micro bit lcd display quotation

The Kitronik :VIEW Text32 character LCD, for those times when the LED Matrix and/or external LEDs aren"t delivering adequate visual feedback from your microbit project. The :VIEW Text32 is a character LCD showing 32 characters (2 lines of 16 characters). The :VIEW Text32 also breaks out the BBC micro:bit pins to edge pads (excluding pin14).

The bottom edge of the board has a replication of the BBC microbits own edge connector, this allows you to plug the :VIEW Text32 into any board that the microbit itself can be slotted into. This is great news if your project outputs strings of text and numbers that previously would have slowly scrolled across the LED Matrix.

On the back of the :VIEW Text32 is a 3 x AAA battery holder to provide power to the :VIEW Text32, the attached micro:bit, and the replicated edge connector. There is a power switch for turning the battery supply on and off. The replicated edge connector can supply 90mA (as per the normal micro:bit)

Kitronik has produced a set of custom blocks for the Microsoft MakeCode editor. To add them click on the cog icon in the top right of the editor, then; select Extensions from the drop down menu, type and enter Kitronik into the search bar and select the :VIEW Text32 tile from the list. The custom blocks will now be added to the editor and can be used in your code.

Get meaningful text readouts from your microbit projects with the Kitronik :VIEW Text32, a 32 character 2 line display that has a microbit style edge connector.

The Kitronik :VIEW Text32 character LCD, for those times when the LED Matrix and/or external LEDs aren"t delivering adequate visual feedback from your microbit project. The :VIEW Text32 is a character LCD showing 32 characters (2 lines of 16 characters). The :VIEW Text32 also breaks out the BBC micro:bit pins to edge pads (excluding pin14).

The bottom edge of the board has a replication of the BBC microbits own edge connector, this allows you to plug the :VIEW Text32 into any board that the microbit itself can be slotted into. This is great news if your project outputs strings of text and numbers that previously would have slowly scrolled across the LED Matrix.

The board has been designed so that the BBC micro:bit can be slotted into the edge connector on the top side of the PCB. No extra tools are required for installation, the board is supplied and ready to go --plug and play/work!

On the back of the :VIEW Text32 is a 3 x AAA battery holder to provide power to the :VIEW Text32, the attached micro:bit, and the replicated edge connector. There is a power switch for turning the battery supply on and off. The replicated edge connector can supply 90mA (as per the normal micro:bit)

Kitronik has produced a set of custom blocks for the Microsoft MakeCode editor. To add them click on the cog icon in the top right of the editor, then; select Extensions from the drop down menu, type and enter Kitronik into the search bar and select the :VIEW Text32 tile from the list. The custom blocks will now be added to the editor and can be used in your code.

I programmed a MicroBit to run an LCD display. I tried two different versions of Python - MakeCode and MicroPython and was surprised by some of the differences.https://youtu.be/xgo0Bp7cWkE

Display size, contrast, color, brightness, resolution, and power are key factors in choosing the right display technology for your application. However, making the right choice in how you feed the information to the display is just as vital, and there are many interface options available.

All displays work in a similar manner. In a very basic explanation, they all have many rows and columns of pixels driven by a controller that communicates with each pixel to emit the brightness and color needed to make up the transmitted image. In some devices, the pixels are diodes that light up when current flows (PMOLEDs and AMOLEDs), and in other electronics, the pixel acts as a shutter to let some of the light from a backlight visible. In all cases, a memory array stores the image information that travels to the display through an interface.

According to Wikipedia, "an interface is a shared boundary across which two separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans, and combinations of these. Some computer hardware devices such as a touchscreen can both send and receive data through the interface, while others such as a mouse or microphone may only provide an interface to send data to a given system.” In other words, an interface is something that facilitates communication between two objects. Although display interfaces serve a similar purpose, how that communication occurs varies widely.

Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a synchronous serial communication interface best-suited for short distances. It was developed by Motorola for components to share data such as flash memory, sensors, Real-Time Clocks, analog-to-digital converters, and more. Because there is no protocol overhead, the transmission runs at relatively high speeds. SPI runs on one master (the side that generates the clock) with one or more slaves, usually the devices outside the central processor. One drawback of SPI is the number of pins required between devices. Each slave added to the master/slave system needs an additional chip select I/O pin on the master. SPI is a great option for small, low-resolution displays including PMOLEDs and smaller LCDs.

Philips Semiconductors invented I2C (Inter-integrated Circuit) or I-squared-C in 1982. It utilizes a multi-master, multi-slave, single-ended, serial computer bus system. Engineers developed I2C for simple peripherals on PCs, like keyboards and mice to then later apply it to displays. Like SPI, it only works for short distances within a device and uses an asynchronous serial port. What sets I2C apart from SPI is that it can support up to 1008 slaves and only requires two wires, serial clock (SCL), and serial data (SDA). Like SPI, I2C also works well with PMOLEDs and smaller LCDs. Many display systems transfer the touch sensor data through I2C.

RGB is used to interface with large color displays. It sends 8 bits of data for each of the three colors, Red Green, and Blue every clock cycle. Since there are 24 bits of data transmitted every clock cycle, at clock rates up to 50 MHz, this interface can drive much larger displays at video frame rates of 60Hz and up.

Low-Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) was developed in 1994 and is a popular choice for large LCDs and peripherals in need of high bandwidth, like high-definition graphics and fast frame rates. It is a great solution because of its high speed of data transmission while using low voltage. Two wires carry the signal,  with one wire carrying the exact inverse of its companion. The electric field generated by one wire is neatly concealed by the other, creating much less interference to nearby wireless systems. At the receiver end, a circuit reads the difference (hence the "differential" in the name) in voltage between the wires. As a result, this scheme doesn’t generate noise or gets its signals scrambled by external noise. The interface consists of four, six, or eight pairs of wires, plus a pair carrying the clock and some ground wires. 24-bit color information at the transmitter end is converted to serial information, transmitted quickly over these pairs of cables, then converted back to 24-bit parallel in the receiver, resulting in an interface that is very fast to handle large displays and is very immune to interference.

Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) is a newer technology that is managed by the MIPI Alliance and has become a popular choice among wearable and mobile developers. MIPI uses similar differential signaling to LVDS by using a clock pair and one to eight pairs of data called lanes. MIPI supports a complex protocol that allows high speed and low power modes, as well as the ability to read data back from the display at lower rates. There are several versions of MIPI for different applications, MIPI DSI being the one for displays.

Display components stretch the limitations of bandwidth. For perspective, the most common internet bandwidth in a residential home runs on average at around 20 megabits per second or 20 billion 1s and 0s per second. Even small displays can require 4MB per second, which is a lot of data in what is often a tightly constrained physical space.

Take the same PMOLED display with the 128 x 128 resolution and 16,384 separate diodes; it requires information as to when and how brightly to illuminate each pixel. For a display with only 16 shades, it takes 4 bits of data. 128 x 128 x 4 = 65,536 bits for one frame. Now multiply it by the 60Hz, and you get a bandwidth of 4 megabits/second for a small monochrome display.