Help us make a great product

[johnt]

What sort of touch device do you have in mind?
Are you thinking an end user device to compete with Galaxy or kindle etc
(if not why not - I think you'd be good at that - just dont use google linux)
Or are you thinking about a development board for engineers - if so what markets
I suspect you are going about this backwards.
I offer creative consultancy on a professional basis but I'm happy to contribute a little.
But it's hard to make useful suggestions without knowing what you are trying to achieve.

[Hazelden]

If there was a Mikromedia II product developed I would like to see some of the following features included:

Enhanced Mikromedia board:
More RAM for PIC32 Microcontroller
Capacitive Touch Screen
MikroC Pro Compatible RTOS

Premade Mikromedia Case options:
-Thin case for just a Mikromedia board + 1000 mAh battery
-Medium thick case for either a Mikromedia board + mikroBUS Shield or Mikromedia board + battery shield
-Gaming Case for a Mikromedia Board + Gaming Shield + Battery

Improved TFT Display Library:
-Double Buffered Graphics for flicker free screen redraws
-TFT_Partial_Image function expanded to support custom source and destination rects with image scaling
-TFT_Image function expanded to support 1 bit alpha key to allow for image composting over a textured background.
-TFT_Image_Rotated function to draw BMP images with 0/90/180/270 degree rotation
-TFT_Get_Pixel function to read a color value off the TFT screen
-A function for drawing filled polygon shapes onscreen.


VisualTFT Enhancements:
-Multi-line text area / box
-List box with item selection
-Resource Collection feature for animations supporting numbered BMP image sequences in the name.number.bmp format ( ie. compass.1.bmp to compass.360.bmp) with a frame number attribute exposed in the VisualTFT GUI.
-Alignment tools for standard labels
-Horizontal and Vertical sliders with OnUp / OnDown / OnClick / OnPress actions
-Support for a BMP formatted tiled texture Screen backgrounds / fill patterns
-Custom VisualTFT "Syntax Highlighting" Color Scheme Editor

MikroC Pro Enhancements:
Custom Styles editor for full GUI control

Extras:
MikroProg Suite utility compiled natively for Mac OS X

If it is too much work to develop and maintain the full MikroC / MikroBasic / MikroPascal programs for Mac OS X just having the MikroProg utililty would be really handy.

Mikromedia eBooks
I would like to see a series of MikroElektronika (paid) Mikromedia eBooks similar to the classic "Forest Mimms" Radio Shack electronics books that would focus on getting new hobbyists and students started with electronics + embedded programing + embedded graphics using the Mikromedia boards.

Possible Book topics:
-Getting Started With Sensors
-Getting Started With Communication
-Getting Started With Embedded Multimedia
-Getting Started With Embedded GUIs

[LGR]

Keep in mind that for multimedia, you're competing with $70 Andriod pads from China with 700x480 LCDs. I think it would make more sense to be thinking less in terms of multimedia, and more in terms of remote control. This means options for wireless communication; wifi, zigbee, and bluetooth.

[rmteo]

Keep in mind that for multimedia, you're competing with $70 Andriod pads from China with 700x480 LCDs.

Agreed +2. I was offered 7in. Android tablets for <$42 (in quantity) and use them (connected to a separate MCU via USB) for applications that need a GUI/HMI.

[LGR]

rmteo, that's exactly what I'm contemplating. The USB interface seems very doable, and as an alternative, the Microchip wifi interface would work, too.

[cirederf]

For my part, considering the price of the tablet, I'm looking for ease of programming internet as well as a communication easy with wifi for example, it is the customer who chooses his tablet

[zet-jaro]

Hi, I have EasyAVR6 so basically I can give you some advices for minor changes only for that board, maybe for version 7


1. make one jumper on USB UART on 2nd leg of FTDI (DTR# line) which is connected over one capacitor to RST pins

2. analog potentiometer isn't connected to DIP28, it's very important to me becouse in most cases I'm using ATMEGA328

3. make some kind of jumpers or dip switches for enabling debouncing on push buttons

that's all for now

hope I've helped!
Tomislav

[filip]

Hi,

Thank you for your suggestion, I will pass it to our hardware developers.

Regards,
Filip.

[OT]

For instrumentation/data logging use one really need a dedicated coin cell battery backed-up real-time clock. DS3234 could be a good choice with the oscillator in the same chip, output for 32kHz and programmable 1 Hz, and Fast SPI connection that only would take the CS pin on top of other SPI devices. The internal dsPIC33/PIC24/PIC32 clocks will stop as soon as power is lost, so they are not a good alternative for time keeping.

For instrumentation purposes you could loose the MP3 chip. Also I am not sure how useful the accelerometer is - if something other has to go the accelerometer chip would be my first choice.

