Open standard simplifies installation of development board displays
An open display connection for display sockets and display boards has been developed by MikroElektronika. DisCon is intended to simplify the installation and replacement of any type of display on a development board. It enables a wide choice of display sizes and styles to be used, saving development resources, added the company.
DisCon defines both display socket and display board, for simple installation and replacement of any type of display on a development board that carries the DisCon socket. According to MikroElektonika, the universal standard for display type add-on boards saves months of wasted development time and money while introducing design flexibility and scalability.
The standard specifies functional and aesthetic requirements that must be respected in the development process. These include the physical layout of the display board, communication and power supply pins, the size and the shape of the display board, and the silkscreen marking conventions for both the add-on boards and sockets. It permits all sizes and styles of TFT display to be used – currently 3.5in, 4.3in, 5in and 7in units, and capacitive, capacitive with bezel, capacitive with frame and resistive styles are supported.
The DisCon display board socket consists of a 2×20-pin connector with a proprietary pin configuration and silkscreen markings. The connector is a female 2×20-pin device, on a standard 2.54mm pitch. It may also have a polarisation post for easier positioning of the display board. The pin-out consists of four different groups of pins – I2C, GPIO, data pins for the parallel data-port, and optional control pins – along with power supply pins.
MikroElektronika (Mikroe) invented the mikroBUS development socket standard and the compact Click Boards that use the standard to reduce development time. Now the company offers 1000 Click Boards – claimed to be 10 times more than competitors. The mikroBus standard is included on Microchip’s, Renesas’ and Toshiba’s development boards.
SiBrain is Mikroe’s standard, for MCU development add-on boards and sockets. MikroElektronika claims to make the world’s widest range of compilers and also provides development environments, development boards, smart displays and programmers and debuggers.
