I present the ArduinoLCD by EarthMake, the most gratuitous Arduino knockoff of them all.
The ArduinoLCD is like a mullet – business in the front (ATMega328 Arduino R3 clone) and party in the back (3.5″ touchscreen). A GPU coprocessor handles the graphics, letting you create controls and displays with a janky proprietary script.
I received a prerelease ArduinoLCD at the New York Maker Faire. The panel and driver seems equivalent to their ezLCD 301. Hooray design reuse!
- ezLCD Instruction Manual (PDF)
- ezLCD with Arduino App Note
- SparkFun ezLCD 301 Product Page
- Font Converter (Windows)
- “Termie” Terminal Software (Windows)
I believe the GPU is connected to the Arduino via serial. I’d normally dig in (select Arduino R3 in Arduino to write to it) but I want to dump the factory sketch before I clobber it with Blink. Mike has a full Atmel debugger at the space, so I’ll head by tomorrow and upload it here.
Initial thoughts: This is a classy board. If the ArduinoLCD acts like a HID, it can make an interesting auxiliary keyboard or mouse. Otherwise, this is an expensive board with some interesting gadgetry possibilities. I’ll be building it into a piece of wearable technology, and I’ll keep you posted.
PS: the included USB cord has a fabric sheath of some kind and is total swag.
4D systems also offer LCD modules with on board GPU. Along with GorillaBuilderz LCD shield for Arduino and open source GorillaBuilderz Arduino libraries, you will be up and running ‘out of the box’ !
https://gorillabuilderz.com.au/shop/lcd-shield/
https://gorillabuilderz.com.au/shop/%C2%B5lcd-32pt/
Spiffy. Feel free to send one to the space – we’ll do a brief head-to-head review on it and almost certainly use it in a sweet project.
hmm but the EarthMake $79 ArduinoLCD is an Arduino and a GPU LCD that at 3.5″ is 64% bigger display area then a 2.8″ LCD shield and your talking north of $130 for the arduino+gorilla+4d GPU and a stack twice as high.