Hi, folks! So I’m looking at a hopefully interesting project. Specific questions below.
Basically I want to install a bunch of tiny TFT displays into a model, in order to simulate control panels. Think of the square-ish displays used in 2001: a Space Odyssey. Each display in that movie would display some sort of status output - sometimes text scrolling down, or a static display. Occasionally visual animations would appear.
Now, I could just make some static displays on transparency materials, but I want the displays to change like they do in the movie! So I thought some tiny TFT displays would be great - just cycle through some bitmaps.
Thing is I’m having difficulty figuring out a simple way to do it. So my questions are:
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I need maybe 3 or 6 tiny TFT LCDs in the model, controlled by as few microcontrollers as possible. Can any of the popular microcontrollers drive multiple TFTs?
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I need to load maybe a dozen colour bitmaps, and cycle through them, ideally with varying time values. The fastest change in bitmap might be 1/10 sec, but mostly they’d cycle through every few seconds, so shoving a bitmap over SPI should be fine. What LCDs can do that? I’ve found at least one TFT that only supports plotting pixels and can’t support bitmaps.
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because I’m lazy I’d love to be able to use Makecode/drag’n’drop coding or something instead of coding in C on an Arduino, but I’ll take what I can get. :) Can any Makecode-codable device drive bitmaps to a TFT?
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I’ve seen a couple of TFTs that have micro SD card slots on the back. I don’t quite get how this works. Is it possible to have the microcontroller simply tell the TFT to “load bitmap X from flash” or whatever? Or is the memory card sort of like a filesystem for the microcontroller, which then has to send the bitmap over SPI to the TFT?
Any thoughts on the simplest way to do this would be appreciated! Thanks. :)