VF DISPLAYS WHICH NOW INCORPORATE CIG CONTROLLER LAUNCHED BY ITRON UK
New from Noritake Itron is the integration of VFD controller chips into the VF displays. For the past 10 years the company had incorporated the drivers into the VFD glass which dramatically reduced the price of the displays and alllowed designers to access over 60 standard CIG VFDs for their applications. The integration of controller chips into the glass for both character and graphic modules provides considerable improvement in cost, dimension and operational parameters, providing solutions for a diverse range of requirements which include automotive, point-of-sale and instrumentation through to video broadcasting.
Using the industry standard '44780' controller which is widely used for LCD character modules, Itron UK can now offer a bi-directional synchronous clock serial interface capable of clock cycle times up to 2Mhz; a chip-select input which provides device re-sync and a fan-out capability; and a wide logic supply to enable operation in 3V d.c. to 5V d.c. applications.
The controller also has an integral 1.25 MHz clock with a 150kHz output which provides oscillation for a low-cost switching power supply. The 368 internal character fonts are divided into 2 sets - the traditional ASCII+ Katakana set found in LCD modules and an ASCII+European set for requirements including the Euro symbol. Eight user-definable fonts and a 16-level brightness control are also included. Three product formats using this controller will be 2x16, 2x20 and 4x20 character displays with a 5mm character height and an operational temperature range of -40degC to +85degC.
For the CIG graphic display controller, a new ASIC controller has been developed with 8Kbytes of internal RAM to provide display refresh and superior grey scale illumination up to 16 levels. It has a high-speed SPI serial interface and the internal command structure allows two layers of display data to move, scroll, swap and alpha blend together. When scrolling one layer on top of another images from the back layer can penetrate the front layer. The fast command and data processing capability allows high-speed animations for video applications in consumer and professional products.
Furthermore, the controller is configurable for different graphic VFD drive structures with dot formats up to 512 dots horizontally and 128 dots vertically. Display formats include 128x64, 256x64 and 256x128 dots.
For further details, contact:
Andy Stubbings, Itron (UK) Ltd, Vantage House, Harfreys Road, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk NR31 OLS Tel: 01493 601144 Fax: 01493 600343
Website: wwwnoritake-itron.com
or
Karen Mascarenhas, Mascarenhas PR, Tel: 020 8305 0650 Fax: 020 8305 9520
Email: karen@kmpr.co.uk Website: www.kmpr.co.uk
VF DISPLAY NOW WITH CIG CONTROLLER LAUNCHED BY ITRON UK