37 EMBEDDED

Graphics LCDs are increasingly being used in embedded applications. Professor Dr

Dogan Ibrahim of the Near East University in Cyprus describes the properties of these
displays and explains the design of a simple colour graphic LCD (GLCD) based project

USING GRAPHICS LCDs IN

EMBEDDED APPLICATIONS
is sent down the correct column and the correct
row is grounded. The pixel at the row and column
intersect-point receives the voltage to untwist the
liquid crystals at that pixel. When we disable a
pixel, the liquid crystals cannot go from one state
to another instantly, as some time is required for
this. Also, since a pixel is equivalent to a capacitor
where two metal electrodes are separated by a die

Most of the
software tools available
are in the form of
bitmap converters that
can be used to convert
a standard image file to
a data file that can be
used in a high-level
programming
language

Figure 1: Passive-matrix display

material, when the charge is removed it takes a

certain time for this capacitor to discharge, thus
slowing down the response time of the pixel.
Although the passive-matrix addressing is simple, it

Electronics World Embedded Supplement November 2011

Figure 2: Active-matrix display

CDs are used in a wide range of

applications, including portable consumer
devices such as mobile phones,
calculators, watches, MP3 players; domestic
equipment such as microwave ovens, televisions,
radios, hi-fi equipment, video players, cookers;
instrument panels in cars, aircraft, boats; and in
many more applications. LCDs are lightweight,
portable, inexpensive and reliable; they consume
little power and are easier on the eyes. Because
LCDs do not use phosphors they cannot suffer
image burn-in problems associated with most older
type CRT-based displays. Colour graphic LCDs
(GLCDs) are increasingly being used in many
portable applications such as mobile phones,
electronic games, and in industrial control and
monitoring equipment.
Basically, LCDs are optical devices made up of a
number of pixels filled with liquid crystals and
placed in front of a light source (or a reflector) to
produce images in colour or monochrome. Each
pixel of an LCD is aligned between transparent
electrodes, called Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), and
polarizing filters. LCDs do not produce any light of
their own, they require an external light to be
visible. On most displays this light is provided using
a light source, placed behind the LCD panel.
Based on the actual addressing mechanism
used, we can classify the LCDs into passive-matrix
addressed and active-matrix addressed. Passivematrix addressing is used in earlier displays and
here only m + n control signals are used to address
the m x n pixel display. To turn on a pixel, a charge

has the drawback that the response time is rather

slow. It is also difficult to control the charge
accurately and when a pixel is untwisted, the pixels
around it also partially untwist making the image
appear fuzzy.
Figure 1 shows the functional construction
of a passive-matrix display.
Active-matrix addressing (see Figure 2) is based
on using thin film transistors (TFT) to quickly
discharge the capacitor and, hence, improve the
response time. Most domestic, consumer and
industrial graphics LCDs nowadays are based on
this TFT technology. A particular pixel is selected by
switching on the proper row and sending a charge
down the correct column.
Since all the other rows intersecting that column
are turned off, only the capacitor at the designated
pixel receives the charge. By controlling the
amount of voltage supplied to the crystal we can
control the amount of untwisting. The advantage
of this type of displays is fast response time and
accurate control of the pixels, thus producing sharp
images. TFT displays are complex and costly to
manufacture. The transistors are etched with high
precision on the LCD glass between pixels.
Colour graphic LCDs are very popular, especially
in consumer devices. A pixel in a colour LCD
consists of three subpixels with red green and blue
colour filters. By controlling the applied voltage we
can modify the intensity of each subpixel over 256
shades. Thus, with three subpixels we can produce
a possible of 16.8 million colours, requiring a very
large number of transistors etched onto the glass.
There are various technologies used to create
monochrome and colour displays depending upon
the amount of twist given by liquid crystals. Some
of the commonly used ones are: TN (Twisted
Nematic), HTN (High Twisted Nematic), STN (Super
Twisted Nematic), FSTN (Film compensated Super
Twisted Nematic), DTSN (Double Super Twisted
Nematic), CSTN (Colour Super Twisted nematic)
and several more.
GLCD modules are normally supplied on a PCB,
together with a controller chip that can be
interfaced to serially or in parallel. Some of the

commonly used GLCD controllers are T6963,

KS0108, LR35503, HDM6448 and so on. Most
embedded compilers provide software libraries in
the form of a collection of functions for displaying
and manipulating images on GLCDs. With the help
of such libraries users can display bitmap images,
draw graphs, draw shapes such as squares,
rectangles, circles, display text, and so on.
This article describes the brief characteristics of
GLCDs and shows how a TFT-based colour graphic
LCD project can easily be designed using special
software and hardware tools.

