LCD Smartie

hi ive been having some trouble getting this serial backpack to work correctly
it seems its has some issues in smarty when writing to the second row
i tried all the drivers avail in smartie and all of them work but the second line stil wont show up correctly

however when i use hyperterminal the second line works fine
does anybody know how to setup this display using the test driver

http://wulfden.org/k107/index.shtml

I can make a driver for that display if you are ok with testing a few versions out before getting the final release.
Some pictures could be needed to troubleshoot the possible problems.

caesar wrote:I can make a driver for that display if you are ok with testing a few versions out before getting the final release.
Some pictures could be needed to troubleshoot the possible problems.

Sure Caesar that would be great

the basic testdriver and also the matrix orbital driver works 99% correctly but it has some issues putting data on the correct line
also scrolling any text wil cause the display to reset or scramble the text

Ok, here is the first alpha version, please test it and report what works and what not!

http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/andersons.dll

PS: I moved the post to the plugin requests forum as it is a plugin request now

caesar wrote:Ok, here is the first alpha version, please test it and report what works and what not!

http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/andersons.dll

PS: I moved the post to the plugin requests forum as it is a plugin request now

Hi Caesar

thanks for the driver

however when i try to load it it states invallid comport name
but if i use the crystalfonts driver or matrix driver with the same comport settings the display works fine

strange cant seem to get it to work

Will look into it soon, just been busy at work these days.
Stay tuned.

caesar wrote:Will look into it soon, just been busy at work these days.
Stay tuned.

thanks Caesar

I have completely rewritten the source and I named it k107 now, think it's more appropriate.

As usual, please report back.

Here it is: http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/k107.dll

caesar wrote:I have completely rewritten the source and I named it k107 now, think it's more appropriate.

As usual, please report back.

Here it is: http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/k107.dll

Hi Caesar

thanks for the new driver

this version works
the backlight controll also works but when changing it it shows caracters on the screen

also the line placement on the screen does not match

1. Use a blank Smartie screen and adjust the backlight, then please take a picture.

2. put as many 1's in the first row as the display width, 2's for the second row and so on then take a picture please.

caesar wrote:1. Use a blank Smartie screen and adjust the backlight, then please take a picture.

2. put as many 1's in the first row as the display width, 2's for the second row and so on then take a picture please.

Hey Caesar

Made u 2 small movies
this shows everything a lot beter

http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/m.vos2/reset1.wmv
when i put 16x 1 on line 1 and 16x 2 on line to and restart lcdsmartie it wont show anything and causes the display to reset itsself


This is when changing the backlight

http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/m.vos2/bl1.wmv
regards Martijn

Changed a few commands, here is the new 0.3a version:

http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/k107.dll

caesar wrote:Changed a few commands, here is the new 0.3a version:

http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/k107.dll

Hey Caesar

this one seems to work a lot beter
text is displayed on the correct places now all the time

backlight controll also works but stil shows caracters on the screen

when using transitions the layout wil be scrambled
but other then that it works great
scrolling test now also works fine

there is one thing i did find when displaying bars is displays the bar as _ instead of a block

Version 0.4a is now up. Should fix almost all problems.

caesar wrote:Version 0.4a is now up. Should fix almost all problems.

text all works fine now

transitions causes text to windup on the wrong line or position
scrolling also works fine
winamp vu meters dont work but thats probably a limitation by the lcd driver
it causes the lcd driver to reset

Some transitions cause text to blend from one screen to another at random positions, so what you are seeing should be a normal transition.
Try different effects!
Also make sure that your display is set up as 2x16 in LCDSmartie.

The k107 board has a serious limitation: it can't buffer and process more than 64 bytes at a time and I think the way that serial communication is implemented is taking too much processor time. Instead of making a 64 bytes buffer they should have better concentrated at making the commands process faster.
I managed 57000bps from a PIC 16f628... without any data loss!

Also the k107 needs a little over 80ms to define a custom character (because it's saved in the internal eeprom of the PIC - 8 bytes x 10ms plus some additional code for processing and buffering). That can be done in under 0.1ms and not 80ms.
Winamp spectrum is a very fast and bitrate greedy application... I'm afraid that custom characters are a serious problem for this display.
I can't do much about it, the adapter is too slow.

caesar wrote:Some transitions cause text to blend from one screen to another at random positions, so what you are seeing should be a normal transition.
Try different effects!
Also make sure that your display is set up as 2x16 in LCDSmartie.

The k107 board has a serious limitation: it can't buffer and process more than 64 bytes at a time and I think the way that serial communication is implemented is taking too much processor time. Instead of making a 64 bytes buffer they should have better concentrated at making the commands process faster.
I managed 57000bps from a PIC 16f628... without any data loss!

Also the k107 needs a little over 80ms to define a custom character (because it's saved in the internal eeprom of the PIC - 8 bytes x 10ms plus some additional code for processing and buffering). That can be done in under 0.1ms and not 80ms.
Winamp spectrum is a very fast and bitrate greedy application... I'm afraid that custom characters are a serious problem for this display.
I can't do much about it, the adapter is too slow.

yea the k107 board prety mutch sucks lol but its good enouch for now

thanks a lot for making a custom driver for me Caesar

My pleasure, ledfreak3d!

If you detect something wrong with the plugin then drop a line and i will look into it.

Enjoy!

This is great. I had my 20X4 blue LCD running on the parallel port for a while because I could not find any programs that would work with my serial backpack. I have the phanderson #118 2400 Baud controller for use with my Picaxe uControllers and it works with your plugin.
I do have problems running other plugins such as bignum or tinybar. They just don't send the right data I guess. The lcd tends to reset when lcd smartie hits a page using these plugins. I also had to turn off the transition effects as the display would get confused and start showing goofy characters.

If you happen to do any more work on this, I would be happy to test it for you.

Thanx for a solution to my problem.

Dan

Bignum and tinybar use custom characters. The problems you encountered are normal for this display.
It's just too d**n slow!

There is no solution, sorry.

PS: http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic. ... 4302#14302 <= there is the explanation.

Are there by any chance a possibility to upload the dll once again?