GUI development board

14 September 2011 Design Automation

Microchip has developed the ‘low-cost controller-less (LCC) Graphics’ PICtail Plus daughterboard (AC164144), which enables the development of graphics applications without an external graphics controller.

The cost of integrating an external graphics controller to support touch-screen user interfaces can be prohibitive for highly competitive markets such as home appliances, consumer, automotive and industrial products. Based on a 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller (MCU), the new daughterboard enables developers to directly drive 256-colour (8 bits per pixel) graphical user interfaces using the PIC32’s on-chip memory, direct memory access controller and parallel master port. The board also enables developers to ‘jumper’ in the onboard 256 KB of SRAM to support 65K-colour (16 bits per pixel) WQVGA interfaces.

The new daughterboard can be used with an Explorer 16 development board or PIC32 starter kit, and can be connected to any of the LCD panels available from Microchip, including the Truly 3,2” QVGA and Powertip 4,3” WQVGA display panels. It is supported by Microchip’s free graphics library, making it easy to incorporate graphical user interfaces into industrial products such as control panels; home appliances such as coffee machines, washing machines and dryers; consumer thermostats, security-alarm panels and educational toys; and into driver information displays in the automotive market.

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