Help me choose a display

[MJU]

I'm searching for a display but I don't know which one to choose.

I am going to make a project on which a display is used that must be readable in the dark.
I was looking to use 2 seven segment LED displays, but they use too much I/O's on the processor.

My first test was one using a small 128X64 0.96 inch OLED display and this works, but the printed numbers are far to small.
I used the GLCD (SSD1306) Buffered (Displays: Graphical) component in Flowcode 7.

* I need to show a number with 2 digits. (as large as possible)
* I want to have at least the height of the classic 7 segment displays (for readability).
* I want to use standard Flowcode component (easy to use)
* The display will be used in outside temperatures (inside a garage)
* I want a cheap display preferable from the Chinese sellers we all know.

Which display in the Flowcode library meets this requirement?
Which display on (lets say Aliexpress) will do the trick?

Thanks!

[MJU]

Forgot to mention:

Or how can I display numbers on the GLCD (SSD1306) Buffered (Displays: Graphical) display, full height using the Flowcode component??

[mnf]

It would be easy to plot digits as 8x8 blocks, my MAX7219 component (see http://www.matrixtsl.com/mmforums/viewt ... 66&t=19356) has a character set you could use? Alternatively you could use that component and some 8x8 led matrix components (I used https://www.amazon.co.uk/MagiDeal-MAX72 ... 9+matrix+2), which would give a bright and fairly large display
Martin

[mnf]

As I had a little time to kill - I knocked up a big character demo for the SSD1306 based OLED display..

BigChar.fcfx

(17.78 KiB) Downloaded 254 times

Which sort of works - I've just put in some 'dummy' characters..

However it did open up a rather large can of worms.....
The component seems to have been copied from a base component and a few errors have crept in...

For example:
SetForegoundColor / SetBackgroundColor describe 0 as white and 1 as black - however it is the opposite way round (ie a lit pixel is one and off 0)
The tooltips for these specify setting the color as a mixture of red green and blue.

DrawRectangle - the descriptions for Transparency and Solid are incorrect (I wound up writing my own draw rectangle routine) - and are confusing to say the least.. See comment in code - and if you can get to work?

Plot probably just needs to be Plot(set) to set or clear a pixel.... Rather than plot or Bplot..

Martin

[MJU]

It would be easy to plot digits as 8x8 blocks, my MAX7219 component (see http://www.matrixtsl.com/mmforums/viewt ... 66&t=19356) has a character set you could use? Alternatively you could use that component and some 8x8 led matrix components (I used https://www.amazon.co.uk/MagiDeal-MAX72 ... 9+matrix+2), which would give a bright and fairly large display
Martin

I've considered the MAX7219 with which I made several nice things (unfortunately most of the time using the Arduino sketches).
Matrix should consider updating much of it's components to keep track with the Arduino community.

The MAX7219 can be used to control "normal" 7 segment displays so I will look into this again.
Thank you

[MJU]

As I had a little time to kill - I knocked up a big character demo for the SSD1306 based OLED display..

BigChar.fcfx

Which sort of works - I've just put in some 'dummy' characters..

However it did open up a rather large can of worms.....
The component seems to have been copied from a base component and a few errors have crept in...

For example:
SetForegoundColor / SetBackgroundColor describe 0 as white and 1 as black - however it is the opposite way round (ie a lit pixel is one and off 0)
The tooltips for these specify setting the color as a mixture of red green and blue.

DrawRectangle - the descriptions for Transparency and Solid are incorrect (I wound up writing my own draw rectangle routine) - and are confusing to say the least.. See comment in code - and if you can get to work?

Plot probably just needs to be Plot(set) to set or clear a pixel.... Rather than plot or Bplot..

Martin

Thank you MNF,

I thought that it would be easier to enlarge the fonts that are used in the components already.
Now the largest font is set by using 3 as font type. Bit this is far too small to be useful in a project like this.

I'm starting an new post to ask Matrix to conceive a new line of components that can display a much larger font..
Thanks for your work!

[mnf]

It is possible to enlarge the font used (note that it is a 5 column font so not as nice as it could be)

BigChar.fcfx

(17.39 KiB) Downloaded 246 times

Updated to show the complete character set - note that I've changed the magnification level so that one character fills the display (nearly - change mulX to 13 in the call to BigChar to fill the display) - you could always use two next to each other! - as the component stores the font rotated 90 degrees from what I had before...

Note also that in the small snippet of C used

Code: Select all

for (FCL_J = 0; FCL_J < 5; FCL_J++) {
  FCL_T[FCL_J] = FCD_0ba71_Base_GLCD__ReadASCIILUT(FCL_C -32 , FCL_J);
}

the name of the ReadAsciiLUT function may change. Things do get a bit unpleasant when mixing in C (I also keep the '-32' even though it means having to add it to the loop variable - means it would be easier to use in other code, rather than just a demonstration)

I don't think it looks as good as the LED matrices - I did use an 8 bit font instead of a 5 bit and it would probably be enough for if you just had the 10 digits data (so 80 bytes)..

It's a pity there isn't an easy way to incorporate Arduino libraries into FlowCode (though in my opinion my attempts for the MAX7219 and Fingerprint scanner have been rather neater than the C equivalents - probably because Flowcode lets you visualise the code so well). The Arduino community is MUCH larger and there is a much wider range of hardware support than would be humanly possible for MatrixTSL to provide - there has been some effort to start a FlowCode community based set of components - but it is early days. If the process was a little easier (and the documentation a little better) - then hopefully the situation may improve...

Note that I have no affiliation with MatrixTSL (other than being a customer - but, hey, if you guys want to commission some libraries????)

Martin

[MJU]

Look at this: viewtopic.php?f=65&t=19617