Ben Heck's FPGA LCD Driver Hack

Comments · 297

• IC

  @icraftcrafts8685 · 5 months ago

  11 years later and those are still the best rotatable dell monitors

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• PS

  @psiewert83 · 10 years ago

  Ah you know...just messing around with my $14,200 oscilloscope.

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• PE

  @petereric95 · 11 years ago

  <br>I didn&apos;t understand a single thing from this entire video except that you bought a car lcd from ebay :D

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• IN

  @intheblues · 11 years ago

  Ben - Your vast knowledge on everything electronics is off the planet. &nbsp;Every video I shake my head and smile about how much you know, retain, and explain. :-)

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• PH

  @philipacovington · 4 years ago

  FPGAs are great for retro-computing and learning how a CPU works. &nbsp;I am implementing Ben Eater&apos;s 8-bit computer in an FPGA in a series of videos on my channel for anyone interested.

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• MA

  @markconger8049 · 8 years ago

  I can&apos;t believe I have just found this video after two years of searching how to possibly use displays without controllers. This is the best tech video I&apos;ve watched all year (2017.) Thank you, Ben!

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• SH

  @shana_dmr · 11 years ago

  I love how you explained &quot;FP&quot; in FPGA as &apos;can be programmed anywhere, even on a field&apos; :D

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• TE

  @tekvax01 · 11 years ago

  just a point of clarification... front and back porch are for the horizontal sync, the pre equalization and post equalization pulses are used in vertical sync.

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• BA

  @Backbeardjack99 · 11 years ago

  Awesome!!!! Just awesome! Please Ben, do a complete FPGA tutorial!

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• MA

  @malgailany · 11 years ago

  One of the most interesting videos I&apos;ve seen recently!<br>Reverse engineering graphic LCD has always been a hard task without datasheets. Also showing how an FPGA can be used as a high-speed driver while most microcontrollers may fail to achieve the task. I hope to see more details, and how to display useful information on the LCD.<br><br>Thank you for interesting video.

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• TH

  @tHaH4x0r · 11 years ago

  Finally a build that requires some actual skill.<br>You could use DRAM with 2 partitions for 2 frames. 1 frame is constantly written to the screen at the update rate (30 or 60hz) whilst the other is free to access and modify by a microcontroller (cortex M4 or something) which prevents tearing and enables slow microcontrollers to write to the screen with a decent update rate. When the frame has been updated, the FPGA switches the ram access to update the screen with the new frame.

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• BR

  @brandonlewis2599 · 11 years ago

  This was the best episode yet. I really enjoyed this. l especially like how this episode showed in detail the process of reverse-engineering, and all (or most, anyways) of the guess-work that is involved. And how you just need to jump in there and experiment.<br><br>In some sense, it&apos;s a shame that Ben got it working on the first try. Would have learned more watching him struggle a bit. But hey, I guess it looks good for your sponsor.<br><br>Finally, you finally gave me an appreciation for what an FPGA can do that a micro-controller or dedicated logic can&apos;t. It would take a pretty serious (and expensive) micro-controller to drive that LCD -- if indeed it could be done at all. But it would also take a ton of work to build a circuit up from logic gates to it. The FPGA reduces this to a 25-minute episode.<br><br>Thanks, Ben!

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