What is the Highest Resolution display ever successfully used with Arduino?

Other Hardware Displays
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I'm looking for a very high resolution display for use with Arduino. (I own the Due along with a few others.) I realise that the current Arduinos will never output 1920x1080p at 25fps, but I don't see why they couldn't control some sort of high-res screen (eg, 1280x720) with a low refresh rate.

I'm curious about this for various projects, but my current one involves plotting a signal being read by one of the analog-in ports. I literally only need to update something like 100-200 columns of pixels every second, and most of the pixels will be left black, and simple black and white is fine. Therefore, "refreshing" a 1920x1080 screen rolling once every 10 seconds would be fine. That's only 200kbps in pure black and white.

I've ordered a 800x480 TFT screen for $30, and can't see why I couldn't use three of these in a row in portrait mode, or four arranged 2x2 in landscape mode, but I don't want to have the joining lines. Also, if a 800x480 screen can be delivered for $30, it should be possible to do 1280x720 for $80 or even 1920x1080 for under $150.

What stops a laptop/netbook/tablet screen module being connected to Arduino?

Also, while I'm asking, is there any high resolution e-paper screen that can be used with Arduino? I've only been able to find ones that are less than 300x200.

Thanks!

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Hello and welcome

Arduisi:
What stops a laptop/netbook/tablet screen module being connected to Arduino?

Those screens and their controllers are unknown, most likely you will never find any public information or datasheet about them. So you will have to reverse engineer it... which is almost impossible :wink:

Arduino is not suited for this job. You may want to look at more advanced boards, such as Beaglebone Black, Raspberry Pi, or similar, with HDMI connector.

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Thanks for the input, but can anyone answer the main question: What is the highest resolution display that anyone has got working with Arduino?

*** Does anyone know of an LCD screen with a resolution above 800x480 that can be controlled by a microcontroller by a serial/parallel interface? ***

This is currently for part of a university-based project, but I'm interested in bulk costs as this could eventually become a mass-produced device. If I'm willing to join three screens together it looks like I can achieve 1440x800 for just $40-45 (bulk buying 3x 5" 800x480 screens (with built-in driver and RAM) plus one microcontroller) for a low-power, compact & simple solution, but I'm hoping that it's possible to use a single higher resolution screen without increasing the cost too much, or perhaps even reducing it.

Are there no display modules above 800x480 where the interface is publicly available?

I would also consider a solution of an LCD + separate inexpensive separate driver chip to communicate with microcontroller and store the RAM. As suggested buy Guix, HDMI could work, but I imagine that using HDMI in the chain will result in unnecessary bulk, power consumption and complexity. (I don't want a separate monitor - I'm aiming for something with the dimensions of a tablet computer, but with lower power consumption and much lower cost.)

I realise Arduino isn't ideal, but need to keep the cost, power consumption and size as low as possible, so Raspberry Pi, etc, is definitely out. I can consider other microcontrollers, e.g., the mbed platform, but as I say the microcontroller itself shouldn't need to be all that powerful (potentially not much more than reading an ADC pin at 500Hz and outputting 200kbit/s or less, with minimal other processing) as long as the display / display driver doesn't demand that all of the screen be updated frequently (ie, retains the unchanging pixels in RAM).

Is the only way to achieve this to buy a expensive(ish) microcontroller with a built-in TFT driver? If so, how can I find the cheapest programmable (ideally C/C++) microcontroller + screen that is 1280x720 or above? (Even 1024x768 would be a big improvement.)

Thanks.

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Hi

Largest displays, i have seen here in this forum have 800x480 pixel (like this one: http://www.buydisplay.com/default/7-tft-screen-touch-lcd-display-module-w-ssd1963-controller-board-mcu).
I think it is supported by UTFT for Arduino.

Oliver

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you might have a look at this one, # pixels is not a holy grail ...

I have seen a high res screen once (not on the forum) controlled by multiple UNO's but I do not recall it :frowning:

Note that the Arduino's have less RAM than highres screens
so can you tell us what your application is??

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I have a board that drives a 800x480 TFT touch screen from a SAM3S2B processor, which is similar to (but slower than) the SAM3X8E used in the Due.

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At the moment I'm just trying to plot a signal in high definition, but the end application in mind is for displaying biosignals in high definition, for example multi-channel EEG (brain waves) or ECG/EKG (heart traces). Fortunately the signal channels are separate so I could potentially use one display for each channel, but it is still a problem for the time axis, where I would ideally have 2000 or more pixels, and splitting the signal into several windows causes issues, such as heartbeats appearing further apart - unfortunately there isn't a 480x2000 display around!

For my application, I need high resolution - 250dpi would be great, 120dpi is probably a minimum, and I'd ideally want this for an area of 150mmx300mm (6"x12"), or maybe even 8"x12" so a display of 1500x3000 pixels would be perfect, but 1280x720 would be a good start, and 1024x768 may be sufficient for portable use.

For example, here's a standard 12-lead ECG:

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/4297/af3e.jpg

As you can see there is fine detail that is important. Using 800x480 is still clinically useful, but loses some accuracy when the signal is high frequency or low amplitude. The top three lines actually 12 different signals (3 rows of 4 columns), which could be put in four side-by-side 800x480 windows (portrait orientation). Each one or two displays could even have its own microcontroller, but the bottom line is continuous and almost 12" long. Putting a quarter inch to 1cm break in the middle of it can be problematic, especially as it must line up perfectly with the above traces. I could also end up with an awkward portion of unused screen at the bottom. (Displaying EEG also usually requires a long horizontal axis.)

My 800x480 display with built-in SSD1963 controller is on its way and will hopefully arrive within the next few days. If it works well enough I may order another couple to try them side-by side.

Having had a bit more of a look around it seems my best bet at using a continuous hi-res screen may be a microcontroller with a built-in LCD driver, such as the Atmel SAMA5D34, which supports 2048x2048, but is $10 in bulk, and I have no idea what sort of display to look for for it, and I'd imagine it will use somewhat more power.

Can anyone recommend a microcontroller + hi-res screen (1280x720 or better) combination?

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why not use an (old) PC for displaying data send from the Arduino to the PC.
You can do serial at even 500Kbaud to send data to PC very fast.

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I considered using a PC, which would certainly be easier, but as I said I want something hand-held and battery-efficient, and also have to consider the product viability.

Unfortunately they sent the wrong display so I'm waiting for a replacement. On the plus side I get to keep an 800x480 display but without the SSD1963 driver.

I'm wondering if there is any way for the SAM3X8E (Arduino Due) to drive a 800x480 display directly. I shouldn't need much RAM, since I'm only storing up to 800 values between 0 and 480 (800 x 9 = 900 bytes of RAM) and could just re-draw the graph, say 30 times per second. Could this be possible?

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