SparkFun Forums

[Pyrofer]

Ok, this is my second attempt at making this. The first one worked, but didnt fit inside the case!
Using an old TomyTronic 3D and a few parts from Sparkfun (Pic mini-bully and usb/serial breakout) as well as a TechToys LCD (Sorry sparkfun, but I needed parallel input :p I did buy a load of screens from you already!)
You can see my work here at
http://www.pyrofersprojects.com/blog/?page_id=92
The latest work with the Mini-bully board is at the bottom.
Ive got the 330 accelerometer from Sparkfun too and am going to integrate that as the control method for the game. Im also planning on putting in the bluetooth spp module (from sparkfun :p) to allow me to link the two for proper 2 player dogfights in space.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1UA4bnOLKw

[noptical]

Hi
That looks great. What LCD is that? And what controller does it use?

[Pyrofer]

SSD1289 controller. Only does 16bit colour, no 8bit.
It came from A Sparkfun competitor! But as they no longer sell it I think I can mention TechToys.

I previously had 2 128x160 displays that DID do 8bit colour, so twice as fast.
I thought a single screen would be easier to build, and it was. Pity about the colour problem.

Hey, Sparkfun, where are all the good Parallel LCDs? You seem obsessed with the Nokia 6100 screen and that one OLED. The 4D systems stuff is great (Atilla rocks, a great guy) but some of us want to do stuff direct and at high speed to the LCD.

Can we have a 320x240 OLED with parallel interface please? Or some of the e-ink screens everybody is begging for.

[reklipz]

The PSP is probably their best parallel LCD, at least in my opinion. The pixel density is amazing, and depending upon which revision they have, the backlight is low power LED and the screen has great contrast. Full 24bit color as well, no dithering (at least that I know of, there is minimal circuitry on the glass and flex cable, definitely not enough to do dithering...).

Good luck with the project, looks like a fun one!

[Pyrofer]

The PSP lcd is indeed amazing. However I need a lower spec LCD not higher.

I am only using a smal pic micro to drive this, with only 8bit parallel. So more colour depth = longer draw time.
the 16bit colour ive got now takes twice as long to draw as the 8bit I used before. 24bit colour would be unusable.
Also, I dont think the PSP lcd has a built in rambuffer, so id need something bigger than a few k ram to store the image.

[Pyrofer]

Ok, I decided to add the accelerometer to this for control, but didnt have one handy as the old sparkfun one is in another project...

I bought a Wii Nunchuk for £9.99, cut the plug off and wired it into the Mini-bully board by i2c.

Took a while to get the i2c working, but now my 3D ship is controlled by the nunchuk. The joystick in conjuction with the accelerometer allows almost complete control of the ship in 3D space.

All code writting in C with the free Student edition of the Microchip C compiler for pic24.

The only problem I have is that the MiniBully voltage regulator cant quite provide enough power. Powering the PIC, the LCD, the Backlight AND the nunchuk is just too much.

I now need a higher power 3.3v supply, does anybody know the output of the one on the mini-bully so I can ensure I get a more powerfull one?