September 2009

Configurable Advanced Touch-Screen LCD Video Application Platform Now Available 

LCD-Pro, a flexible image processing platform for FPGA families, includes board camera, display and intellectual property.

Human productivity is increasingly dependent on interaction between people and equipment. Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) enable users to work with equipment via an interface rather than switches and levers. HMI is the convergence of visual computing and automation control systems.

HMI Applications

• Industrial Automation HMI Systems - Console-mounted LCD panels with touch-screen capability.
• Building Automation HMI - Touch-screen operator panels for HVAC control, lighting and temperature control, elevator monitoring and safety.
• Automated Vending Machines - New generations of innovative free-standing vending machines incorporating colorful displays, with on-screen text, touch-screen ‘buttons’ for product selection, and overlaid video advertising.
• Automotive and Marine Reconfigurable Instrument Clusters – Dynamically changing instrument panels that highlight particular instruments based on the driver’s immediate need. Display of overlaid video from external sources: images of the road ahead, often from low-light video cameras at night, to alert motorists of obstacles, or radar navigation images and video overlays from integrated marine camera equipment.
• Household Appliances - State-of-the-art appliances such as washing machines now sport color touch-screen graphic LCD displays. Besides taking over the functions of electro-mechanical push-buttons, these displays also visually instruct consumers in methods of loading and wash program selection for different fabrics and garments. Refrigerators are available with large graphic LCD screens offering features once considered esoteric, like entertainment (TV, DVD), home control integration, videophone integration, digital picture frame applications and even web browsing.

LCD-Pro Advanced Touch-Screen Video Graphics Controller

The Lattice LCD-Pro Advanced Touch-Screen Video Graphics Controller provides HMI manufacturers with ready to use out-of-the-box, state-of-the-art display driving capability in a fully-configurable FPGA video system, based on the LatticeECP2 FPGA. It implements a powerful, fully-configurable 16bpp LCD video controller with display support ranging from 2 inches, 4:3 aspect ratio to 23 inches with resolutions from QVGA (320x240) to high resolution 1366x768 16:9 widescreen TFT displays.

LCD-Pro Block Diagram

Lattice LCD-Pro Evaluation Kit

The LCD-Pro Evaluation Kit is an evaluation platform designed to provide HMI manufacturers the dual benefits of rapid prototyping and accelerated product development. All the required hardware, intellectual property and software are available in a self-contained, easy-to-use kit. The Lattice LCD-Pro Evaluation Kit ships complete with the Lattice LCD-Pro Advanced Touch-Screen Video Graphics Controller system, 7” WVGA 840x480 color touch-screen display, color video camera, power supply, cables and a demo for a complete out-of-the box experience. Lattice LCD-Pro Configurator software is included. This application runs LCD-Pro plugins and enables transparent access to all FPGA resources.

LCD-Pro Evaluation Kit

Advantages

Lattice LCD-Pro provides several key advantages:

• Comprehensive Advanced Graphics IP Library -  LCD-Pro provides a complete state-of-the-art library of IP for advanced LCD display control, graphics and video, supporting touch-screen functionality. The IP is field-proven, and employs the industry standard AMBA AHB/APB scheme for IP interconnect and connection to external processors either natively or via wrappers.
• Multiple Display Support -  State-of-the-art LCD controller IP allows advanced graphics functions to be implemented entirely within the FPGA. Built-in support for over 30 commercially available displays, with touch-screen support, enables interfacing to a wide range of displays with no additional effort.
• Field-Proven, Configurable IP -  Field-proven IP with a common AMBA interconnect framework significantly speeds up time-to-market and virtually eliminates interconnect debug. Configurable IP cores offer optimization of internal pipelines to scale IP core footprints according to application needs to fit the optimum device for the application.
• External IP Integration -  Industry standard AMBA architecture takes the guesswork out of integrating a designers' own or third-party IP cores into the system.
• Multiprocessor Support -  An optional multilayer architecture is available for multi-processor system support.
• System Expansion -  A high-performance 32-bit bus architecture is available to further extend system communication, peripherals and I/O. The system is expandable using static and Flash memory, uses an I²C system bus for plug-and-play detection of software drivers and graphic page creator software.

System-on-Module for Platform to Product

Perhaps the single most unique advantage offered by the LCD-Pro Evaluation Kit is the ability to go straight from platform to product. One can potentially use the Evaluation Kit’s single-power-supply, 3.3V FPGA Module to develop an HMI application and then simply unplug it and plug it in as a System-on-Module HMI engine into the end product. Product development can, thus, proceed while the HMI is being developed, and the HMI engine is simply plugged in to complete the product. As far as leapfrogs in time-to-market go, it does not get any better than that.

To Learn More

To learn more about the LCD-Pro Evaluation Kit, visit the Lattice website or contact your local Lattice sales representative.