Hello!
I'm building a custom stereo spectrum analyzer for home system. It will have 8x14 led dot matrix display. Having such nice display inspired me to use it for showing additional data, such as name of input selected, show volume level while adjusting and so on. The problem is that EPROM space of chip I want to use PIC16F887 is quite limited, so having whole font in memory is not possible.
My approach is as follows:
1. Attach an external eeprom chip, where letter graphics and other symbols will be stored
2. create a lookup table, so we know that say data for "B" starts at address F940 and data for "X" starts say at FFCD.
3. Alocate a virtual "frame buffer" in chip eeprom, which will be read by separate routine in interrupt, which will update the display.
4. As needed, transfer data from external eeprom to internal.
The question is, to have smooth display, I will need to update it at least 30 times per second. Reading internal eeprom so much times will cause it to fail quite fast, I guess? The possible workaround is to use SRAM chip, but maybe I'm making things too complicated and there are simpler ways to solve it? I don't want to use external IC like MAX7219 or similar, I want to do everything purely my MCU powers.
I'm building a custom stereo spectrum analyzer for home system. It will have 8x14 led dot matrix display. Having such nice display inspired me to use it for showing additional data, such as name of input selected, show volume level while adjusting and so on. The problem is that EPROM space of chip I want to use PIC16F887 is quite limited, so having whole font in memory is not possible.
My approach is as follows:
1. Attach an external eeprom chip, where letter graphics and other symbols will be stored
2. create a lookup table, so we know that say data for "B" starts at address F940 and data for "X" starts say at FFCD.
3. Alocate a virtual "frame buffer" in chip eeprom, which will be read by separate routine in interrupt, which will update the display.
4. As needed, transfer data from external eeprom to internal.
The question is, to have smooth display, I will need to update it at least 30 times per second. Reading internal eeprom so much times will cause it to fail quite fast, I guess? The possible workaround is to use SRAM chip, but maybe I'm making things too complicated and there are simpler ways to solve it? I don't want to use external IC like MAX7219 or similar, I want to do everything purely my MCU powers.