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Re: Kopin 320 on a Microcontroller?

I see the point of the colour issue, 3x more information to be handled
and the higher Video Rate totally slipped my eye when I was looking
through those specs on Kopin website.
I just hoped to make more out of 320M than what it actually is...

Unless there's a faster AVR out there or some tricks to be pulled out
of the sleeve on 320M, but I'm no expert in VHDL code or 
microcontrollers in general.

The colour idea was only for the second stage, getting a monochrome
image in the first stage through a microcontroller would be a success 
onto itself and I'd hope that few people would want the circuit and
the code as an alternative to Motorola (if it gets to be cheaper).

Hmm I suppose I should just scrap the whole idea and get the ASIC 
from TekGear then, I'm sure Tony would like another customer :)

thanks

-pedja

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Duncan Entwisle" <>
To: <>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: Kopin 320 on a Microcontroller?

> Back from walking the dog..
> 
> >>> I believe that it should not be that complicated and there wouldnt
> >>> be too much adc/dac conversion, plus with a microcontroller (I'm
> >>> thinking some Atmel perhaps) the Kopin 320 grey
> >>> can maybe become a colour display with a proper back light
> >>> (basically r/g/b LED controlled by the chip) in stage two (after
> >>> stage one actually gets the greyscale image displayed)
> 
> If you're talking about one of the 8-bit Atmel AVRs, the maximum
> MIPS (from a quick perusal of their website) is 16MIPS.
> 
> So, back to that low 25 fps frame rate - in the time between sending
> pixels to the display, you would have 8 instructions.  You would
> have to update a counter, assert the appropriate signal lines etc
> in that time. You also need to find time to get information from the
> outside world into the PIC and then the external memory.
> 
> I did toy with the idea of going retro...  I envisaged addressing an
> external eprom (or flash) with an incrementing counter, and
> having the databus mapped to the Kopin's control signals, so
> every time the address incremented, the next control signal
> was sent out - but I didn't bother going too far down that route.
> 
> 
> > I actually noticed your blog about the Vidi project few days ago but 
> > you
> > have no wiring schematics up or any other electronics detail just the 
> > code.
> 
> Well, it has only been two and a bit weeks since I *started* - and you
> have to start somewhere :-)
> 
> My main concern was that I wasn't sure whether I'd interpreted Kopin's
> datasheet correctly - and I was hoping that someone might of been
> able to provide some input.
> 
> > I wonder if 320M and 320C are phyiscally the same just the driver chip
> > and the backlight are different (it leads me to believe that when 
> > reading
> > the specs on Kopin's website).
> 
> The way the two devices are driven appear to be different, plus the 320C
> operates at a much higher clock speed (as it displays 3 separate frames
> for every 1 frame that the 320M has to display) - running the 320M at
> that clock speed would violate the timings for the device.  (I suppose
> you could run the 320M at 75 fps, but have an effective colour frame
> rate of 25 fps, but it wouldn't be as good as the real thing).
> 
> Duncan.
> 
> 
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