Need a TFT & bluetooth dev kit

[Mosaic]

Hi all:
I need to develop a touchscreen interface for an automation project. I'd like to go with a TFT active display for high contrast day/night use.

The resolution could be 320 x 240 or a bit less. I'd prefer to use Microchip uC parts. I believe the 18FJ series is capable.

Are their dev. kits etc. to help in this regard? I see Visual TFT is an option from Mikroelektronika.

Also I might need bluetooth....any suggestions on developing such capability?
perhaps this?
**broken link removed**

 

[Gobbledok]

Hi Mosaic,

There doesn't seem to be much at all around for PIC18's and LCD's. You may have to "roll your own".

I like to use double sided vero board and ribbon cable for my own board. I usually use ebay for my lcd needs. I'm not sure how much experience you have with TFT's but do a quick search on ebay for "SSD1963" or "ILI9325". The SSD controllers are usually found on the slightly larger, higher resolution screens and the ILI controllers are commonly found on the 320 x 240 screens. Make sure you get a complete LCD PCB module (i.e. the screen does not terminate in a tiny ribbon cable). As well as being easier to interface to, these boards also usually have the touch screen controller on board and quite often you can find them with SD card slots or a few MB's of flash, etc.

For the bluetooth, I like using simple bluetooth-serial converters. They are extremely easy to use, you just talk to them through SPI and they behave just like a normal SPI port once paired. You can also send them AT commands in order to change their name, change the serial speed, read the connected devices, etc. Do a search on ebay for "bluetooth master slave" to see the small cheap modules I am talking about. They are about A$6.00 each.


Edit: Just saw that MikroElektronika does a tft board for the PIC18FJ: https://www.mikroe.com/mikromedia/pic18fj/

Edit again: Only just noticed (duh) that you mentioned the MikroElektronika board in your OP. It seems to be about the only one.

 

[Gobbledok]

A couple of examples of my 'RYO' dev boards:

PIC32MX795 using a PIC32 'Plug in Module':

STM32F407 (the board in progress out of my power supply):

 

[Mosaic]

Can you share the schematics and a bit of sample coding? Which libs support the boards?