Is it worth using a TOUCHGFX display with STM32 ?

[JGonz.3]

I need to know which interface I should use. It's for a display which is going to be used in hospitals. Have used other displays with other board as ESP32 for example connected through SPI.

The question is, is it worth using a TOUCHGFX with STM32 if I have never used it? Is it too much learning for just one project?

[Romain DIELEMAN]

Well my answer is a bit biased but TouchGFX Designer in itself is easy to use and easy to take into hands. Depending on the complexity of your project/GUI I do believe it would be a good idea to use TouchGFX. Give us a bit more info on your overall knowledge and what you wish to do, so that we can give you a better answer. People here or us can always try to give you a hand when you encounter issues.

[JGonz.3]

OK Romain, thank you so much. I would say that the issue for me would be having to use the STM32 instead of any other board such as ESP32 with which I'm more familiar. Do you see, objectively 😉 , any issue having to learn/use the STM32 ?

Apart from that, would you recommend me to use MIPI, SPI or another ​interface to connect the TOUCHGFX with the STM32 (in case I do finally decide to use it) ?

Thanks in advance,

[Romain DIELEMAN]

Well that will depend on the product you choose. To configure st products you now can/need to use another software, CubeMX, which is quite "annoying" to learn. However we have provided application templates that do all the configuration for you when creating a new project. I would suggest having a look at the supported boards (we are currently working on all of them and updating when finished new application templates to support as many as we can) and compare with your needs of performance. From the correct application template you can then adapt it to your custom board.

So in conclusion I would make sure that the products you chose for your project are already documented/supported so that you skip all the annoying work and have information online. Otherwise stick to what you know even if this might cost me my job :D

[JGonz.3]

Okey, thank you so much again. I will give it a ​thought and hope it doesn't cost you your job 😉

[berendi]

Any recommendation would depend on what you are trying to actually do.

Small display, no animated graphics, then use SPI. Large display with animations, use parallel RGB or MIPI. Or what the budget allows.

I am not 100% sure that touchgfx would work well with SPI, but it would be definitely cheaper.

Get a disovery board with display to start experimenting, or tell more about the requirements.

[HP]

Depending on the size of the screen you need I would recommend to get either a

STM32F429i or

STM32F746 or

STM32F769i

The last one uses a MIPI interface which can be tricky to route properly due to the high-speed nature of the bus. the 746 have a pixelclock of only 9.6MHz which is manageable. the 429i uses 16-bit compared to the 746 24bit color depth. Each of the dev-kits are quite cheap on their own. (if you get the 769i just make sure you do get the one with the screen on!)

Hardwarewise the IDE can be a bit cumbersome to start with but it's eclipse (if you chose the CubeIDE) it's not that bad.

What are you using for your ESP32?

[JGonz.3]

It's nice to have that information @HP​ . Anyway, do you know of any free development kit or where to obtain them? (For example in case I need to do a swipe action, zoom, etc.)

In an hypothetical case, the screen would be arround 7''.

At this moment I'm not ussing the ESP32 for nothing. I'm an Electronics Engineering student doing end-of-business company internships and I've been assigned to have information about TOUCHGFX/STM32 to see if it would be biable to use/implement/learn to use them.

[HP]

the dev-kits are not free but they are inexpensive. In your case I would go for the F746 board. That's the board that have the most use cases supported and most likely the one that you will be able to get help with.

As for the screen size it is only 4.3" but since that is not your main goal. TouchGFX is technology-agnostic. It doesn't care about the hardware or the screen size. It is a software framework for quickly designing GUI's and that is your main task. making it work on other hardware is... fairly straightforward when you start digging in to the layouts and stuff 🙂