Display Keyboard connection

Fabri · Joined: 22 Aug 2005 Posts: 275

Hi Everibody,
I develope a system based on 2 circuits pannel and mother board. The comunication, between the 2 circuits, is based on rs232. The cable is 2 meters long. The pannel was developed in second time respect mother board, this is the reason of second pic in pannel lcd.
In a little future I'll develope a new revision of mother board and in this occasion I need to have one only PIC in the system able to write LCD 16x2 and read a 4x4 keyboard on cable, 4 or 6 wire, of 2 meters long.

Do you think is possible and have you got an hardware idea to solve the problem ?

Thanks for support,

Bye

JohnLeung · Joined: 18 May 2004 Posts: 15

Hi

In the past I have completed several products similar to what you have described. A keypad with 4x4 keyad and a 20x4 LCD panel as the control console, the other side is a 4" 3-digit 7 segment display or a 128x32 matrix 40" long bi-color LED display.

I have put the 4" 7 segment display as a complete kit with open source code under my web site www.TechToys.com.hk -> under PIC kit section.

The idea is to ensure a good communication between the console and the display with a buffered serial communication link. For the console, it's just a good 4x4 keypad driver, a DS1302 RTC circuit, 4x20 LCD driver, and so on. Since it is a power socket application, no sleep mode, no battery saving skill required.

John Leung

SherpaDoug · Joined: 07 Sep 2003 Posts: 1640 Location: Cape Cod Mass USA

Before you commit to this make sure it is a good idea. The cost of wire and connectors may be more than the cost of one of the cheaper PICs. This is especially true if the PIC code is already written and a harsh environment requires expensive connectors and wire.

Remember silicon is cheap, iron can be very expensive!
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