Some time ago, we offered you a possibility to win a development kit with this perspective technology. Because of your big interest, we´re adding to a contest one more „EVE“ development kit.
Paraphrase with the woman´s name is very near to a name of a new technology of display control - EVE - embedded video engine. Company FTDI as a well known producer of USB solutions with a slogan USB-made-easy, decided to bring this philosophy even to a field of graphic solutions. The first representative of a new family is the FT800 graphic chip, containing all necessary to create a powerful graphic output. Perhaps the biggest advantage of this solution is, that „EVE“ puts only minimal requirements on the speed (and resources) of a Host processor, that´s it can cooperate even with smaller „low-end“ microcontrollers (Atmega, PIC, 8051,....) with a very small power consumption.
The essence of small requirements for a Host processor resides in a fact, that FT800 contains al functional blocks necessary for graphic operations and control of the display itself like:
● touch panel controller
● frame buffer
● memory (registers, ROM, RAM)
● graphic processor and co-processor
● MCU interface (I2C, SPI) and other blocks.
Moreover FT800 also contains an audio module (synthesizer and a DSP sound processor with DAC) thus FT800 also provides a sound output (mono).
Besides a significant simplification of a graphic output is the idea of „EVE“ also based on a fact, that it has to enable a cheap production of a graphic output for a target device. According to an example from FTDI (displayed on an attached picture), it´s possible to simply build a powerful „display“ for the price of under 19 USD (at a volume production). At the same time this solution lowers requirement for a count of components (BOM) and also for a PCB space. Graphic capabilities of a new chip are really impressive as it features even such properties like anti-aliasing (subjectively sharper image even on a low resolution display), alpha blending (shading, 3D,...) and built-in complex pre-defined shapes and tools. All programming of FT800 is object-oriented, so for example drawing of a simple bargraph takes only 5 commands. To create a graphic user interface (GUI), the user initializes an object memory (up to do 256 kB) and then controls specified objects and their attributes. The result is the above-mentioned low load on a Host processor.
Only a brief description of all technical features would take a few pages, that´s why we rather recommend you to look at the attached video, FTDI EVE presentation, and to study FT800 datasheet. Further information will provide you documents FT800_Programmer_guide, AN_240_FT800_From_the_Ground_Up and AN_252_FT800_Audio_Primer.
For a development support, there are also available various evaluation boards of the VM800 series. Guide price of the FT800 is 2,75 USD (100 000 pcs).
For a detailed information about prices, availability and further support, please contact us at sales@soselectronic.com.
New object-oriented graphic platform for an easy-to-integrate display solutions
- powerful graphic ship „3in1“ with a 6-bit output (RGB-6,6,6)
- including Audio and Touch controller (4-wire)
- enables to create an affordable graphic output with minimal requirements for a Host processor
- suitable also for slower microcontrollers like AtMega328, PIC, 8051,...
- simply applicable, object-oriented architecture
- built-in complex shapes and tools
- WQVGA (480x272) and QVGA (320x240) output
- SPI and I2C for a system Host
- Anti-Aliasing, Alpha blending and masking algorithms
- doesn´t need a costly RAM for a frame buffer
- colour dither - 8-bit computing for a better appearance of half-tones
- programmable timing for various displays
- mono audio out PWM, 64-voice synthesizer
- audio wave playback, 8-bit linear PCM
- 1,8-3,3V, 35 mA Active, 25uA Sleep
- -40 to +85°C
- 48 pin QFN
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Competition with the following question has been published here:
Which are the basic interfaces of FT800 family for communication with a Host procesor?
