LCD plugin supporting more than 70 display types (now with full graphics support!!!) (1 Viewer)

[JoeDalton]

ETA: 1 or 2 days

But don't expect too much of it...
My tests here indicate CPU usages close to 100%, due to the large amounts of data that need to be sent to the display, a few times per second.
But this shouldn't be a real problem because the background thread that steers the display runs at the lowest priority.

This means that everything else that needs more CPU power will slow the display down...

Joe

 

[CHli]

This is just Great

 

[tkortell]

Cant agree more, I'm very interested in what you have been working on JoeDalton

R / tk

 

[JoeDalton]

Just to let you know what to expect:

I also made a litte video of smooth scrolling.
You can download it here

But as I said. This uses 100% CPU, so I'll disable it by default.

Hope you like it..

PS: the big text in the bottom is an overlay image. The text in the top is drawn over it.
I used the Arial Black font with a fontsize of 10 points here...

Joe

 

[GaryW]

CPU load

any idea what's causing it?
the video's great by the way.

 

[JoeDalton]

Like I said before, the complete screen is sent to the display, serveral times per second.

As my display is 160x128 pixels this means pumping 2560 bytes over the parallel port. To send one byte, one must first check whether the display is ready to receive,which means sending 2 bytes to the display's control register, then read it's response, and then send another byte to the control register.

Thus, per screen this means 2560*5 = 12.5 K per screen, and this 5 to 10 times per second. I know that this isn't that much, but besides that the plugin also needs to determine the current MP status, get the info it needs to display and build the screen before it can be sent.

All in the background...

I just tested this while playing a full HD (1440x1080) movie in MP.
The movie runs smooth without dropping any frames, but the display scrolls awfully slow then

Joe

 

[swifty]

Wow, GREAT news Joe!!
The screenshot looks awesome
Just an idea... until its possible to figure out a way of lowering CPU usage, would it be possible to make the number of updates per second configurable so we can test what a good compromise would be on our setups?
I have a fairly slow (1.4ghz) cpu so need to squeez every bit of juice I can

Thanks for your great efforts in the MP Community

 

[deansewell]

Double Line Characters?

Hi, is it possible to show double line characters on a 2 x 16 display? (imon vfd). Thus, the charachers would be bouble height and you would have only one effective line?

I ask as my VFD is some 4m from where I generally sit and it is impossible to read and I sometimes use this to navigare with the main screen off.

Any ideas?

Regards,

 

[trosty]

I just added another long awaited feature: Text Mode Progress Bar!!!

example: [#####------]

Does this one also work with the 0.2.1 release?

Thanks!

 

[JoeDalton]

Yes, this is already included in the 0.2.1 release...

Joe