H8S solution enables high-quality LCD displays for a wide range of cost-sensitive markets

The LCD evaluation demo board combines the Renesas H8S/2378 microcontroller and a graphic software/GUI (graphic user interface) package from Segger, providing a low-cost solution that opens vast new markets. The supported Segger software includes library routines for creating any form of high-quality images on the display. When running the Segger software, the demo evaluation board can support full-screen animations at 25 frames per second on a QVGA size panel. This capability can be applied to produce smooth GUI selection menus, as well as custom animated screen images on the display panel.



The single-chip H8S/2378-based hardware and software solution allows high-quality LCD panels to be incorporated into cost-sensitive applications,” said W. Kattermann, Group Marketing Manager CID Business Unit, Renesas Technology Europe. “As a result, refrigerators, ovens, thermostats, electronic utility meters, medical monitoring and many other products can offer LCD displays that simplify operation and present data in visually appealing formats.



Using the Renesas software application programming interface (API), Segger is able to offer its emWin and embOS software products with the H8S/2378 microcontroller for LCD applications. The Segger emWin product allows users to quickly and easily generate complex images with 2D graphics and animation support as well as user defined text font support. The embOS product complements the multi-bus and multiple direct memory access (DMA) architecture of the H8S/2378 device, handling software multi-tasking at minimal cost, said Rolf Segger, President of Segger Microcontroller Systeme GmbH .



The H8S/2378 microcontroller has ample speed (35MHz) and highly integrated peripherals for performing real-time control tasks. It also removes the requirement of an external LCD controller with a frame buffer, by using the multi-bus architecture and the on-chip external DMA controller to drive data from the external frame buffer to the LCD panel. The control signals are synchronized to data transfer by using a timer pulse unit (TPU). The on-chip functions operate LCD panels in a fully time-deterministic way, imposing virtually no overhead on the device's 16-bit CISC CPU core. Thus, the device is able to perform all other system connection algorithms and functions. In addition, the chip's bus architecture, combined with the single-cycle access capability of the built-in flash memory, allows low clock frequencies for driving LCDs and performing MCU functions. The low clock frequencies reduce electromagnetic interference/electromagnetic susceptibility (EMI/EMS) levels and decrease power consumption.