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worst gadgeteer compatibility
Andre Marschalek
#1 Posted : Monday, June 25, 2012 9:45:03 AM(UTC)
Andre Marschalek

Rank: Tinkerer

Joined: 10/31/2011(UTC)
Posts: 3

hi


i use a lcd display from sytech design which they sell as gadgeteer compatible (Gadgeteer LCD 4.3 Touch Module) which is connected to a gadgeeter compatible mainboard from ghi electronics (fez spider)


to summarize the problem:


during a firmware update (4.1) with the sytech display all i can see is a white screen


the white screen disappears as soon as i deploy a solution where during the first time the display settings become changed


after this point the display works as expected but not in the stage where the fez spider writes details such as firmware, mac address, ip address on the display, this text is still unreadable


i can live with the white screen this would no costumer see, but what he see is the unreadable text, no one would by such a product


IMG_0028.zip


i have decided to inform sytech which sold me the display and must give me support in this case


this was done by the end of march and since this time i play ping pong between two "gadgeteer" companies


now, 4 month later, all i know from sytech "support" is:


<snip>
You are using open source projects. This is code people have contributed in a non commercial spirit to codeplex - we d or ghi or Micorsoft do not charge you for this code - it is our way of giving back to the hobby community.


The hardware that we sell for Gadgeteer and indeed GHI, is provided at a rock bottom price - intended for use by hobbyist to experiment with. Only limited support can be provided - we also have commercial businesses to run to provide income. Without our commercial businesses, we would not be here to contribute to open source projects. These businesses will always take priority over non paying community projects - so hence there can be a delay in getting answers to your questions.


There is no hardware fault with the display you purchased from us - you are not using it on one of our boards - which it was primary designed for.
</snip>


with "delay of answers" we are talking about more than 3 weeks response  time....


If they put the gadgeteer logo on it then it MUST follow gadgeteer specification and must work with any gadgeteer device.


Gadgeteer makers (GHI, sytech, seeed or anyone else) must follow to make sure gadgeteer have a healthy ecosystem.


a customer must trust the gadgeteer logo to be sure that it works, a gadgeteer logo would otherwise not make sense


i think you understand why i am very dissatisfied


br
Andre


 

RorschachUK
#2 Posted : Tuesday, June 26, 2012 3:36:42 AM(UTC)
Rank: Tinkerer

Joined: 4/19/2012(UTC)
Posts: 7

If built into a commercial product, I don't think you'd want a customer to be seeing readable debug info on screen either, nor mention of GHI Electronics. I think what you need to be able to do is turn off sending startup debug text to the screen at all. Seeed's OLED display is blank during startup and never displays anything until you tell it to. If GHI can't help, you could maybe try delving into their code on CodePlex to see if you can find where the board outputs debug info to the LCD and try commenting that out. Is there a good reason you need a Spider mainboard rather than Sytech's own Nano though? Nano is a little cheaper and is faster but lacks some features Spider has. It will almost certainly 'play nicer' with Sytech's 4.3" screen, though, and its 200Mhz processor should be able to output smoother graphics to the screen than Spider's 72Mhz processor - so if your product is primarily a touchscreen app and doesn't care about the features Spider has that Nano doesn't - PWM pins for driving wheels and servos, for instance - that would make it a better choice, wouldn't it?
Kerry H
#3 Posted : Wednesday, June 27, 2012 2:31:10 PM(UTC)
Kerry H

Rank: Admin

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Hi Andre,


I'm sorry to hear that you've run into this issue and I completely understand your dissatisfaction.  Let me check into whether a workaround has been found.  I'll post back my results.


 

-- K

Kerry Hammil
Microsoft Research
James Carter
#4 Posted : Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:29:29 AM(UTC)
James Carter

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Hi Andre,

I've been working on providing support for both (GHI and Sytech) displays on our Argon mainboard.

As you say - the displays work fine once you have booted into your Gadgeteer application. It is the debug information that is not working - this is shown before the TinyCLR is booted (which runs your Gadgeteer application).

I can say that this is not the fault of Sytech, nor GHI. This is a limitation in the .NET Micro Framework boot process. The Spider mainboard is assuming that the LCD connected (even if a different or no LCD is connected) is their display (which makes sense). Because of this the display settings (refresh rate, width/height) are set to incompatible values with your display.

This is not something Sytech can resolve, because these settings are in the GHI firmware. This is also not something that GHI can resolve, because they have no way of knowing which display you have connected to your mainboard until your Gadgeteer application boots, and it reads your code to set the display parameters.

The only way to fix this would be to add LCD settings to the firmware config, and allow these to be set by the user in MFDeploy, meaning the LCD controller could use the given values. Perhaps you could raise this as a request on the NETMF codeplex website?

1 user thanked James Carter for this useful post.
Kerry H on 6/28/2012(UTC)
Simon Taylor
#5 Posted : Thursday, June 28, 2012 9:43:57 AM(UTC)
Simon Taylor

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Joined: 3/7/2010(UTC)
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Andre,


Firstly, I dont think quoting snippets of emails out of context is helpful in solving your problem, the purpose of the forum is to post your problem to try to get help in resolving it - not personal vendettas!