USING GLCD SOFTWARE TOOLS

Figure 5: The VTFT screen with a button

The development of a GLCD project requires

creating images by programming each pixel of the
GLCD. This process is usually carried out using a
GLCD image creation software tool, as doing it
manually is a highly tedious work. The software
tool enables the user to create the required GLCD
image initially on the PC screen by shading or
colouring the pixels, or by importing the image
from a file.
At the end of this process the software usually
creates a large number of bitmap data to represent
the image, and this data can be loaded into the

38

Figure 4: Figure 4: The Macromedia

board (front and back)

Figure 3: Countdown timer display layout

EMBEDDED

target GLCD device to display the required image.

Most of the software tools available are in the form
of bitmap converters that can be used to convert a
standard image file to a data file that can be used

software is supported by all of the mikroElektronika

embedded compilers, and visual effects such as
inversion, outlining and shifting can be applied to
designed fonts.

in a high-level programming language. Some

popular GLCD software tools are described below.
The bitmap2lcd software enables users to import
to a PC screen a monochrome image in standard
graphics program format, and then it creates a
GLCD data file of the image that can be used in
embedded C, Pascal, Basic, or Assembler
programs. A freeware version of the program with
limited functionality is available from
www.bitmap2lcd. Bitmap Converter software from
GLCD Tools (www.glcd-tools.com) converts
bitmaps and icons to C and C++ programs that
can be used in embedded graphics LCD
applications. This program has the advantage that
both monochrome and colour images can be
manipulated.
GLCD Font Creator from mikroElektronika
(www.mikroe.com) is a free software and it can be
used to create fonts, symbols and icons for graphic
LCDs. The nice thing about this software is that it is
compatible with all of the Windows fonts and
these fonts can be imported and used. This

Visual GLCD software is graphics development

software that supports a large number of
monochrome displays with touch screen
mechanisms. Users can build their GLCD images by
placing visual components such as labels, boxes,
circles, images etc on the screen, or by enabling or
disabling the individual pixels on the screen.
The complete GLCD screen can be designed
without any knowledge of programming. The
screen image is then converted into a data file that
can be imported and used in a program to display
the created image. Visual GLCD is fully supported
by all embedded compilers of the developing
company (www.mikroe.com) and the developed
screen images can very easily be incorporated in its
compilers.
Visual TFT is perhaps one of the most advanced
embedded graphics LCD programming tools
available on the market, developed by
mikroElektronika. As this software is used in the
project given later in this article, it is worthwhile to
look at the features of this advanced software tool
briefly.
Visual TFT is a GUI-based colour graphics LCD
development software supporting touch-screen
facilities, developed for modern TFT type GLCDs.
The software can be used to create graphics
images, as well as graphics applications by enabling
users to create touch-screen based event-driven
objects that can be placed anywhere on the screen.
For example, users can place a button on the
screen and then define the actions to be taken
when the button is pressed down or when it is
clicked. The GLCD image code and the user action
template codes are all created automatically by the
software. The user is only required to write code
for the user action routines, e.g. the code when a
button is clicked. Visual TFT software supports all
the TFT based boards developed by
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39 EMBEDDED

EXAMPLE COLOUR GLCD PROJECT

In this section the design of a microcontrollerbased colour graphics project is given. The project
is a simple countdown seconds timer developed
using the Visual TFT graphics development
software. Figure 3 shows the display layout which
consists of:
 A soft-keypad of numbers used to enter the
countdown initial value;
 A soft-button named START to start the
countdown process;
 A soft-button named CLR to clear the initial
countdown value;
 A text-box to display the current value of the
count as the countdown progresses.
The GLCD screen was designed using the Visual
TFT (VTFT) graphics development software. In
addition, the graphics handling code is generated
automatically by the VTFT.

Figure 8: Display layout of the countdown timer

mikroElektronika. These boards are called

multimedia (or mikromedia) boards, and there are
boards for most high-end PIC MCUs.
A multimedia board basically consists of a 320 x
240 TFT colour display on one side and a 4-layer
PCB on the other side, incorporating a
microcontroller, touch-screen hardware, power
supply, stereo MP3 codec, accelerator chip, flash
memory, SD card interface and a mini USB port, all
costing around $100.
The microcontroller I/O ports are brought to
the edges of the board so that external devices
(sensors for example) can easily be interfaced to
the microcontroller. The code developed using
the Visual TFT software can be compiled using
an embedded compiler (e.g. mikroC or
mikroBASIC), and then loaded to the target
multimedia board with the help of the on-board
bootstrap loader.

