/bitlashchatpad_TFT

A mobile ATmega1284p platform with a TFT screen and a Chatpad keyboard

Primary LanguageC++

The project

It is a small mobile platform based on an ATmega 1284p running Bitlash. An Xbox Chatpad is used as an input device. A TFT screen is used as a display. Schematic of the board is in the Doc directory

I would like to use this platform as an engineering assistant tool when doing electronics.

  • To generate logic patterns
  • To test SPI and I²C components and or peripherals
  • Measure pulses
  • Test servo
  • ....

Components

The screen

It is a TFT screen from OPENSMART with an ILI9326 driver chip. Library for the screen is on my GitHub

The keyboard

The chatpad is reprogrammed with the firmware from the OpenKeyboard Project. I have no link to this project as they are all dead links.

The software

The application is based on Bitlash by Bill Roy. Bitlash is a scripting language with an easy to learn syntax. I have made some modifications to Bill Roy work in order to make the best use of the ATmega 1284p. The library is on my GitHub

Todo list

General
  • Adding schematic
  • Loading modified Arduino library for the screen on Github
  • Loading modified Arduino Bitlash library on Github
  • Loading a copy of the OpenKeyboard Project on Github
Application
  • Adding chatpad input to Bitlash
  • Adding TFT support to Bitlash (see note))
  • EEPROM cleaner. Utility to compact EEPROM content when there are too many holes in the file system
  • Support for SPI in Bitlash
  • Support for I²C in Bitlash
  • jointly with the development of SPI and I²C, adding support for an array in order to transfert pack of data to the peripheral

Note: Concerning the screen, a scroll is very time consuming as the hardware support is only possible in portrait mode. So it was decided to make a rollover instead of a scroll. When bottom of screen is reached the cursor returns to top of screen. To highlight the cursor position the line following the cursor is deleted too.