Information on tft screens

[kentclub]

Hello,

I've come to this forum with hopes to get some guidance. Being a mechanical engineer, electronics is not exactly my strength !

Here is what I'd like to do : I have a tft screen, here are the techs :

I would like to be able to connect the screen to a MacBook (Pro) via USB and when I do, I want it to display the notifications/today screen that appears when you swipe two fingers from right to left :

I really am clueless so what I need is a path. Just the main things I should be looking for.
Like, do I need to code a driver to be installed on the Mac ? If so in what langage ?

Here is the link to the screen : 4.3" TFT Lcd Screen

Thank you !

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

I'm afraid driving a TFT display panel is not easy. The display needs to be constantly refreshed with pixel data at a fairly high rate. This can't be done by the CPU; extra hardware is needed to hold the image (480 × 272 × 3 = 382.5 kilobytes) and generate the continuous RGB data stream for the panel. Then you need an LVDS serialiser to convert the signal to twisted pairs, so the cable to the panel isn't an inch thick, and a deserialiser at the panel end. It's the sort of thing that you would use an FPGA for. Definitely not beginners' territory. Sorry!

 

[kentclub]

Thank you for the reply.

1) Is there a substitute for a TFT display that would be easier to set up ? (a screen type with less hardware and close enough resolution)

2) If not :

- What is the "extra hardware" to hold the image and generate the continuous RGB data stream ?

- How can I initiate myself to LVDS serialisers ? (any good links to get started ?)

I can take the time to learn if needed !

Thanks

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

I'm sure you're smart and would be able to learn it all eventually, but there really would be a huge amount to learn. Start by looking at Dave Jones's basic description of FPGAs:

... and Dave is a very smart and experienced design engineer.

You would need one of those and a 512 KB SRAM to store the image and generate the data stream for the TFT.

Ignore my comments about LVDS serialiser/deserialisers. If you put your driver board directly behind the display you wouldn't need them.

I'm not sure how you would interface to the computer. Perhaps USB? In that case you would need to learn microcontroller programming, probably, and interface the microcontroller to the FPGA so it could update the image in the RAM. A common microcontroller with USB capability would be the PIC. Have a look at http://www.microchip.com/wwwAppNotes/AppNotes.aspx?appnote=en534221

Then you would need some software running on the computer to get the real-time information to be displayed (either as raw data or as an image, if that's possible) and send updates out the USB port as the data changes.

Learning to do each one of those things, from a standing start, would take anything from months to years. If you're still keen after looking at those links... you're crazy!

 

[kentclub]

Alright, thank you very much. I'll start looking and decide it's worth a shot !