Figure 7: Block diagram of the project

Figure 6: Specifying the microcontroller interface to the GLCD display

In practise the engineering

application areas of graphics LCDs
are endless and it is possible to
develop very complex and at the
same time user-friendly applications
using the VTFT software

Electronics World Embedded Supplement November 2011

VTFT software has been developed for the

Mikromedia series of intelligent colour TFT boards.
An example Mikromedia board for the PIC18 series
of microcontrollers used in this project is shown in
Figure 4. These boards are available for various
popular microcontrollers.
As mentioned earlier, in addition to the 320 x
240 pixel colour graphics LCD with touch-screen
hardware, the board contains a PIC18F87J50 type
powerful microcontroller, USB interface with
bootloader software installed, MP3 audio
processing, SD card hardware and an on-board
accelerometer chip.
In a typical graphics application the user creates
a GUI screen using the various tools offered by the
VTFT software. The automatically generated
graphics and key-click user action codes are then
loaded from the PC to the program memory of the
target microcontroller, using the bootloader
software already loaded to the target
microcontroller and supplied free of charge for the
PC end of the USB interface.
Figure 5 shows the VTFT screen with a single
button placed on the screen. The target GLCD
screen layout is located in the middle of the screen.
Users can load visual tools such as labels, boxes,
circles, images, or lines by dragging them from the
Tools pane at the right hand side of the screen and
placing them anywhere they like on the screen.
The properties and appearance of the screen and
the tools placed on the screen, such as their colour,
size, operation mode and so on can be changed
during the design or programming phase of the
project.

EMBEDDED

templates provided by the software. When the

screen design is complete and the required code is
generated, the user activates the compiler (e.g. the
mikroBASIC compiler). The user compiles all the
program modules together to generate the
program hex file that can be loaded into the
program memory of the target microcontroller.
The actual program loading process can be done
using the supplied bootloader, or alternatively a
programmer device (e.g. the mikroProg
programmer) can be used for this purpose. Figure 9
shows operation of the user program developed
for this project to handle the key click actions and
to display the countdown values on the display. It is
interesting to note that this is the only code
developed by the user.

Figure 11: The countdown timer in operation

Figure 10: The user program

Figure 9: Operation of the user program

A project can include several screens and layers

where an application can select and display any
required screen. As shown in Figure 6, the
hardware connection between the microcontroller
ports and the GLCD board, and configuration of
the touch-screen hardware are specified using
Settings option of the VTFT.
The block diagram of the project is shown in
Figure 7. Port J of the microcontroller is connected
to data port of the GLCD module. Similarly, as
shown in Figure 6, some pins of ports D, G and H
are connected to the GLCD control pins. The
microcontroller is operated from an external 8MHz
crystal. The clock is multiplied by 6 to give a
working frequency of 48MHz.
Figure 8 shows the display layout of our
countdown timer on the VTFT screen. The keypad
and the START/CLR buttons were created using the
round box button tool. This tool has the property
that various event-driven program subroutines such
as OnClick, OnDown, OnUp etc can be
attached to it. The actual countdown value is
displayed on a round box button every second. An
image is used at the top-left corner of the screen in
the form of a logo to demonstrate the image
capabilities of the board.
The operation of the countdown timer is such
that the user initially enters the countdown value
and presses the START button. The initial count
value can be cleared by clicking the CLR button.
The code to display the designed screen is
generated automatically by the VTFT software. The
codes for the user actions, such as the code to
handle the key clicks, are entered using the

40

The actual user program is shown in Figure 10.

The program was developed using the MikroBASIC
compiler. mikroBASIC is a popular integrated highlevel language, developed for the PIC
microcontrollers.
The language offers a large number of library
functions for interfacing to peripheral devices, such
as RS232, RS485, I2C, SD card, LCD, GLCD,
Ethernet and so on. Subroutine update calculates
the total countdown value as the user clicks
numbers on the keypad. In addition, the clicked
numbers are displayed on the screen. Subroutine
strtClick displays current value of the countdown,
decrements the count by one and introduces one
second delay inside the loop.
Figure 11 shows the developed countdown
timer in operation, implemented on
the PIC18FJ mikromedia board.
Although the graphics LCD example
demonstrated here is very simple, in
practise the engineering application
areas of graphics LCDs are endless
and it is possible to develop very
complex and at the same time userfriendly applications using the VTFT
software. For example, the
mikromedia boards can be interfaced
to external sensors, actuators, or
motors, and equipment can easily be
monitored or controlled by
developing simple, user friendly,
graphics-based applications with the
help of the VTFT software. The
mikroElektronika website
(www.mikroe.com) includes a
number of useful practical
applications demonstrating use of
the mikromedia boards with the
VTFT software. 
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