New Product: 10.1″ LCD with touchscreen ready to connect to OLinuXino in stock

10.1″ LCDs which connect to the standard 40 pin LCD connector to all OLinuXinos A10-A10S-A13-A20 is now in stock.

There are two versions with
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-LCD10TS/
 and without
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-LCD10/
 Touchscreen panel.

The resolution is 1024 x 600 pixel and with this panel you can make small Laptop and work normally with Linux if you wonder how big is 10.1″ LCD as comparison Asus EYE PC is with same LCD size.

We tested this LCD and it works fine with the Android images, the Debian support for the Touchscreen panel is still not complete. There is long thread about this in our forum: 
https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=444.0
 but seems for the last few month no-one from Debian world seems to care for the broken touchscreen library to fix it

A13-OLinuXino can drive 1024×600 pixels 10″ LCD

 

Today we managed to run A13-OLinuXino-WIFI with the new 10″ LCD in 1024×600 pixels resolution. The Debian image with XFCE4 runs just fine as you can see from the above picture.

The Android image do not display correctly, I guess 800×480 is hardcoded somewhere in the image as even if you define bigger resolution in the script.bin the screen size remains with same size and takes just part of the LCD area. This is not something which to worry us anyway as our main interest is to run Linux on A13

So soon everyone would be able to make his own Linux netbook with A13-OLinuXino-WIFI + A13-LCD10TS + USB keyboard!

A1X-LCD10 10.1″ LCD 1024 x 600 pixels 24 bit color is on the design desk

 

Soon after we released A13-LCD7 customers start asking us: can you make something smaller, we have handheld application in mind and 7″ LCD is just too big, this is how we made A13-LCD43 4.3″ LCD 480×272 pixels, then other customers start asking: I have application where bigger display is necessary, can you make 10″ LCD module?

So we were looking around and finally found RGB24bit parallel interface LCD with 10.1″ diagonal and 1024×600 pixels resolution.

We got today two samples and will try to see if A13 can work with such resolution as this is double than 800×480 pixels of the A13-LCD7.

This 10″ LCD will allow building of laptop/tablets with A13-OLinuXino, LCDs with same size and resolution are used in Acer Eye netbook PCs and the resolution is good for normal work.

If everything works well we will have A1X-LCD10 in stock in April, the preliminary price we target is EUR 75 for the LCD module with the driver circuit ready to plug in A13-OLinuXino, resistive touchscreen will be sold separately.

 

A13-LCD7TS support in Linux

A13-LCD7TS 7″ LCD with Touchscreen works perfect under Android, but the normal Debian image we have didn’t support it.

You can see some discussion on our forum about it: 
https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=444.0
 part of the problem is that touchscreen driver is not registered as such in the linux kernel. This could be fixed relatively easy by adding the info written on the forum, so now you can use the touchscreen by your apps, but you still can’t do this under X, why?

Because Debian is missing xf86-input-tslib library in it’s repositories and to have working touchscreen on XFCE4 you have to download and compile this library yourself.

Dimitar Gamishev (a.k.a. HEHOPMAJIEH form #olimex irc channel) yesterday teach me how to do this step by step so now I can share. First you have to download the Touchscreen patched which Dimitar did from
https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/SOFTWARE/A13/TOUCHSCREEN
 

1. ENABLE TOUCHSCREEN

then you follow these steps:

step 1.

$ git clone https://github.com/kergoth/tslib

step 2.

$ cd tslib

step 3.

$ patch -p1 < ../tslib.patch

(if asks for the filename it is plugins/input-raw.c)

step  4.

$ autoreconf -vi

step 5.

$ ./configure

step 6.

$ make

step 7.

$ make install

so far fo good, now touchscreen event is exported and to see which number it is do

$ dmesg | grep sun4i-ts

[ 18.190000] sun4i-ts.c: sun4i_ts_init: start …
[ 18.200000] sun4i-ts: tp_screen_size is 7 inch.
[ 18.210000] sun4i-ts: tp_regidity_level is 5.
[ 18.220000] sun4i-ts: tp_press_threshold_enable is 0.
[ 18.230000] sun4i-ts: rtp_sensitive_level is 15.
[ 18.230000] sun4i-ts: rtp_exchange_x_y_flag is 0.
[ 18.240000] sun4i-ts.c: sun4i_ts_probe: start…
[ 18.260000] input: sun4i-ts as /devices/platform/sun4i-ts/input/input4
[ 18.280000] sun4i-ts.c: sun4i_ts_probe: end
[ 18.260000] input: sun4i-ts as /devices/platform/sun4i-ts/input/input4

 

so in this case the event is 4

then you have to do some EXPORTs where you replace X with “4″ in this case:

$ export TSLIB_TSEVENTTYPE=raw
$ export TSLIB_CONSOLEDEVICE=none
$ export TSLIB_FBDEVICE=/dev/fb0
$ export TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/eventX
$ export TSLIB_CALIBFILE=/etc/pointercal
$ export TSLIB_CONFFILE=/path/to/ts.conf
$ export TSLIB_PLUGINDIR=/path/to/lib/ts

note you should write your correct path which depend on what OS you are running and what –prefix you used to compile them

if you did everything correctly you can check with 

$ ts_test 

or

$ ts_calibrate

if everything is OK

2. ENABLE TOUCHSCREEN FOR X

$ wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/x/xf86-input-tslib/xf86-input-tslib_0.0.6.orig.tar.gz

