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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : TFT-Maximite, unknown connectors
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Juri74 Senior Member  Joined: 06/02/2012 Location: ItalyPosts: 162 |
Hello all, i received my special Christmas gift some days later but hey! better late than never :D i assembled and started to play with my new toy, tft-maximite with this i will build a temperature monitor for inhouse heater system, with the ability to monitor out-house temperature and more in the future. the problem is i found 2 connectors that i didnt know how to use.. i've board revision v1.3 first connector is PL9, on schematics it appear to be an header for "buttons" but nothing more... how can i use these buttons inside mmbasic? (if they can be used ofcourse) second connector is PL12, what is this? i can't even find on schematics :/ thanks in advance for help :) Juri |
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| Juri74 Senior Member Joined: 06/02/2012 Location: ItalyPosts: 162 |
any clues? |
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bigmik Guru  Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Hi Juri, At the risk of sounding stupid, I have been a bit slack in recent times, I thought the TFT maximite was basically a home-brew hardware project. Where did you get the PCB and/or built up TFT-MM from? Without knowing that it is hard to answer with any details. Can you post links to the product or the schematic/PCB layouts? Preferably zipped so we can keep a good resolution.? regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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OA47 Guru Joined: 11/04/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 926 |
Mick, I am sorry to read about your health problems but I sincerely hope that your situation improves. A link that may get you started on the TFT Maximite is: http://geoffg.net/tft-maximite.html All the best Graeme |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Gday Graeme, Thanks for your wishes, I am doing ok.. still mobile(ish) just need an oil change or something simple (I hope, well I hope not new plumbing).. OK WOW! I was not aware that someone had actually produced a TFT maximite product as such.. I was most certainly aware that the `hack/DIY' version was there... I will have to read up on this more... Sorry Juri, maybe if the information is not forthcoming here that an email to the designer of the PCB http://www.segor.de/ is in order. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3196 |
Sorry Juri, I would like to help but the only example that I have of this device is an early prototype. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| paceman Guru Joined: 07/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1329 |
Juri, Have you read the information that Geoff has available on this link TFT Maximite especially the first two paragraphs. If you can read a German magazine then you could perhaps access an 0413 edition of c't Hardware Hacks magazine and get more info. Also, an e-mail to Carsten Meyer (the developer of the TFT version) at the link Geoff gave (cm@ct.de) might get a response. It looks to me that PL9 is just for buttons (on D8 to D12). PL7 looks like a c't magazine specific I2C interface connector - that they call I2C CTLAB. As you say there's no connector on the schematic marked PL12. A wild guess might be that it's the unmarked connector shown for the shields - why that would be I've no idea. It might also be for a alternative version that uses a capacitive touch screen instead of the resistive one. I think Mick would have a better 'feel' for what they're doing than I have. How TFT-MMBasic ties into this I don't know apart from the info Geoff has on his site. I'm also in the process (slowly) of building a simpler hacked version of this but connecting the 40 pin 0.5mm flex connector to it neatly is a challenge. I've bought the bits I need (including four versions of the flex connector socket) and I'm setting myself up to make PCB's as per Pete's method (pre-coated boards) - hopefully I'll get there, but if not it'll be fun trying! Greg |
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jman Guru Joined: 12/06/2011 Location: New ZealandPosts: 711 |
Hi Juri PL12 is for a PSP LCD backlight connector And I am not sure about PL9 but this looks like the 4 wire touch interface for the LCDs that have them separate from the 40 pin connector Regards Jman |
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| paceman Guru Joined: 07/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1329 |
Thanks for correcting that John. Greg |
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| Juri74 Senior Member Joined: 06/02/2012 Location: ItalyPosts: 162 |
hello all! actually PL9 have 5 lines coming out from micro.. from D8 to D12 PL7 Too have 4 more lines from mcu: D0, D1, D2, D3 these are 9 more control lines that could be available on TFT- Maximite. unfortunately TFT-Maximite firmware does not support accessing lines from 21 to 40, even trying to access lines from D0 to D4 and from D8 to D12 unfortunately, cause an error i buyed a kit from segor.de (http://www.segor.de/#M=1&Q=maximite) they only make the kit, doesn't know much about connectors or other stuff related.. @Mick, i'm sorry for your health problems, hope the situation will improve quickly :) all schematics can be obitained from this link: https://github.com/heise/MAXIMITE @Geoff, yes they have a new board revision actually (1.3) from pictures on your web site i think you have the very first edition, PL9 isn't thede but PL7 is onboard, a test version of firmware for tft-maximite with lines D0,D1,D2,D3,D8,D9,D10,D11 and D12 enabled could be useful to make some experiments. @paceman i tried to email to Carsten Meyer (cm@ct.de) but without luck :( i even writed some comments on two youtube videos of tft-maximite... but until now, no reply Juri |
