[N8VEM: 17302] Mockup of an "Advanced" V2 Bus Monitor Display

[Andrew Bingham]

(Note: This is just a mockup of the display. It's not working....yet.)

I'm still working on the V2 Bus Monitor, that I got a lot of good feedback
on in a previous thread. One thing I did do was buy some hardware to
mockup what the "Advanced" Bus Monitor display that I have in my head.
Partly because having a goal in my mind is motivating, and partly to get
more feedback. This is an 800x480 5.0" TFT LCD
(http://www.adafruit.com/products/1596) being driven by an RA8875 driver
(http://www.adafruit.com/products/1590) connected to an Arduino.

I've mocked up a display of the items I think we'd have on the V2 Bus
Monitor. To show high/low of signals, I'd invert the colors for that part
of the text (eg black on green for what would usually be an "ON" LED). I
haven't done that here yet because I'm writing whole lines of text at once
so it would invert the whole line, not just the individual items.

The address to halt/trap on is also displayed, and the
left/right/increase/decrease spots at the bottom would facilitate using a
touchscreen to modify the values.

I believe that all this could be accomplished with some serial/parallel
shift registers to get the latched LED data into the microcontroller and
the selections for the address and IN_= source back out to the bus monitor
board. But that is the part I am still thinking about, this part was easy
:)

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions. Hopefully someday, we'll be
able to have a display this nice on the front of our machines. I've shown
3 text sizes here (since it's writing the same text each time, it doesn't
"reflow" to fill the display, but certainly the entire area is available at
each side). The smallest one is too small, but depending on someones
eyesight and positioning of the machine, I could see using either of the
two larger sizes. There's also a picture of the whole system with a
credit-card-sized card for scale.

Andrew