itron tft display free sample

iDevOS is a combined operating system and application processor software suitable for controlling a wide range of applications using a colour TFT display with touch panel and numerous interfaces to control peripheral devices. It was developed to reduce the time taken for companies to implement the latest colour display technology in their products by supplying much of the high level functionality expected of a touch controlled display in the operating system.

The typical "bottle-neck" when connecting a new colour display to an existing control system is that the amount of data communication can increase by a factor of 20 which can result in slow updates and poor animation capability. iDevOS allows you to move the application processing from the host control system into the display so all the host needs to do is collect raw data and send it directly to the display module. In 20% of projects, customers dispense with their existing control system and use the itron SMART display module to control the whole product.

Noritake_VFD_GU7000_LargeTextDemo demonstrates how to use the Noritake_VFD_GU7000 code library to change the font size on the Noritake GU-7000 Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) modules.

This project displays 1x1 in the normal sized font, 2x2 in a font that is twice as wide and twice as tall, and 3x2 in a font that is three times as wide and twice as tall.

Noritake_VFD_GU7000_ImageDemo demonstrates how to use the Noritake_VFD_GU7000 code library to display bitmap images on the Noritake GU-7000 Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) modules.

This project displays an antenna icon on the screen. This demonstration will store the image in the FlashRom of the VFD module. To confirm if your VFD module is applicable, refer to the specification.

iDevOS is a combined operating system and application processor software suitable for controlling a wide range of applications using a color TFT display with touch panel and numerous interfaces to control peripheral devices. It was developed to reduce the time taken for companies to implement the latest color display technology in their products by supplying much of the high level functionality expected of a touch controlled display in the operating system.

The iDevTFT software is being developed to simplify the creation, editing and uploading of application menus, fonts and images into itron SMART TFTs. You can add files to a project list on the left side and view/edit the files on the right side. Menu files are shown with multi-color syntax and error highlighting.

We offer Windows® based free development software “iDev TFT” to create your application quickly. The iDev TFT software is being developed to simplify the creation, editing and uploading of application menus, fonts and images into itron SMART TFTs. You can add files to a project list on the left side and view/edit the files on the right side. Menu files are shown with multi-colour syntax and error highlighting.

One such customer, KBiosystems, manufactures equipment used in detecting COVID variants with its wide range of sample sealers employing 4.3inch and 7-inch display modules. A typical sample tray consists of 225 compartments, which once loaded, requires a foil heat seal to be applied to prevent contamination. The latest designs use Itron (UK) Ltd’s modular system solution with stepper motor drive, temperature measurement and heating sub-modules controlled by the display module operating iDevOS via internal serial CAN and I2C interfaces.

Another customer, Monmouth Scientific, manufactures Clean Air Cabinets which guarantee a highly clean environment in which to analyse thousands of swabs from COVID test centres. Both 4.3 inch and 7-inch display modules are used across a range of products to set flow rate, filter change and other parameter settings.

Until 5 years ago, their displays were single colour illumination in blue, green or white but then along came the smart phone to totally re-define what is high tech in displays with its multi-colour high definition screen and touch control. A natural response would be to adopt the latest multi-colour technology, increase the system processing power, install a Linux or similar operating system and encourage their customers to move to new expensive development systems and recruit highly paid experienced engineers. However customers had been downsizing their electronic engineering departments for many years so with a long learning curve plus associated risks, it meant that many customers needed a more realistic solution.

ITRON Managing Director Andy Stubbings outlined a new operating language drawing influence from web and traditional C languages which would significantly reduce the software writing time and drive a new sales strategy for the company.

Key facets required were an object oriented, style based interpreted TEXT language with reduced command set but overloaded functionality and 16,000 object high speed database to retain parameters and reference to graphic and functional objects. This allows the application processes normally found in the host to be transferred to the display system so that low speed comms with raw data can provide rich functionality appropriate for a TFT display seeking to provide that ‘ifactor’.

After a year of development with a key Italian customer, ITRON released it’s first generation colour display system and was swamped by customer demand as it entered the market at 70% of the competition price and provided free development software and application examples. For just £85, anyone with basic web page writing capability could create an application in 12-15 hours then visit clients with a working demonstration rather than just a paper based idea. This resulted in high client confidence and rapid contract closure.

Then next two years saw ITRON ‘open the door’ to customer requested enhancement and with the assistance of over 200 customers, the iDevOS operating language nears completion. It now includes many of the capabilities seen in office based software like spreadsheets, graphs, pie charts and slide shows with many communication protocols including those found in MIDI music synthesizers and DMX theatre lighting control all in about 750k bytes enabling fast boot times less than 2 seconds.

iDevOS is an object oriented language initially designed to control TFT displays to enable rapid application development through easy image, text and function handling but has now found merit in many other control applications.

Effectively the difference compared to a conventional host - display system, is transfer of application processing to the display. The host is the same as used for the original monochrome display with 128x64 pixels and runs many of the proven software routines for controlling critical processes like boiler temperature and pump speed. You can view the iDevOS current specification and updates via the link below.