Setting up and configuring a round display with TouchGFX

[Ricko]

Hi,

I never worked with STM32 platform. I have to interface a SDI round display with it.

I have seen that TouchGFX includes three "parts": TouchGFX Generator, TouchGFX Designer, TouchGFX Engine. But still not sure what each of them does.

A couple of questions if someone could please help:

1) What tools do I need to generate the code for the actual custom round display's low level interfacing

2) How do I define the round display in TouchGFX?

Thank you :)

[GaetanGodart]

Hello @Ricko ,

TouchGFX Engine (or maybe we should call it framework) is what creates the framebuffer, what displays the images, what gets the button clicks, etc. It is the heart of the application.

TouchGFX Designer is the desktop application (software) that allows you to create quick GUI, make multiple screens and add widgets to them.

TouchGFX Generator is turns your TouchGFX Designer project into code that the Engine/framework can understand.

Your questions are pretty vague. You want to generate code but for the low level interfacing and you want define a display. I don't really understand.

What I understand however is that you want to use a round display with TouchGFX and you have a ST board to control that display.

Can you share the references of the board and the display please?

The first step to understand TouchGFX is to go through our documentation : support.touchgfx.com 

Specifically for board bring up (to use a board + a display in TouchGFX) there is this sub-section : board-bring-up 

To help you can also look at our pre-made TBS for other boards to see how we set up the hardware in STM32CubeMX and other.
To do so, just create an empty project from the Designer by selecting a specific board and a specific display and you will have a working project (for that specific board and display).
Some of the screens are round, that is the case of the STM32U5G9 DK. This one should help you.

If this comment answer your question, I invite you to select it as "best answer".

Regards,

[Andrew Neil]

How does the display itself behave?

AIUI, (some of) these "round" displays behave as if they were square - so the setup is exactly as for a square display, and you just "draw" to a circle in the middle of that square ...

[Ricko]

Thank you both.

@GaetanGodart sorry, I did not explain myself properely. What I meant is how and where do I input the display parameter (timing, etc) that define a specific display that is not currently used by any of the demo board?

Just for extra clarity, I have to develop this application for a customer. So the electronics is fully custom and not any demo board. And the display I have to use one that the client specified, so I assume there is somewhere in TouchGFX (or somewhere else in the toolchain) a place where all the signal timing is specified. Not talking about just pin assignment, but the full timing which is specific and different for every display.

Just for reference, this is the display I have to use: 3.4inch DSI LCD (C) - Waveshare Wiki

1) Are you saying I do that in the STM32CubeMX?

2) And - this is a very long shot - is there a list of some standard controllers already "defined" in TouchGFX (or STM32CubeMX) which I might be the same as the display I have to use? To avoid having to go through the manual of every demo that is listed in TouchGFX.

3) what is TBS? (you wrote "pre-made TBS for other boards")

Thank you :)

[MM..1]

1. No tools exist , that generate working code for you. MX generate base init for internal peripherals in MCU.

TouchGFX examples add some BSP drivers for external parts, that can be reused.

2. TouchGFX is sw manager for framebuffer universal in memory only. Flushing to hw (displays bus) is external part coded in target files code isnt part of TGFX generate

[GaetanGodart · Accepted solution]

Hello @Ricko ,

The link you provide doesn't help much. You should know the reference number (which look like R04DIS5454LD_GD or some other fun name like that). Also, you should have access to the datasheet, where you find the timings you talk about.

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1) Are you saying I do that in the STM32CubeMX?

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From my understanding of your needs, yes.
You have hardware timings, you have to let your application know about those timings, so it must be STM32CubeMx related.
Here you can find a video where the person is doing a full board setup : How to integrate TouchGFX in a custom board (The long way round) 
I also recommend checking our documentation : board-bring-up 

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2) And - this is a very long shot - is there a list of some standard controllers already "defined" in TouchGFX (or STM32CubeMX) which I might be the same as the display I have to use? To avoid having to go through the manual of every demo that is listed in TouchGFX.

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We don't have that because each setup is specific to a board + a display. You can't use a setup that was made for board a + display a with board a + display b.

There is no manual per demo. Also by demo, I assume you mean board setup.

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3) what is TBS? (you wrote "pre-made TBS for other boards")

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Sure, I should have started from there, my bad.
TBS stands for TouchGFX Board Setup. It is basically what you want to do right now.
And we have some that we made for a bunch of ST discovery boards (ending by DK), that is the one I called pre-made TBS. They are specific to the discovery board.

What I recommend you to do is to check the documentation I sent you, watch the video.
Then get the datasheet of your display, get it's information, for instance I know it is a DSI display so far. Then you can check all the TBS we made by looking in the Designer directly and look at the information of those discovery boards to find one that uses a display similar to yours this way you can get inspiration from the TBS for the discovery board.

I hope it clears things up but I strongly recommend you to read our documentation to learn more about TouchGFX.

Regards,

[Ricko]

Thank you @GaetanGodart and @MM..1