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| raketenbuggy Newbie  Joined: 08/02/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 21 |
Hello, has anybody already a clue on how to use PL9? I couldn't find any information either. BTW: I followed the lines on PL12 and it has all the necessary signals for PS/2, USB and SD-card. You can find a little sketch with the pin asignment on my blog (http://raketenbuggy.blogspot.de/2014/02/der-bausatz-zusamme nbau-und-die-1.html, the description is only in German but fortunately diagramms are international). It's a little bit too much for a backlight connector only. It looks more like you could put the three connectors on a different board and connect it via ribbon cable to the TFT Maximite board. I don't know what it might be usefull for, but it seems possible. Although I would keep the ribbon cable as short as possible. Michael |
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| Bernd Newbie Joined: 26/02/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 1 |
Hi, first of all thanks to Geoff and everybody who helped making the Maximite happen! It is an amazing device! Regarding PL9: I ordered the German kit (TFT Maximite board version 1.3). The kit comes with pre-configured cabeling for PL9 and the german magazine article actually talks about using it for "buttons". So I built a case with 5 buttons for "further usage". Well, after trying to configure pins > 20 and failing, I was quite a bit surprised. Cause looking at the board and the schematics, everything should be in place. Now my hope was that this is only a software limitation and I might be able to use "peek & poke" to get raw access to the relevant register. After Geoff kindly provided the source code, I was partial successful in doing so: The current TFT Maximte header file set a define for the max number of pins to 20 and this is checked in function/commands like pin() or setpin. However looking at the ColorMaximite header file reveals some insights about the potential I/O port address schema: Port-A base address is at 0xbf886010 and bits 6 and 7 should be pins D8 and D9. After using print peek(49032,24592) and pressing my buttons connected to PL9 I could actally see these bits toggeling! D10 - D12 might be on Port-G (Port-A + 0x60) bits 14,12,13. However, I faild in reading them (and that might be an issue at my end). That's what I could find out by now. Hope it might help until we have a changed header file that then would support the normal basic commands. Best Regards Bernd |
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| Juri74 Senior Member Joined: 06/02/2012 Location: ItalyPosts: 162 |
Hi Bernd, thank you for the suggestion on using peek command, this could be very useful to manage the PL9 connector. in this way they can be used connected to buttons! better than nothing! thank you! Juri |
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| raketenbuggy Newbie Joined: 08/02/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 21 |
As some of you already discoverd PL7 and PL9 on the TFT Maximite board sold by segor are not useable at the moment. The reason is that these pins originally belonged to the arduino connector which is on the Color Maximite board but not on the TFT Maximite board. So the pins are not supported for the TFT Maximite. I asked Geoff about this. He didn't realize that Carsten Meyer used some of the pins. Obviosly Carsten didn't didn't tell him. So if you want to use PL7 and PL9 without any PEEK or POKE commands, you have to recompile the code and change the file "IOPorts - ColourMM.h". Geoff told me that beside changing NBRPINS from 20 to 40, you also have to add the correct entries in the table PinDef[] (directly below NBRPINS) to define the capability of the pins. Then the interpreter should automatically recognise the additional pins. You can find the correct entries in the file "IOPorts - ColourMM.h". Geoff will have a look at this issue in his next update. Unfortunately this is not planned for the next months. And Carsten stated about the same (no time to do any updates) in the German heise forum. So at the moment we have the options to either - recompile on our own - use PEEK and POKE - live without PL7 and PL9 I will try to recompile because I want to use PL7. But I don't know if I'll succeed because I've never worked with PICs before. Michael |
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| raketenbuggy Newbie Joined: 08/02/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 21 |
Hello everybody! Last weekend I recompiled MMBasic with NBRPINS = 34 and an appropriately modified PinDef[] (since A0 to A5 are not used at all on the TFT Maximite board it makes no sense to add them). The biggest problem was getting the MPLAB-IDE working. As proposed in the c't-Article I used version 8.9(2). At first I had to free 1.2GB (!!!) on my harddisk for the IDE. Then the installation crashed several times respectively stopped without installing every file needed without any error or other message. It took 6 attempts and some hours until it finally ran. 