$ tar zxfv xf86-input-tslib_0.0.6.orig.tar.gz

$ cd xf86-input-tslib-0.0.6/

$ patch -p1 < ../1-xf86tslib-sigfault.patch

$ patch -p1 < ../xf86-input-tslib-port-ABI-12-r48.patch

$ ./configure –prefix=/your/x11/lib/dir/

$ make

$ make install

add this in the X- configuration:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Sun4iTouchscreen”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/eventX”
Driver “tslib”
Option “ScreenNumber” “0″
Option “Rotate” “NONE”
Option “Width” “800″
Option “Height” “480″
Option “SendCoreEvents” “yes”

EndSection

and like in point 1 /dev/input/eventX replace X with “4″

then pray and start X if you did everything correctly X should start with Touchscreen support like show on these videos:

iMX233-OLinuXino with LCD 4.3″ and touchscreen

iMX233-OLinuXino uses TQFP version of the iMX233 and in the datasheet is written that this package do not support other than 8-bit LCD interface. So as this is written in the datasheet by the manufacturer we just trusted it and didn’t plan to release LCD for it, as the 8-bit interface limit the choice only to intelligent LCDs with internal RAM.

Claude Schwartz though proven the datasheet info wrong! He wrote on the irc #olimex channel that he made iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI to work with both dummy and intelligent LCDs in 18 bit mode, so we sent him one A13-LCD4.3TS LCD to check and he sent us the picture above one day after he received the LCD.

This is iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI wired with A13-LCD4.3TS LCD in dumb 18 bit mode, he attached USB-TV dongle to iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI and actually this is TV stream from ZDF, iMX233 power is limited so he got only 3 pictures per second and this is more like slide show than TV stream.

Then he decided to do another test and compiled DOOM game for 320×240 pixel resolution and run it on iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI with LCD, the result is here: 

So despite datasheets write we can’t use dumb LCDs with the iMX233 in TQFP package, this is proven to be wrong.

Now the next challenge is to make the LCD touchscreen to work as iMX233 in TQFP package have only 3 ADC inputs, as Claude already prove the hard things are easy to solve, the impossible (according to the datasheets) just take some more time, so the touchscreen support is just matter of some more time.

Next step if touchscreen is complete? Building small board with iMX233+4.3″LCD+LiPo battery to create low cost Game console!

 

STELLARIS-UEXT adapter for Stellaris launch pad in stock

STELLARIS-UEXT is Texas Instruments Stellaris Launchpad to UEXT adapter.

We have prepared demo code for MOD-GSM, MOD-MP3, MOD-GPS, MOD-TC, MOD-SMB380, MOD-IRDA, MOD-LCD3310 so you can interface these modules from your Stellaris Launchpad.

As Stellaris MCU have two SPI, I2C and UARTs we made the adapter with two separate UEXT connectors so you can connect two independant UEXT modules to it. Each UEXT have power up/down control with MOSFET so you can power up and down UEXT modules connected.

A13-LCD43TS 4.3″ LCD with Touchscreen for EUR 35 is preparing for production

 

We are preparing A13-LCD43TS which is 4.3″LCD 480×272 pixel LCD with backlight and touchscreen as accessory for A13-OLinuXino.

The board will be available for sale in 2 weeks and will cost EUR 28 for OEM quantity (50+pcs) and only EUR 35 for single quantity.

The 4.3″LCD is much more suitable for handheld application than the big 7″ LCD and as you can see from the pictures the display size is OK for Android apps:

 

We are now assemblyng A13-OLinuXino-MICRO developer edition which will be ready for sale next week. Together A13-OLinuXino-MICRO + A13-LCD43TS are the perfect match for low cost l man-machine interface solutions. Note MICRO have just 256MB so will not run Android well, but Debian Linux is running fine.

Attaching Color LCD to iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI with MOD-LCD6610

MOD-LCD6610 is color graphics LCD with 128×128 pixel resolution.

This GitHub project
https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/SOFTWARE/iMX233/MOD-LCD6610
 allow iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI to display text and graphics in different colors to MOD-LCD6610.

iMX233-OLInuXino-MAXI interface with MOD-LCD3310 graphic BW LCD

 

MOD-LCD3310 is low cost black and white graphical LCD.

With this project on GitHub
https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/SOFTWARE/iMX233/MOD-LCD3310
 you can write text positive and inversed, draw dots, lines, circles, rectangles, triangles, elipses on the LCD.

 

Low Cost LCD-TO-VGA adapter

A13 processor have no HDMI and VGA output as his big brother A10, so we had to work out something using the LCD interface it have.

We browsed IC video DACs and there is plenty of them, but they are expensive and didn’t fit well OLinuXino low cost concept, so we decided to give a try and make simple R ladder video DAC.

A13 LCD interface is 18 bit this means we will need 3 channels x 6 bit Video DAC.

All VGA monitors have 75 ohm terminator on their input lines and the video signal is 0.75V for white level and 0V for black. So knowing this we could make resistor ladder DAC with R, 2R, 4R, 8R, 16R, 32R connected in parallel with RGB 0-5 bits. The values are easy to calculate when we know the LCD buffer output voltage 3.3V and the voltage we want to have when all bits are “1″ i.e. 0.75V. The resistors using the 1% precission values picked were 549 ohm, 1050 ohm, 2180 ohm, 4370 ohm, 8660 ohm, 17800 ohm.

The adapter was routed and pcb prototypes were run. The assembled adapter was attached to LPC1788 board with 4.3″LCD with tweaking the output to match VGA lock frequency and the result was perfect.

The picture which appears on LCD was color stripes with small ball which you can move by tilting the board (using on-board accelerometer), as you can see from the picture the colors are perfect and image is standing still with no glitches and jitters.

So now we have low cost VGA solution for our A13-OLinuXino and can move forward with the PCB schematic finish and routing. Note that the VGA signals go through buffers which are gated i.e. we can enable and disable the VGA output and A13-OLinuXino will be able to work with both LCDs and VGA.

EDIT: schematic is included here below: