I need to bend the ear of a hardware engineer so I can figure the minimum amount of hardware I need for a project (unrelated to empeg) I have in mind. Basically, I need to be able to take a stream of characters from a serial port, do some calculations and display them on either a dotmatrix or alphanumeric LCD or VFD display.

Is there anyone out there who can help? Can I use PIC chips for this?

Patrick, are you listening and/or willing to lend a hand in terms of giving me a quick overview on what's possible, what's not and what resources (books/internet sites) are available.

Rgds,

M

P.S. The project is 'in-car' but I don't want to use the empeg. I have my reasons ;)

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MKII #080000528 - 40Gb Blue

There are LCD and dot matrix boards with a built in serial line at say 9600 baud, and you can send in alphanumerics as well as control characters to clear the display and other cool stuff. I think they can be had for pretty cheap.

Calvin

http://www.seetron.com
Or try Linux Central:
http://www.linuxcentral.com/ then click "Serial Display Modules" in left column


MkII #080000085

Matrix Orbital has some, both LCD and VFD (liquid crystal display - vacuum fluorescent display) which is a ready built package needing only a 12 V supply and a serial port to hook it up to.

Then there is the lower cost ones, CrystalFontz comes to mind though they have mainly LCD ones.

Got one here from MO and it is nice, runs a system monitoring tool for my Linux master server.

Cheers,
Hans

ps. they are not ... cheap. Considering it is _just_ a display.



Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

I have done many projects using PICs and 8051(2)s to take one or more serial streams, manipulate them, and display some info on a simple LCD or VFD. In fact, that is the number one reason that I am interested in the empeg. My concept of "embedded system" topped out with PIC and 805x, serial based devices. The concept of being able to include ethernet and hard drives into my small embedded designs is so awesome that I can hardly stand it. It's kind of cool that it also makes a great car stereo.

Anyway, if you give a few more details, maybe I can be of just a little more help.

Later,

Steve

Yep - Hans is right about Matrox Orbital. They're good but expensive. I have one connected to the linux server that plays mp3's into my stereo. It's hooked into the freeamp software (www.freeamp.org) to spit out track info. It's got some nice features beyond "you send me character, I put on screen".

Dave

Dave
36G 090000759 Blue waiting for Amber