It should be choice of a controller with a 12 bit A/D converter; for instance the EP version of the dsPIC board has only 10 bit resolution. A quick check indicated that one would currently need to go down to 256mB program memory to get 12-bit resolution in a dsPIC33 EP version, may be a standard version with 512MB would be available? Personally I feel that dsPICs are preferred for instrumentation.

The preferred size for an instrumentation display would be somewhat larger than the current ones.

In a practical device, microSD cards are awfully small to handle in the field, I would prefer standard size cards, which also would offer more storage space.

As others have noted above, the option of dedicated cases in several different versions would make it a lot more sell-able.

Would some on-board device to translate between 5V and 3.3V signals be possible?

Low dropout voltage regulator to provide high enough voltagep; I do not know if this has been fixed on later versions of the boards.

Personally I would have liked to have both the FTDI chip and a Max3232 (but no room for RS232 connector as that would take too much space), but maybe that is a too special wish.

If it were to be used for small volume mass production, some kind of guarantee of future design compatibility/stability would be desirable.

[x2net]

Dear MikroElektronika.

I'm using pascal language since 2002 and I'm wondering why If-then statements don't work with strings.
Example:

If string='DoThis1' then DoThis;
If String='DoThat' Then DoThat;

It is a bug or something? (I tried this with delphi 5, delphi 7, Turbo Pascal 7.0, and windows pascal, all works except mikropascal)
Please give advice!
Thanks

[x2net]

Why?

[filip]

Hi,

Currently, this feature is not implemented in the mikroPascal, you can use StrCmp routine from the String library to compare strings.
Please, there is no need for any offensive words which you have posted here, like the one on the screenshots.
Thank you for the understanding.

Regards,
Filip.

[stevencovert]

I agree with Hazleden's ideas. As far as multimedia and gaming and "fun" in general, I don't see anything Mikro can do to compete with the small tablet market flood from China. However, and more importantly IMHO keeping on the business plan of education/engineering, I would like to see a general purpose unit with some decent ADC and DAC outputs, and some TTL.

For a professional (I mean non-student, marketable, etc.) design you can't use the the big 40-pin connectors. Something like the FFC connector design I posted in LIBSTOCK works great to interface to a daughter board. Unless you have rows around the edges to plug the module into a daughter board.

The hard part in trying to design something *I believe* is deciding what to offer as a standard product. Mikroe's multimedia kits are nice to develop with (even though I have never used ANY of the multimedia features as an engineer). As mentioned in other posts, if you take out the MP4, Accel and keep (or add):

- SPI EEPROM (dsPIC doesn't have EEPROM!)
- FTDI USB
- SDCARD (std size, not micro)
- 2 Click modules
- Lots of examples for updating ROM via USB/SDCARD

This will require the SPI routines generated by VisualTFT to get fixed, so you can use multiple SPI devices on SPI bus 1 *when using the SDCARD for the TFT*. To my knowledge the generated code still does not de-assert the chip select when talking to the SDCARD, which crashes everything. All my designs have SDCARD on SPI1, and everything else on SPI2 due to this.

For example, this could a reference design. I can take the "standard" size daughter board and design anything I want, and plug in the MCU / comms main board to run it. You already have a nice case for the PIC18F CPU board, something like that, maybe another design that is larger for bigger projects.

For example - With this nice looking white case with a 3.5" TFT, people could mount it on the wall and communicate to a PIC PLC somewhere for home automation. Engineers like myself could design some custom DAQ device/controller and get it market super fast, having the GUI hardware/case board dimensions etc. already done.

But if I could do my design and simply plug in the TFT/MCU User Interface module (with above stuff listed on it) and put in the case (with some machining for connectors) - wow! Call it the Mikro dsPIC33/PIC32 design launcher Only thing are some of my designs require a metal enclosure to reduce EMI, or because it is a high voltage power supply, etc. If there a metal equivalent of your white plastic enclosure, that would be awesome.

So as students who learn on Mikroe's platforms turn into engineers that DESIGN and PROTOTYPE with Mikroe's hardware and compilers, Mikro can supply the pre-built "brains" and/or enclosure to help us get these new devices to market quickly! Apple does this everyday in schools - give the schools free MAC's! Let them learn on MAC's, they become MAC users for life

I actually have started something similar along this topic. I have spent a large part of my projects just trying to house the thing. I have settled on extruded aluminum housings from Bud that accept standard eurocards (like the pic in my LIBSTOCK post). This design has TFT off-board mounted to the cover, connected to the main board via a FFC cable. I have about 6 designs based on this, and was at one time putting together the entire design as a reference for LIBSTOCK (for professional engineers), but never got around to finishing it.


Just my 2 cents

Steve