The Windows Vista OS is known to have compatibility issues when running serial communications programs on multicore processors. This issue is because it allows multiple cores to work on the same program, which can cause synchronization issues. To solve this, use the “Set Affinity” to 1 core. There are various ways to do this (Google “Windows Vista Affinity”). When the program is running, one way to change that setting is to right-click the application from within the Task Manager and then set the affinity.

The “text flash” command is implemented via the animation engine. See the “ani” commands. These allow you to create animations like a flashing LED or animation like a fluttering butterfly. Example: // bitmap 10 and 11 are "indicator off" and "indicator on" respectively // this sets up the animation script, script # is 0 ani 0 xi 10 0 0 // display indicator on ani 0 y 1000 // yield for 1000ms (1 second) ani 0 xi 11 0 0 // display indicator off ani 0 y 1000 // yield for 1000ms (1 second) // enable script 0 anie 0

SLCD43 does not support WinCE 5.0 running on this display controller. Our SLCD43 does support RS-485 via an external RS-232 to RS-485 converter. This type of adapter automatically enables the RS-485 transmitter when the RS-232 transmit data is active. It supports either half-duplex or full-duplex RS-485. Our SLCD43 can be controlled by a PC or a microprocessor using a physical serial connection to support CMOS/TTL logic levels. We also can load macros so applications can reside on the device with minimal external control (via commands). Find your unit under the "Touchscreen Display Modules" and then look in the "Documents" tab to download our software and hardware manuals for further information.

Our SLCD display modules do not support any wireless interface directly. “Bridge” chips are available that operate as Serial RS-232 to (Bluetooth, WiFi, IR, etc.) adapters. If you are willing to design your own adapter board, our display modules may meet your needs, and it’s a matter of your intended application and the size/cost/performance constraints you are facing. Alternatively, our newer G2 modules do support WiFi interfaces.

We don’t have a GUI builder tool for SLCD products. Still, we recommend using standard bit-mapped image development and manipulation tools to create images and then our Screen Layout Utilities for graphic placement. The standard tools include programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop or the free program called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). Once you have your bitmap images defined, you can use our free Screen Layout Utilities (a plug-in for GIMP) to design your screen layout and generate a macro that will display on your LCD. We have tutorials for using GIMP to create bitmaps and using the Screen Layout Utilities within GIMP, and both tutorials are online in our video library. Display modules controlled with Reach Technology G2/G3 controller boards do have a drag-and-drop tool for GUI development.

If you use older versions than SCLD5 BMPload Version 2.1.4 or SLCDx BMPload Version 1.8.2, you may experience Vista OS-related problems (error messages, corrupt device downloads, etc.). Download a newer version at BMPload.

In general, users will not see any difference when switching from a PC serial port to a USB Virtual Com Port (VCP). However, there are significant differences in the configuration of a serial port and a USB port. A serial port can send data on a byte-per-byte basis whereas the USB sends data in packets. If the application is sending one byte at a time, it is very inefficient for USB as it waits for the buffer to fill up and complete a full packet or waits for a timeout to send a short packet. The USB-serial chip on our board (FTDI) allows for the configuration of these timeouts so the speed should be at least the equivalent of the legacy serial port if not better. To reduce the time to receive (chip to PC) smaller chunks of data the latency timer can be reduced to 2ms (default 16ms) and [...]

We suggest converters that have the FTDI chip inside from Digikey.

There is no formal “if/else” construct. However, you can approximate it with the macro label feature. For example, let’s say you can present the user with four different menus depending on some state variable. You could implement this with a couple of macros and an integer variable, and the variable i0 would hold the state, 0-3. Your code would set i0 to the desired value, then call macro select_menu. Macro select_menu turns i0 into a label with an ‘m’ pre-pended, which is used in the call to display_menu. #define select_menu m display_menu:m`i0` #end #define display_menu :m0 // display items suitable for menu 0 t "Menu 0" 100 100 :m1 // display items suitable for menu 1 t "Menu 1" 100 100 :m2 // display items suitable for menu 2 t "Menu 2" 100 100 :m3 // display items suitable for menu 3 t "Menu 3" 100 100 :default // display [...]