I have responded to your query many times, you just dont like or understand the answer - however I will repeat it now.


I will address your two main points.


1) ...when the application is running display works as expected.. during bootup of the mainboard the display text for firmware version, mac address etc is unreadable......


During the point where the mainboard ( irrespective of manufacturer) is booting up, it is running some type of bootloader code, normally Tiny Booter, then Tiny CLR is kicked off, then your application. During the time the bootloader code is running, the OS has not started - any text output to the display is from the bootloader.


The settings for the hardware display controller need to be loaded. Micro Framework is an 'embedded' OS and expects the hardware for the port to stay constant, the ability to change the LCD settings, from an application is an addition not natively supported in Micro Framework - In the early days GHI produced a Micro Framework port with additional non standard features, one of these was the ability to change the LCD configuration settings from an application level. Our early approach was to change LCD settings using an extension to MFDeploy, allowing you to edit the LCD configuration settings. Gadgeteer, took the feature of being able to change the LCD settings from an application level and incorperated the feature into Gadgeteer. We added the ability to edit the LCD config, at an application level into the port of the Nano board, to support this.


However, your problem is during boot up, and is totally dependant on how the manufacturer implemented their MF port. It looks like the settings being used during boot up are the wrong settings for the display. However once the Tiny CLR and application are running, the settings used are the new ones for the display.


THERE IS NOTHING THE APPLICATION CODE CAN DO TO CHANGE THE BOOTLOADER CODE, IT IS NOT RUNNING AT THIS POINT.


There is another possibility, that maybe the settings, set during the application are not being persisted to flash, you can tell this by how the application starts up, does it doe a reboot. But I doubt this is the problem.


No other user of the 4.3 display and GHI boards has complained about this problem - either it is unique to your board, or they dont see it as significant.


The Gadgeteer LCD Driver is a 'passive' component in this process. It just contains the configuration with the settings required. It is the Gadgeteer main board code, that looks at the display type, stored in an extended weak reference, and compares it with the display type in the flash config. and then decides whether to call the update method of the main board to change the settings. The only thing the LCD Driver is responsible for, in this situtation, is supplying the settings - which as you have pointed out, when your app runs the display is correct, therefore the config settings in the display driver are correct.


 


Your issue is why are they not used during boot up - is it a porting firmware implentation issue, or is there some fault with the settings being persisted... there is nothing the lcd driver can do in this respect.


 


Finally - thank you James for your comments - hopefully the same answer from an independent source will finally put this issue to rest.


2) Gadgeteer Compatible..


The LCD is Mechanically compliant with the Gadgteer Module builders guide, in connector layout, color, dimensions silk screen ine thickness and so on.


As for the firmware, it inherits from the gadgeteer base display class, implements required methods and the dll is in the format required by Gadgeteer - as is the install msi. You have not stated one point that makes it not gadgeteer compatable - unless I have missed something?


 


SImon Taylor


 


Sytech Designs Ltd

1 user thanked Simon Taylor for this useful post.
Kerry H on 6/28/2012(UTC)
Kerry H
#6 Posted : Thursday, June 28, 2012 5:03:45 PM(UTC)
Kerry H

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Simon and James, thanks for your quick replies. 


Interoperability is a key tenet of the Gadgeteer platform, and hardware vendors like GHI, Sytech and Love Electronics do invest significant effort in ensuring their products work together.  They are also quite engaged with the Gadgeteer user community, as can be seen by their fast responses here, in other forums and in 1:1 interactions.


In particular, my team has observed that Sytech's display works well with other mainboards that have the required R/G/B/T sockets.  Simon and James have described the cause of the pre-boot behavior quite well - this is a pre-boot configuraton issue.  Sytech's display is spec-compliant.  Changing the pre-boot display behavior would require a change in MFDeploy to specify display configuraton (as James describes) or complete removal of debug display information.


Andre, if you'd like to request that display configuration settings be added to MFDeploy, please log an issue at http://netmf.codeplex.com/.  They can't promise to address every feature request, but they do listen to customer feedback and if this is a common problem they will take a look.

-- K

Kerry Hammil
Microsoft Research
Andre Marschalek
#7 Posted : Sunday, July 08, 2012 7:31:42 AM(UTC)
Andre Marschalek

Rank: Tinkerer

Joined: 10/31/2011(UTC)
Posts: 3

hi

let me say thank you for all your effort and help

Kerry, i opened such a request now

best regards
Andre

Simon, you wasted months of my time and you have long struggled to help me

i think the quoted snippet speaks for itself
Kerry H
#8 Posted : Monday, July 09, 2012 4:25:35 PM(UTC)
Kerry H

Rank: Admin

Joined: 11/22/2011(UTC)
Posts: 80

Thanks: 8 times
Was thanked: 5 time(s) in 5 post(s)
Please keep feedback constructive on this forum - personal discussions are better handled offline.
-- K

Kerry Hammil
Microsoft Research
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