LCD plugin supporting more than 70 display types (now with full graphics support!!!) (2 Viewers)

[JoeDalton]

I know that some displays have built in scrolling capabilities, but I choose not to use them. The reason is simple: at this moment my plugin is able to communicate with ALL supported displays in exactly the same way. It only uses 3 display functions: clear, position cursor and send text.

To enable what you want would mean writing specific code for each display I support. This would mean more work for me and less supported displays, because I lack the time.

Now, there is some hope... Some friendly guy has promised to send me a graphic VFD (I only have a character VFD atm) 8)
This will enable me to add full support for graphical displays. This means logo's and... smooth scrolling capabilities :wink:

Joe

 

[knutinh]

I know that some displays have built in scrolling capabilities, but I choose not to use them. The reason is simple: at this moment my plugin is able to communicate with ALL supported displays in exactly the same way. It only uses 3 display functions: clear, position cursor and send text.

I see. This would be a minor improvement compared to the great benefit of having a uniform API.

To enable what you want would mean writing specific code for each display I support. This would mean more work for me and less supported displays, because I lack the time.

Now, there is some hope... Some friendly guy has promised to send me a graphic VFD (I only have a character VFD atm) 8)
This will enable me to add full support for graphical displays. This means logo's and... smooth scrolling capabilities :wink:

Joe

:-D But this means that you could only support that particular graphic VFD, right?

How is your system organized? I envision something like this:

[MP]->[LCD plugin] -> [low-level driver] -> [actual display]

Perhaps the scrolling abilities could be "hidden" in the low level driver for each particular display, then the LCD plugin would only ask for text scrolling, and the driver would decide how to implement that?

(Just me tinking loud)

regards
Knut

 

[mbb]

I finally take the time to improve the wiki about accented characters.
https://www.team-mediaportal.com/dokuw/plugins/externaldisplay/configuration
I hope that it's clear enough.

 

[JoeDalton]

:-D But this means that you could only support that particular graphic VFD, right?

No this would mean that I can support all displays with graphic capabilities that the plugin currently supports.

How is your system organized? I envision something like this:
[MP]->[LCD plugin] -> [low-level driver] -> [actual display]

It is organized as follows:

[MP] -> [LCD plugin] -> [Text Constructor] -> [Display Handler] -> [Low-Level driver] -> [display]

The text constructor determines what to display on the display, based on the current MP status and the messages in the externaldisplay.xml file. The display handler basically does all the scrolling. It extracts the part of the text that should be visible on the display, and sends it to the lowlevel display driver.

So basically it isn't really a design problem to do what you want, because that would only require a special DisplayHandler that does nothing for displays that can do their own scrolling. The problem is that most of the low-level drivers I use are LCDHype drivers that I cannot change. So I can't instruct the driver to turn on autoscrolling in the display.

For drivers I wrote myself (like the iMon driver) it could be possible, but as you mentionned before: I consider this a minor inprovement and I have more important issues to solve in this and the other plugins I'm working on...

Joe

 

[knutinh]

What parts of your "chain of command" are open source, and what parts are closed?

regards
Knut

 

[JoeDalton]

Only most of the low-level display drivers are closed, namely the ones in the plugins\process\LCDDrivers subfolder. For the rest all sources are available in CVS.

Joe

 

[Sentinel]

Sorry, my english is very basic, im from Hungary

I use bolymin pled lcd 2x20 (compatible with HD447800, with english-european character set).

I have problem with displaying localized european characters :
ö ü ó Å‘ ú é á ű í, Ö Ãœ Ó ŠÚ É à Ű Ã.
I don't know how can i these characters translate. I see ->|, gamma, triangle and other

special characters on my display, how can i these characters to xml translate section write.Other solution?

Here is the character table link:
http://www.bolymin.com.tw/tech/p09.pdf

Pls help

 

[JoeDalton]

Here is the link to some documentation on using the translation table: https://www.team-mediaportal.com/dokuw/plugins/externaldisplay/configuration

Joe

 

[krypto]

Flickering VFD display!

Hi Joe!

I have a question.
My VFD display flickers about 2 times/sek, is this when the screen uppdates or is it my display :?:

MP 0.2 RC2 todays CVS
Noritake CU20045SCPB-T23A

/Krypto

 

[JoeDalton]

Krypto,

I think this is indeed due to the updating... Try changint the value of the text mode Comm. Delay setting and see wether this helps...

Joe