Generating VGA is a perennial preferred on the Hackaday suggestions line, as well as it’s not difficult to see why. Low-res video games, of course, however sending all those pixels out to a screen is really a quite difficult accomplishment of coding. the very best many job have achieved is the original VGA standard, 640×480. now that we have quick ARMs sitting around, we can bump that as much as 800×600, like [Karl] did with an STM32F4 discovery board.
The issue with generating VGA on a microcontroller is the pixel frequency – the speed at which pixels are shoved out of the microcontroller as well as onto the screen. For an 800×600 display, that’s 36 MHz; quicker than what the 8-bit micros can do, however a piece of cake for the STM32F4 [Karl] is using.
[Karl] started his develop by taking a look at the VGA job Artekit put together. It as well utilizes an STM32, however a 36-pin F103 part. Still, it was quick sufficient to produce a line-doubled 800×600 display. [Karl] took this code as well as ported it over to the F4 part on the discovery board that has sufficient area for a full 800×600 frame buffer.
With all that RAM on board the F4 part, [Karl] was able to broaden the frame buffer as well as produce a fairly high-resolution screen with DMA as well as about a lots lines of code. It looks great, as well as now we just requirement a appropriate application for high-resolution VGA displays. Retrocomputing? A high-resolution terminal emulator? who knows, however it’s a fantastic utilize for the STM32.
If circles as well as some text aren’t your thing, Artekit likewise has area Invaders running on the 36-pin STM32.