stm32f4 tft lcd example made in china

Ahh yeah look at that! If you look closely, top right of the LCD, that’s obviously a flex connector for a resistive touch overlay (4 contacts running to the 4 sides of the LCD overlay).

Agreed! I will be picking one up. I’ve been happy developing for the stm32f4discovery (and other stm32 chips) with gcc, openocd and gdb. It is all free.

The STM32F4 cores are pretty well supported by libopencm3 and Code Sourcery and summon-arm-toolchain both build working toolchains and openOCD supports the stlink natively now.

A fair number of inexpensive baseboards/motherboards/accessories have also appeared for earlier versions. I hope Olimex puts out a couple nice STM32F429/427 boards.

I can see there is only a STLINK usb connector on board, so there is even no FS to expect. beside HS, I suppose does mean High Speed (480mbps). but HS anyway needs a separate physical layer USB chip for addition to STM32F4 chip and most likely this is chip is not present on this board anyway, because this is STM32F4+LCD+SDRAM demoboard and there is no need for USB at all.

The data brief bullet-points “USB OTG with micro-AB connector”. Looks like the micro-usb is on the underside, sticking out at the bottom of the photo. With matching T/H mounting tabs on the topside, labelled USB USER. But like you said, the STM32F4 requires an external PHY for HS, and it seems unlikely they’d include one on this board.

I think Farnell’s 21€ will be accurate, as ST’s suggested USD price is $24. The placeholders for the STM32F429I-DISCO on element14 (a division of Farnell) and mouser show $42, which I think predates the later ST announcement. I think the ST announced $24 will hold, and the distributor prices will match that, as they have in the past.

I wouldn’t expect TI to hack profits from their calculator range, and HP have always been expensive, but ST could easily change their format to calculator-friendly. Clamshell design, LCD & battery in top half, CPU & keypad in bottom half, expansion pins to left / right of keypad makes a self contained unit.

HP Palm – Love the idea, hate the baguette (french bread loaf) layout. If I could get custom key covers, and surface-mount key switches, I’d be designing my own low-profile keypad to go with an LCD module. Top side keypad, bottom side CPU / RAM / USB / LCD driver / power regulation / expansion port.

Great find, thanks! Man, could they have buried the details on that guy any farther down into the document? I can’t help but feel like a quick pointer in the LCD section to “oh by the way there’s a touch screen, here’s how to talk to it” would have been a good idea.

It’s certainly useable in any other project where you have an onboard LCD controller. Especially any other project that happens to use a STM32F4. What difference would it have made if it had an external controller? Surely it’d have been on the same PCB. Were you hoping for a removeable SPI-interfaced module?

Look in the UM1670 user manual, paragraph 4.8: the tft includes an ILI9341 controller. The ILI9341 has it’s own graphics ram inside, it is not mapped into the STM32 address space. It is connected to the STM32 via a parallel bus. The ILI9341 and similar controllers are common on cheap chinese tfts. So it is no problem to source similar tfts for your final product after developing on the discovery board.

UM1670 in paragraph 4.8 also says that “The TFT LCD is a 2.41″ display of 262 K colors. Its definition is QVGA (240 x 320 dots) and is directly driven by the STM32F429ZIT6 using the RGB protocol”. ILI9341 has multiple modes of operation including direct RGB/HSYNC/VSYNC mode which bypasses internal GRAM. I don’t have the board yet but I assume display buffer is located in external SDRAM which is also on the board. The whole point of this kit is to show TFT and SDRAM interface in new STM32F4x9.

I’ve checked this discovery board firmware available from ST’s site (“STM32F429 discovery firmware package UM1662” number: STSW-STM32138, btw. finding it is a bit difficult – ST’s site is terrible):

They are using FreeRTOS, FatFs, STemWinLibrary which is ST’s version of Segger’s emWin graphic library and STM32F4xx_StdPeriph_Driver v1.2.1 which includes F429/439 support (FMC, LTDC and DMA2D added).

Check again martin. Those lines have pullups to vdd and are connected to cpu pins. I have this board for some time and I can confirm that lcd is driven by lcd controller from cpu and frame buffer is in external dram which is also on the board.

1. I have found most examples are broken when used in later/modern versions of compilers for one reason or another (stm32 code pre 8 works but after 9 you will have cube lib issues ) and keil is just to variable between mcu"s and longer learning curve for some like me.

3. lots of FSMC code out there but non fully explain the CS pins and memory read/write in usage or config(the will example their usage but not say another one to give context)

now you will note we have the above #define for the DATA portion of the LCD/FSMC , now just because we define it there does not mean we have configured the hardware fully,

as to what MODER, OSPEEDR etc mean you can find that in the 407_vet manual available via cubemx or stm32 web site , but the short of them are they are the registers for each port (GPIOD,GPIOE etc) and the binary bits configure their operation. a example is

it"s not often obvious what the value are ment to be in the manual (it"s also not just in one manual but spread across a few ) how ever the cubeMX IDE can help you get the config right and then you take those values and paste into your example,

When I purchased the boards from Acelex, they provided me with a link to a STM32F4xx .rar file containing a ton of sample code and datasheets. Most of which in Chinese, but some in english. Google translate to the rescue. There were some examples with the TFT. Perhaps try contacting the seller to get a copy. It"s about 6GB uncompressed.

Driven by growing demand, TFT-LCD’s manufacturing capacity in China has been experiencing a continued growth rate ranging between 20 to 30% per year. This trend is expected to continue during the coming years as result of coming upgrade cycles in display devices. Beijing Oriental Electronics Technology Group (BOE) and Tianma Microelectronics Co. Ltd rank among the world top TFT-LCD manufacturers.

Air Liquide and BOE recently signed a long-term supply agreement for BOE’s new 4.5-generation TFT-LCD fab in Chengdu high-tech industrial park, in the capital city of Sichuan Province. Under the terms of the agreement, Air Liquide will supply its global offer covering carrier gases (nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and argon), specialty gases, Total Gas Management and all equipment and installations related to gas supply. The decision made by BOE to choose Air Liquide’s global solution is the result of a long term partnership between both companies.

Tianma Microelectronics awarded Air Liquide the supply of all the carrier gases to its new 4.5-generation TFT-LCD project in Chengdu. This is the first time Air Liquide and Tianma enter into a partnership.

Francisco Martins, Vice-President World Business Line Electronics of the Air Liquide Group, declared: “We are proud to serve the leading players of TFT-LCD in China and therefore reinforcing our position as market leader. This investment will allow our first foothold in Chengdu, one of the most important markets in the South West of China and, at the same time, illustrates Air Liquide’s commitment to contribute to the economic reconstruction of the Sichuan earthquake area. In the current economic context, High Tech and Emerging economies such as China are long-term growth drivers for the Group.”

Established in 1993, has been listed in Shenzhen Stock exchange since 1997. Since then, it has shifted its business from the traditional consumer electronics market to the communications, computer and digital product fields. Currently, BOE is the largest domestic and the world’s No. 9 largest TFT-LCD manufacturer, with a total revenue exceeding 10 billion Yuan in 2007. In 2007, BOE started to build a 4.5-generation TFT-LCD fab in Chengdu with a total investment of 3 billion Yuan.

Founded in 1983 in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province of China, is primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of liquide crystal displays (LCD) and liquid crystal modules (LCM). The company has established subsidiaries in Shanghai as well as in the United States, South Korea and Europe respectively. In July 2008, Tianma announced its new investment in Chengdu. It’s another 4.5-generation TFT-LCD fab with a total investment of 3 billion Yuan.