Micros

Support tools aid Human Machine Interface design

18th August 2014
Mick Elliott
0

Engineers designing Human Machine Interfaces can now turn to Alpha Micro Components which is offering a comprehensive suite of additional support tools using  FTDI Chip Embedded Video Engine (EVE) technology. Both the FT800 graphic controller IC and the newly announced FT801, with capacitive touch enabled interface and multi-touch capabilities are available.

The EVE Emulator Library is the first of the new support resources. This is a behaviour modelling software tool through which engineers can emulate the display and touch functions of the FT800 (and soon the FT801 will have single touch rather than multi-touch mode) without the need for any hardware.

It also allows engineers to create demos quickly to show to their project managers or prospective customers. Working on the Microsoft Windows operating system, it is capable of delivering high level emulation.

This tool benefits from an exact SPI/I2C interface configuration and consistent memory map of FT800/FT801 silicon. EVE sample applications employ a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) to make the application logic fully independent from the hardware platform.

Sample applications can be adapted on the EVE emulator without the need to alter the application logic.

In addition, Alpha Micro can now offer the VM800BU, which is a development module for the FT800 with a USB interface provided by a FT232H bridging IC.

This means when looking to work with EVE-based development modules, it is no longer necessary to source a separate USB converter cable, as the necessary functionality is already present within the board itself.

The EVE Screen Editor is a Microsoft Windows-based software tool which enables engineers to study display commands and experiment with generating their own display lists by which to control EVE ICs.

It can also be utilised to access a number of the various EVE development platforms available (such as the VM800B, VM800C and recently unveiled VM800BU) via FTDI Chip’s MPSSE cable without the need for any supplementary code to be written.

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