New guy here.

[Whats that smell?]

Not to sound dumb or anything but does anyone know a good book to learn about electronics as far as lcd and led drivers, i have general knowlege in audio but little in that department.

 

[gramo]

What are you using to interface with them?

 

[Whats that smell?]

Thats just it I have no clue.

 

[gramo]

Thats just it I have no clue.

If this is the case, you should start having a look at micro controllers if you want to use LCD's, or have a look at some simple analogue/digital circuits that utilize LED displays

**broken link removed** of an LCD with an 18F PIC micro

**broken link removed**​

And the program to display the above;

Device = 18F4520
Clock = 20

// some LCD options...
#option LCD_DATA = PORTD.4              // Assign the LCD connections
#option LCD_EN = PORTD.3                //
#option LCD_RS = PORTD.2                //

// import LCD library...
Include "LCD.bas" 
Include "convert.bas"
Dim Variable As Word

// Start Of Program...
DelayMS(150)                            // Let the LCD warm up
LCD.Cls                                 // Clear the LCD screen
LCD.WriteAt(1,1,"Hello World")          // Send some text to the LCD
Variable = 0                            // Clear the "Variable" register
While True
    Inc(Variable)                       // Increment the "Var1" register
    // Convert to a string, 
    //  and always display 5 characters    
    LCD.WriteAt(2,1,Convert.DecToStr(Variable,5))   
    
    DelayMS(1000)                       // Delay for 1 second                 
Wend

It's duanting at first, but its really not that hard. If I have sparked your intrest in micro controllers, then have peruse of my **broken link removed** or **broken link removed** that I made up that covers the complete basics of using a PIC and making a simple project

**broken link removed**​

 

[PaulAdman]

Jean LaBrosse is back with an update of his “Embedded Systems Building Blocks” (R&D Books, ISBN 0-87930-604-1). I’ve always been a fan of his articles and books, and think this latest is a valuable addition to any embedded library.

The book is a collection of drivers for some of the more common embedded problems. It starts with a 40 page introduction to managing real time problems, largely in the context of using a RTOS. This section alone is worthwhile for anyone trying to learn about using an RTOS, though I’d also recommend getting his “uC/OS-II, The Real Time Kernel”

Included code (also on the companion CD-ROM) covers the following:

*

Keyboard handler, for keypads arranged in matrices that are software scanned.
*

Seven segment LED driver, for multiplexed arrays of LEDs
*

A complete LCD driver package for units based on Hitachi’s HD44780 chip
*

A time of day clock package, which manages time in an year:month:day and hours:minutes:seconds format. It’s Y2K compliant, to boot!
*

If your real time code works with multiple delay and timeout issues, his timer manager is a useful chunk of code. It manages up to 250 software timers; all are driven off a single timer interrupt source. His example shows this running from a 1/10 second interrupt rate; I’d be interested to see if it can be scaled to higher rates on reasonably small CPUs.
*

Discrete I/O drivers for inputs and outputs, with edge detection code. I like the way he abstracts the hardware to “logical channels”, which makes it so much easier to change things, and to create software stubs for testing before hardware is available.
*

Fixed point math – one of the best discussions I’ve seen on this subject, which is critical to many smaller embedded apps. Fixed point is a sort of poor man’s floating point: much smaller code that runs very fast, but you sacrifice resolution and range.
*

ADC and DAC drivers, with a good discussion of managing these beasts in engineering units rather than un-scaled bits.

An appendix includes Jean’s programming conventions, a firmware standard. I passionately feel that firmware standards are the starting point of writing decent code. An alternative standard is available at www.ganssle.com/misc/fsm.doc.

Much of the code is targeted at applications using the uC/OS RTOS. It’s rather easy to port the code to any RTOS, and in many cases even to use it with no RTOS (though you’ll have to delete some of the OS function calls).

When I read the first version of his book my gut reaction was “well, I could write this stuff easily myself.” That’s true; most of this code is not terribly complex. But why bother? Why re-invent the wheel? The best developers find ways to buy, recycle, and borrow code, rather than write every last routine.

 

[Whats that smell?]

Thank for the info guy this is what i was looking for.