Hi, I want to build a display-keyboard system. I want to use a 15-inch lcd monitor or something similar. I don't want to use a PC to drive it, I want to build a custom board around an 8 or 16-bit mpu or an mcu. My biggest question is: how do I drive the video part. Would that be some kind of a vga driver? Can I get a chip for that or do I have to write that into my mcu? (obviously I'd prefer the chip already did it.) I'm a totally clueless on the video part, please kindly offer any advice, ideas. thank you!

 

driving display directly is a problem for many reasons, for example did you consider amount of memory you need to store just one image? another problem is to refresh the image. monitor does not store image, it displays currnet stream of data. to have image you must continuously stream same image over and over 60 times per second (or whatever frame rate your monitor supports).

suppose you have 800x600 resolution and you only use monochrome 2-color image at 60fps. even if we ignore sync pulses etc, that still means you need to keep clocking data out at some 28800000 Hz. It is much easier to use Raspberry Pi for example...

 

that's why I want to find a video controller ic to do that for me, is there such an ic to drive a pc monitor? Or is there a display module that includes video controller so all i have to do is send commands from my mcu to it (much like a 128x64 lcd module for example) but for larger screens like 12" or more. Thanks!

 

rasberry pi

 

yes there is an IC that can drive monitor, every graphics card has one (ATI nVidia). but this is another can of worms. BGA package, adding RAM, and host of other peripherals, writing drivers etc. Raspberry PI has one too. did you check it's schematics?