Hello, I'm a total, complete noob in the Arduino world; I joined this forum with the hopes of getting a seemingly simple task done.
I'm currently building a scale model of KITT (Knight Rider) and want to add functional mini screens into the dashboard; I bought a mod, but unfortunately fried it, and was thinking on something I could do from scratch.
All I want to do is load videos on an SD card into an OLED screen like one of the following:
For me it sounds very simple, but is it possible? and how? and in case none of the screens are compatible (I need really tiny screens) which ones you recommend?
That is an i Interesting project that could be a lot of fun but please realize we are not a free design or code writing service. We will be happy help out with your design and or code but first you have to make an attempt to design it, write it, post it and explain what is not working properly.
If there is hardware it is always best to post links to technical information as there are many versions of the same or different items. Since we cannot see your project, my eyes are to weak, you need to post using the language of electronics, an annotated schematic, (best) or a clear picture of a drawing. Pictures never hurt. Frizzing diagrams are not considered schematics here, they are wiring diagrams, they may be great for assembly lousy for troubleshooting.
I suggest you get a copy of the Arduino Cookbook and read it and study the sections applicable to your project. The basics for what you want to do is in there.
If this is not feasible there is a for hire section where somebody would happily do it for a fee.
I am curious. What sounds simple about this? Who is saying this, and where can this person's words be found? If the person successfully demonstrated "this," by all means, follow those instructions.
It is not possible with Arduino, but beginners usually don't have the background to make good judgements regarding technical challenges like this.
Start by finding examples to display a black and white bitmap image from program code, then from an SD card, and work your way up! Adafruit has a good selection of displays and tutorials on how to use their products.
Hint on posting links: all the nonsense starting with the "?" is your personal tracking information. Remove it.
In general, most arduinos do not have enough compute power to play video, and most OLED displays do not have a fast enough data path TO a cpu to play video.
Recall that in the pc world, we are many generations in on specialized graphics interfaces and accelerators. Playing video is not nearly as simple as it seems.
I have not been able to find more information about this example. I have a similar 3.5" NHD TFT, the shield for UNO, but I have not been able to emulate it.
I have achieved it with the GDSTx library on a teensy 4.1 board and a 5" NHD TFT, but that example... someday the author will share the steps to achieve it
I'm not talking about OLED screens, I'm talking about screens with advanced graphics accelerators like the EVE FT813
That example uses a shield with an FTDI FT81x "Embedded Video Engine" chip, which supports decoding of "motion jpeg" and a lot of the other heavy lifting.
It's similar to using one of those MP3 modules to get an Arduino to play music.
I suppose we can argue about whether that "counts" WRT to the OPs query...
Hello! I think that looks as something very similar, but so far, perhaps there are not tiny enough screens to do a project like that? I was thinking about something as little as 0.6" but reading most messages it seems there is not the case.
To get video, you pretty much need a display with a high-speed parallel interface.
All the the really tiny displays I've seen have much slower SPI or I2C interfaces.
The advanced graphics controller is installed on the screen PCB, at first I thought that everything was done by the shield, but that is not the case.
Not so, that shield is an interface formatted for the arduino UNO, which allows the conversion of signals from 5V to 3V3; It has a microSD reader. In addition, it has a 20-pin header to which the TFT flat cable signals are directed and a two-pin adapter to connect the speaker.
This chip is present in the gameduino 2, 3 and 3x, as well as the shield sunflower, these variants I have not been able to obtain currently.
Several manufacturers such as Riverdi, New Haven Display, Matrix Orbital, Cristalfontz and brtchip have among their TFT lines, variants of the FT81x and BT81x chips, but they are not cheap at all.
I have worked for several years on the library called GDSTx, based on the gameduino 23X library, which can work with the SDIO reader of the teensy 4/4.1/3.5/3.6 boards using Greiman's most recent SdFat library.
But the milestone of making it work with an Arduino UNO has slipped out of my hands.
Going back to the OP's original request, it seems reasonable to reduce expectations and consider static displays doing a "slide show", which is doable with 0.6" displays and an Arduino Uno.
Putting aside things like EVE, which is an admittedly very powerful system and makes graphics almost trivial, there are the Cheap Yellow Displays (google that) which couple an ESP32 to a parallel-interface TFT at about half the price of an EVE display. I'm pretty sure I've seen those do smooth motion video, but I don't remember where.
I don't have any links, but Adafruit has some videos of slow motion video on their small OLED displays.
Returning to the initial topic, a loading sequence of consecutive images stored on a microSD could be used to emulate the sequence of a video.
The images could be named with a numerical sequence, so that when you reach the limit, you can return to the loading menu. In this way different sequences could be shown.
Unfortunately the SdFat library is too extensive to be processed by the memory of an Arduino UNO, but it could be used on an Arduino MEGA or a Due
You are right cedarlakeinstruments, I have repeatedly seen small screens showing incredible graphics, it seems to me that with ESP32-S3,
There are several boards with this chip, quite cheap, in which a tiny TFT is integrated, as in this example
Thanks for your response! Seeing the example you showed, I found another related one, could this be something similar to what I am looking for, and can it use an even smaller screen? If so, which one could you recommend? It also uses ES32 I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K-EbKkWLTA&ab_channel=TaylorGalbraith
It looks good to experiment with, it's just too compact, evaluate if it is useful in the project you have in mind. Check carefully the libraries and software that should be used so that you become familiar.
Verify that this arrangement will indeed work without problems with the libraries
Just the ideal size for my project, as I will try to simulate two different smaller screens inside. I was thinking if, instead of a video, it can generate animations (vectors, colors, etc)
