I was looking for an LCD display that I could use to display waveforms on the workbench. The selection criteria for the display module itself was straight forward:
1. Dot graphic with sufficient resolution to display a simple waveform,
2. Available for fast delivery,
3. Have sufficient documentation available online to design with,
4. Be easy to interface to mechanically, electrically, and firmware wise, and
5. Have a low price.
The Seiko-Epson G1216B1N000 was selected, apparently meeting all criteria, but I was unable to get it to work until Jesper Hanse kindly sent me his driver for the driver for the display in his VAMPP4 TAMPP (Yet Another MP3 Player) and comparing his code with my code, I found some mistakes I had made.
I think the poor contrast has more to do with the digital camera’s low light
signal to noise ratio than the performance of the display.
More about the hardware:
The controller was implemented with an AT90S2313, but it could have been done with an AT90S1200 and a firmware UART simulation since code is pretty small and doesn’t rely on the RAM or timers that an AT90S2313 provide. The hardware needs to drive the data and control lines of the Seiko-Epson module, supply an adjustable negative bias voltage and + 5 volts to the module, and provide inverting buffers for the RS-232 interface.
For more detail: G1216B1N000 dot graphics display using AT90S2313 microcontroller