ECIO with gLCD EB058

[dickcheung]

Hi,
I am new to gLCD, and currently use my ECIO (28P) to control the EB058. In another pages, big brother has recommended good steps and suggestions on how to control EB058, I have tried and successfully turn it on. However, the screen display some unwanted vertical color lines at the left/right side of the LCD as attached.

My setting:
Flowcode:
- gLCD set to port B, modified the initialization code (port b, software mode,..etc)
- gLCD properties set to customized background and foreground, and set the EB057 (as no EB058 in my flowcode)
Hardware: (gLCD)
- use B in the setting, no any jumper added.

May I have your help on:
1) does the attached observation normal? how to remove the color lines?
2) if I want to use S/W mode, how can I do? as ECIO divided the SPI port into 2 sections (2 ports), and flowcode only allowed to set one port for each device (eblock)
3) I tried to set background and foreground in the program, but failed, no matter I set the value, the words will display as white in color, and even the background will not changed. ( I already set customized in flowcode)
(If I preset the color in flowcode gLCD properties, it will show like the attached)
Thanks so much.
Dick

[petesmart]

Hi Dick,

I had a similar issue with my gLCD.. It appeared to be a bonding problem with the ribbon cable to either board or display. Don't think that there is much you can do about this Perhaps try pressing gently on the edge of the display glass and see if you get a change in the line pattern. This will confirm if you have a physical with the ribbon connection

I would sent a PM to Benj at MM with a picture and I'm sure he will help you..

All the best

Pete

[dickcheung]

Hi Pete,
Thanks so much for your great help. I will try this for sure later on.

And hope Benj will give help soon.

Thanks again.
Dick

Hi Dick,

I had a similar issue with my gLCD.. It appeared to be a bonding problem with the ribbon cable to either board or display. Don't think that there is much you can do about this Perhaps try pressing gently on the edge of the display glass and see if you get a change in the line pattern. This will confirm if you have a physical with the ribbon connection

I would sent a PM to Benj at MM with a picture and I'm sure he will help you..

All the best

Pete

[Benj]

Hello,

I've sent you a PM about returning the board. Many thanks.

[Jay Dee]

Hi,
Just started to play with the ECIO 40P and an EB043 gLCD.
The ECIO 40P had the SPI pins shared between both Port B and C (SDO is on Port C pin 7) but the component property screen will only allow you to select one port for all of the pins. Is there a work around for this ?
Checked it in V4 and V5, same deal. However Its not really holding me up as a gLCD is currently just an expansion option on a side project.

Also, I noticed in V5 that the interrupt pin has gone from the CAN setup, was this never used by the CAN ?
Thanks. J.

[Benj]

Hello,

The EB043 does not use the hardware SPI and allows you to bit bang the data to it using any freely available I/O on your device. Refer to the datasheet for the EB043 to get the wiring and patch system setup correctly for your pins.

The CAN component used to list the interrupt pin but the component code did not ever use it. If you wish to use it then you could connect the signal through to say an INT pin on your chip and then use a Flowcode INT interrupt to trigger the calling of the CheckRx function.

[Jay Dee]

Hi,
Thanks for the info about Bit Banging the data to the display, for playing on the bench this will work fine.
However in an existing project I already use the hardware SPI for communicating with CAN and a TLC Led driver chip, is it possible to get the GLCD components to also work from the hardware SPI?

Or is there a technical reason for not using the hardware SPI? From my side using the existing SPI component and hardware SPI is quick and simple to implement.

I think the 4D GLCD will be a really exciting component for future expansion and it would be good to leave provision for such an expansion in the design ( I.e. an extension to the existing hardware SPI)
I would prefer not to have to have to set aside another set of pins just for manually bit banging data to an optional display, that could never be implemented in my design.

Good to know about the CAN not using the Int, freed up a pin!
Cheers, J.

[Benj]

Hello,

It certainly would be possible to get the EB043 display driver working with the hardware SPI. The only reason it has not been done this way is to allow for free allocation of control pins. For the EB058 we were forced to use the hardware SPI as the additional SPI driver chip adds overhead to the display commands which means bit banging is generally a bit too slow.

You could use code customization in v4 or v5 to switch the code for the sendbyte function to instead use the SPI interface. If you already have a working program then I can probably help to get this working for you.

The 4D displays are serial based so you would either need a free UART on your device or you could use the v5 CAL to switch to a software UART and bit bang out the serial data using two free I/O pins. Saying this you can probably get a cheap IC available which does SPI to UART conversions which would allow you to tac the extra display onto your SPI bus.

[Jay Dee]

OK cool, thanks for clearing that up Ben.
J.