....
Mark,
Look, we may have gotten off to a bad start. But that's okay!
>This is a technical forum things get missed or misunderstood.
you bet!
>and oscillators and PLL, are bare bones uC requirements.
And this is why I didn't mention them, because any uC requires them, so mentioning them would not make a difference in the price regardless the controller used. This is how I hoped you would of considered it.
>Also, I don't consider a touchscreen controller to be part of the actual touchscreen, and I >would also label that as a barebones requirement.
Okay, here I did not mention "touch screen" in my op, but somehow it slipped into one of my posts and you picked up on that. No problem! As for the touch screen, I will not be using a touch screen controller. Think of it, my LCD is 1.5" ... not much room is there.... so I am simply using a 5 wire matrix touch screen which will use up 4 inputs on the uC. This will allow 4 touch screen positions on the LCD. More than eanough for what I am doing.
>How memory/cpu intensive are the applications you want to write? Do they require intense >floating point math, or are they simply more GUI input/response applications?
Naaaaa not much floating point math there.... mostly GUI/response app.
In reality a couple of screens app. 10 of them and they will always repeat with very slight differences!
>I disagree. Your original post asks for graphics, backgrounds, fonts, and menu's. >That can be handled easily without linux. There are embedded graphics and GUI >libraries that do all of the user interface you require, no linux is needed and you can >use a simpler controller with integrated ROM/RAM with still a lot of functionality left >over for your custom apps.
And that's precisely the rub! That's why I am trying to find out, which would be more expensive, the Linux way or just a simple Microchip controller with some flash to store my graphics?
Now I know that if I go with the simpler controller with integrated ROM/RAM, I can get a PIC for 3$ or 4$ (High volume) and I add some flash app. 2 megbyte at 4$ (I think that this is unit price... I don't remember ... I would have to check) and this would pretty well be my 8$ cost..... *plus* all your components such as resistors, crystal, caps, LCD, touchscreen, reset switch.... yada yada yada...................
So if I do go with a simple uC without Linux, then Microchip offers GUI libraries for a color LCD solution. However, when I spoke to them, they told me that their graphics cannot handle wallpaper. I don't even know if they handle anti alliasing !!!! And what if I want to design my own list box graphics and functionality.... would their graphics GUI libraries offer such flexibility? I seen their demo its quite nice though!
But if I go the Linux way, the way I see it, I would need a uC at 8$ plus some ram/rom which I have no clue on how much would be a realistic cost given my scenario... *plus* all components such as resistors, crystal, caps, LCD, touchscreen, reset switch.... yada yada yada...................
So that's that!
PS in my op >>> (approximately 16 mbytes to hold some graphics) should of read:
(approximately 2 mega bytes to hold some graphics) I don't have much graphics.
Robert