Hi everyone,
this is my first project using a maple clone (the olimexino) that I want to show to the world.
Using the said maple clone I was able to find out how to interface with the front panel units of Canon Pixma inkjet printers (currently MP620 and MP630).
These front panels contain quite some processing power and are an ready-to-use user interface for many projects at very low or no cost. (Inkjet printers are crappy and therefore cheap/free. A perfectly working one costs about 40 $/€)
Nearly all of the processing for the display is done in the frontpanel chip itself. The displays also have their own RAM (512K words × 2 banks × 16 bits = 2 MB) in which image data can be stored and are able to do transparency and overlay/sprite drawing by themselves. Just tell the frontpanel at which position it should draw the data from RAM address XY and the frontpanel will show it on the display all by itself, even using layers and transparency/overlay. The buttons are also polled by the display chip and the state of the buttons is communicated over UART.
So with just two UART connections (one for LCD, one for the buttons) and an Data+Clock line (image data) you will get an user interface with buttons, graphic color LCD display, RAM to store image data, and direct RAM to display drawing. The load on the connected board is nearly zero as soon as all the data has been loaded into RAM.
For drawing something on the display there is an library available for the olimexino that should also work on the maple. It features direct loading from SD to RAM and simple usage and drawing using "screenobjects".
Please take a look at the demo video at the wiki of the project on sourceforge ( http://sourceforge.net/p/pixmafrontpanel/wiki/Home/ ) and tell me what you think of it. Be aware though that this is just a proof of concept and in alpha.
I am hoping to find other people who want to use these displays in their projects and who can help me improve the library and maybe even add other displays.
I am also searching for people to test the library on a maple board.
Also if you have a Canon Pixma laying around please contact me, maybe we can use the front panel for further research in the future.
I am curious to hear what you think of this project. :)
Kind regards
Blaupause