Then things started to happen very fast. I modified IOPorts - ColourMM.h and also included the latest version of Touch.c (and Touch.h) from github. All in all it took less than 15 minutes to get a hex-file and to upload it with the bootloader. Everything worked flawlessly. Now PL7 and PL9 are working fine. 
So if you want to use PL7 and / or PL9 properly I can only recommend to compile your own version of MMBasic. If you get MPLAB running the rest is child's play. Michael PS: If you want a more detailed description you can have a look here http://raketenbuggy.blogspot.de/2014/03/total-recompile-mmba sic-neu-bauen.html Regrettably it's only available in German but I don't have the time for translation. |
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| crosstydown Newbie Joined: 29/11/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 23 |
Hi raketenbuggy, i very need this pl9 connector to my greenhouse controler project. ca you give a clear procedure to do that and/or a complete firmware that can be uploaded in the pic 32. thanks for your help |
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| raketenbuggy Newbie Joined: 08/02/2014 Location: GermanyPosts: 21 |
Hi crosstydown, here is a short description how to build a customized firmware with PL9 enabled (you get PL7 as well for free). It's some sort of "quick and dirty" without any warranty, but it worked for me. 1. Get the MMBasic source code http://www.mmbasic.com/source.html - Fill in the formular and wait for the e-mail. - Then unpack everything e.g. to C:\MMBasicSource 2. Download and install MPLAB-IDE V 8.9(2) http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/MPLAB_IDE_8_ 92.zip - You have to select "32-bit MCU", MPLAB C32 Suite" and "MPLAB Sim". Selecting "AN851 Bootloader" and "MPLAB ICD 3" does not hurt. - Be aware that the MPLAB installation needs 1.2GB and complete uninstallation is very difficult! 3. Start MPLAB and open C:\MMBasicSource\Maximite\MPLAB\TFT_Maximite.mcp 4. Open and modify IOPorts - TFT_Maximite.h - change "IOPorts - ColourMM.h" to "IOPorts - TFT_Maximite.h" - add "//#define FINALBUILD" after the very first "#endif" - change "#define NBRPINS 20 // number of pins for external i/o" to "#define NBRPINS 34 // number of pins for external i/o" - copy the lines for pin 21 to pin 34 from IOPorts - ColourMM.h and insert them between the line for pin 20 and the curly bracket - save the file 5. build a hex-file - under "Project" -> "Build Configuration" select "Release" - under "Project" select "Build All" - the new hex-file can be found at C:\MMBasicSource\Maximite\Output\TFT_Maximite.hex 6. upload the new hex-file http://geoffg.net/maximite.html#Downloads Follow the procedure which can be found in the latest firmware-package for the Color Maximite. That's it. The MMBasic copyright does not allow distribution without permission: So if there are more people who want the firmware that I compiled myself I can ask Geoff if I get permission. Michael |
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| crosstydown Newbie Joined: 29/11/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 23 |
thanks a lot raketenbuggy! i will try it and let you know. did i need a pickit 3 to put it in the pic ? |
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| crosstydown Newbie Joined: 29/11/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 23 |
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! it's working now! many thanks raketenbuggy! but i dont take the same way. i use visual studio to modify the programme and use mplabx to upload in pic32. |
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| crosstydown Newbie Joined: 29/11/2013 Location: CanadaPosts: 23 |
where you can get the new version of touch.h and what the difference with the old one? |
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