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Using a customised LCD display in Flowcode.

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 10:25 am
by muxer107
Im currently doing a project that will use a customised LCD display to display the temperature reading using a thermocouple.
Is there anyway of controlling a non serial LCD display in Flowcode.
The project specifys that the display needs to be a large customised one that has each segment controlled individually (as it is premade).

Any ideas people?! :P

Stephen

Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 10:45 am
by Steve
This all depends on the connections of the display. It could be that the 7-segment LED display component produces suitable code.

If not, you will need to create your own routines for converting a number into an appropriate outut pattern to display that number.

Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 3:07 pm
by Mark
Stephen,

I would have thought that the problem will be generating the AC signals on the pins needed for a bare LCD without driver chip, let alone multiplexing those signals.

I recall that there are some PICs with in-built AC drivers for just this sort of project. However, I suspect that you will have to generate .fcd file for flowcode to be able to use them.

Mark

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 10:46 am
by muxer107
I didn't want to write back to this post until I had a more detailed way of explaining what I had to do, but basically I don't!

It looks like I'll need one pin for each output of the LCD display, which is going to be a bit of an issue as that means i'll have very few ports left for buttons, SPI communication, etc...

Im looking at generating the AC signal seperatly and then using the PIC outputs with AND gates to control the display, again, this is going to be another problem as this influnces cost, and final size of the project. This is obviously quite important.

To be honest when I asked this question I would have thought that there would be an externel chip that could be controlled with some sort of serial communication that would convert values to be read on this type of display. Surely someone has done something like this?

ive only two weeks left to finish this project and that includes pulling all my code together and hopefully putting the whole lot on a breadboard. If anyone could help me with this aspect of it I'd be very grateful as ive nearly everything else done and it would be a shame to let this ruin the final outcome.

TIA
Stephen

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 12:00 pm
by Pyrobrit
Would one of these help you?

http://datasheets.maxim-ic.com/en/ds/IC ... CM7212.pdf

4bit binary to 4 digit LCD driver chip. I've used a similar chip the 7224 counter for driving 7-seg LCD displays in the past.

Regards

Nick.W