Take it one step at a time. But you still need to know a lot about the subject at hand.
Hmmm, well, tell you what, when I redesign the website, I'll update all the PC board sections, and then give some postmortems on some of the older projects.? Then I'll start with some of the newer ones.? No free software, but I will (hopefully) give people enough of an idea to know how to do things without following a cookbook.? I prefer learning rather than recipes. Documentation? It's on my list so far. On the connector and pin removal. Is this for when someone needs to change out a worn out connector or to reuse the pads and traces for a mod?
This preserves the board, while destroying the connector (for the most part).? ST Micro has a series of boards on which I base projects (NUCLEO 32/64/144).? You can't buy the boards and put the parts on them for that amount of money.? However, not all boards have all connectors.? I started off with sockets on one board, and then shifted (because I didn't look at the old boards) to sockets on the plugin.? So I got two boards with sockets, and two with pins, and I need pins for new designs. Prying off the plastic leaves an array of individual bifurcated sockets, which are then removed individually, holes cleaned out, and then putting pins back in for the new designs. so you get whatever you want once the part is removed. Harvey Thanks,
Dave
On 11/3/2019 12:04 PM, Harvey White wrote:
Ok, doing it may be above your pay grade but the concepts won't be.
Typically, any graphics display knows how to draw a dot anywhere on the screen.
So you design graphics primitives, which implement drawing a dot, panel (square/rectangular area), line, and characters.
Then you figure out how a panel can *own* things you put inside it.? Draw the panel, draw the objects inside.
Then you figure out how, when you draw those objects, they don't go outside the panel.
Now for the LCARS look, you need to tweak a panel so that it's got rounded edges.
Then you need to design what I call a polycorner, which is the basic "up one side, rounded corner, across the top" shape.
You kinda make them out of primitives if you can.
if you want a button, it's a panel that owns a text object.
Then if you have a touch screen, you can ask each object if it's been touched.
if you touch a button, then go do something (if it's active, etc, etc...)
As far as drivers are concerned, that's also easy to understand. Each graphics display needs some sort of controller, like a display card is used in a computer.
Each controller has different capabilities and different commands to make it do stuff.? Some controllers know how to draw panels, some don't.
The driver talks to a particular controller, speaks its language, and then presents a united front to the application which is telling it to draw a square, there, and in a particular color... That little part is generally customized for each graphics controller/display.
the real trick is to realize that only a certain (and very low) level needs to actually know how the display works, the rest of the programming just needs to know the size and how many colors it has.
concepts are easy enough, doing it takes a bit of time.
more writing drivers and putting parts on a board now than not.
Oh, and a point to people who are removing lots of pin connectors from PC boards (and not saving the connectors).
Even a Metcal desoldering system doesn't get it all.
To remove a large connector, if female, pull off the body leaving the pins.? Heat and remove each with the desoldering tool, attempting to suck out the solder from the back.
If male pins, pry off the plastic.? Heat the solder side of the pin and pull out while using the solder sucker when it's out.
the fun part is that this doesn't always work, especially if the design didn't use thermals for ground pins and planes.
So:? take the thinnest soldering tip you have, ideally, it'll fit into and through the hole.
put it in one soldering pencil and have the desoldering tool at the ready.
put the desoldering tool on one side (and you can add solder to get a good transfer) with the point of the other iron on the other side of the pc board.? Desoldering will give you melted solder enough that the fine tip goes through and into the hole. Suck out the solder and remove the tip.? Seems to clean out the hole very nicely when the extra heat is added.
Harvey
On 11/3/2019 11:20 AM, Dave wrote:
Harvey,
? I looked up LCARS with Google and although it didn't have anything at the top from Amazon I dug further and found a few things. Even a mod for the Android to have the phone set up like Star Trek. Pretty neat stuff. Looks like a major task to undertake but I am sure you will get it done. All of the technical explanation is above my pay grade at first, but I did a little googling to understand what you are saying. And it's still above my pay grade. :-) I wish you luck on the project.
Thanks,
Dave
On 11/2/2019 5:08 PM, Harvey White wrote:
Google LCARS.? The first thing to come up is that you can buy LCARS on amazon.? I so love brainless ads and bots.
Yep, it's the computer system in Star Trek, the Next Generation. It has a particular look to it that I'm copying in my own graphics primitives.? Designing something that does a radiused corner is fun, with a radiused fillet, too.
Just got finished putting a *theme* into play, so I can call up different color schemes as needed.
Currently, the basic board drives a 320 * 240 LCD TFT display. Using an S1D13781 (Epson), I can use the same SPI interface to drive a VGA display, since the Chinese board had its own driver. It's a straight plugin physically, and of course, needs completely different drivers.
Next project is to use the graphics DMA engine (rather limited) in an ST F7 processor to do much the same thing. Since its memory mapped rather than SPI interfaced, all I need to do is feed the processor graphics commands and it ought to be done faster.
We'll see how well that one works.? Got the driver for that written, but not debugged.
Harvey
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