FT800 (FTDI Eve)

[David John Barker]

A small number of demo programs for the FT800 graphics chip can be found here

http://www.firewing.info/pmwiki.php?n=FirewingUser.FT800

Here are some links to videos which shows what a simple 8 bit microcontroller can do with this device

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3trUUc-tFKY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJ0br7lz6Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaaf4yUMyVg

There is a new FT801 out which supports capacitive touch rather than resistive (FT800) which looks really interesting...

[Jerry Messina]

Wow. I'm impressed, esp with some of the examples shown in the first video!

You're right on time adding support for the FT800... I started looking at this chip a week or so ago, and was a bit leery thinking it might be too limiting.

Now my only question is how in the heck did they pull off what they did in some of those samples! I'd love to see the code.

[David John Barker]

I needed the drivers for a commercial job I was working on. If you have some graphics programming experience you will find the device has some really powerful features. If you don't have graphics programming experience, then the built it widgets makes development easy. Regardless of you level of expertise, it sure beats having to try and drive a 4->5" display directly using a PIC. I'm getting more and more commercial clients wanting interfaces look and work like their mobile devices and this device makes it a possibility. The resistive screen is fine for virtual button pressing, but the new capacitive screen will enable you to create mobile phone and tablet type interfaces - all driven by a PIC.

It's certainly worth grabbing a Gameduino or VM800B43A and taking a look...

[David John Barker]

Here is a video I uploaded to youtube showing some simple, realtime rendering using Firewing...

http://youtu.be/1UI2cyCCAFo

[David John Barker]

OK, one more -some custom widgets...

http://youtu.be/eAJSSxKjTx0

[Jerry Messina]

Any chance you'd be willing to post the code you used for creating the custom widgets demo?

After seeing all this I think my fears of the FT800 being too limited were pretty off-base!

[David John Barker]

I have uploaded the code, images and small article on the wiki:

http://www.firewing.info/pmwiki.php?n=FirewingUser.FT800Widget

Make sure you download the latest BETA (1.0.0.6 B1) as I have updated the FT800 module (it's work in progress)

[bitfogav]

Are all the sample codes functional with the Gameduino and the Gameduino sd card?..
Also to enable the Gameduino option in code, do we just uncomment the following line?

Code: Select all

#option FT_MODEL = GAMEDUINO

[David John Barker]

Yes - make sure you are using the very latest BETA...I have tested all the sample files with

Code: Select all

#option FT_MODEL = GAMEDUINO

using BETA 1.0.0.6 (B2)
http://www.firewing.info/pmwiki.php?n=Firewing.Download
If you are using the latest compiler with the sample files, have enabled the #option and cannot get them to work, please let me know...

[Jerry Messina]

Thanks for the widget example.

I was expecting to see quite a bit more code than that half-page of source! Sure looks like using the FT800 makes things a LOT easier.

Have you tried it out with different uC families? Curious to know if the limiting factor is the uC or the SPI speed.