Is the touch screen calibration done by your controller board?
Yes. The “tc” command starts a calibration cycle, with on-screen prompts.
Does your controller board support a SCREEN WIPE option (a command or API that temporarily disables the touch sensitivity and allows the user to clean the screen)?
There are several ways to do this – all touch can be disabled, but it would be easier for the host to blank the screen, make the entire screen a hotspot (touch-sensitive region) and display a countdown number that gets reset when the unit is touched. When cleaning is finished, the screen will no longer be touched, and the host can resume regular operation.
What terminal emulator do you recommend for Windows 7 (64-bit)?
We recommend using a free program, Tera Term. To configure Tera Term for use with any SLCD development kit: Start the program, then choose: Setup -> Serial Port…, then set “Baud rate” 115200 (all other defaults are OK). Setup -> Terminal… -> Newline, the set “Receive” to CR+LF, and then check “Local echo”. In the main window, hit Enter, and you should see the “>” prompt.
How do I embed foreign language text in a macro?
The SLCD controller family uses UTF-8 encoding for non-ASCII characters. To incorporate UTF-8 characters into a macro file, you need to use an editor that supports UTF-8 encoding. Windows Notepad can do this. First, make sure you have a Unicode font installed (Arial Unicode MS comes with Microsoft Office) on your desktop to see the Unicode characters. Then start Notepad and set Format->Font to a Unicode font. Then select File->Save (or Save As…), and at the bottom of the pop-up box, you will see Encoding: ANSII. Click on the drop-down box and select UTF-8. Then save to set the encoding. Then, copy the following into the editor: #define test m test2 "Нажмите здесь" #end #define test2 // display text argument somewhere t "`0`" 10 20 #end The font or encoding is wrong if you don’t see the Russian text. Then, save the file as “testMacro”.txt or similar, download this macro [...]
How can I create a button that will respond differently to being pressed normally and held down for a long time?
Here are some simple macros you can install and test; they use bitmaps 1 and 2 from the standard demos. #define init_test s 0 1 z f 13B // std round button from demo bdc 29 200 100 1 "Test" 1 2 xmq 29 button_down release_after_short_press #end #define button_down w 1000 xmq 29 button_down release_after_long_press #end #define release_after_short_press out "down < 1 sec (short press)\r" // reset release macro so we can test again: xmq 29 button_down release_after_short_press #end #define release_after_long_press out "down > 1 sec (longer press)\r" // reset release macro so we can test again: xmq 29 button_down release_after_short_press #end
How can I recover macros and bitmaps from a .bin file?
Question: We had a consultant generate our bitmaps and macros and then left us only with the .bin file? Now you need to make a change and can’t get the consultant to do it in time because of other commitments, vacations, etc. Answer: Here’s a way to capture those macros and bitmaps. Use BMPLoad.exe to load the .bin file from your PC and then connect to your SLCD. Click the “Store into SLCD” button. Now your bitmaps and macros are in the SLCD. You can use a terminal program to coax the SLCD into telling you what’s there. Connect a terminal program (Tera Term works well) and set it up to capture text into a file. Issue the command “lsmac” and the SLCD will list out all of its macros, and you will have captured them into a file, which you can then edit and use as your new macros.txt [...]
How can I get a screen capture of what is displaying on the LCD?
SLCD+/SLCD6/SLCD43 Modules Start BMPload. You will see a box called “Screen Snapshot” with a button called “GetScreen.” Make sure your Port Settings are correct, then click GetScreen. Browse to the desired file location, name the file, then click Save. SLCD5/SLCD5+/SLCD5+N Modules Use a terminal emulator, insert an SD card into the display module, then send the command “*getScreenAsBMPFile”. This step will copy the current screen to a file on the SD card.
Do you support Graphical VFD?
We do not support VFDs.
The SLCD5 based units’ LCD takes time to display after power-on. Can this be changed?
The SLCD5 (7″, 8.4″, and 10.4″) firmware loads bitmaps and macros from serial data on Flash into RAM before it displays anything on the screen. This way, the screen does not come up blank. However, this loading can take time, especially if there are a lot of bitmaps. There are two ways to speed things up: If the splash screen is set to bitmap 1 (e.g., command “*SPL 1”), this bitmap is loaded and displayed first before all the others are loaded. This setting can reduce the on-time delay. A special inverter cable, P/N 23-0121-12, can be used with ERG 8MAD series inverters. This cable enables the inverter as soon as power is turned on, so the screen goes white right away. Then once the controller is initialized and there are bitmaps loaded, the screen will display normally. The downside of this solution is that the inverter always runs at [...]
When I opened the .ZIP file I found an .ELF file, but expected the firmware to be in a .BIN format. Do I need special loader for SLCD5 products?
You don’t need a special loader. Just copy the .ELF file to your SD card (root) and reset or power cycle the board. The card needs to be 2 GB or less in size, and it has to be FAT16 formatted. Hook a terminal emulator to Main/COM0 at 115200, and you will see the update progress.