Advice about screen

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karine
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu 28 Dec 2017 14:17

Re: Advice about screen

Post by karine »

Is it possible to feed the hdmi out signal to the raspiboy screen somehow ?*
Or use the GPIO instead ?
Using the comp out on this project is a real issue.

Thank You
Graylag
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue 12 Dec 2017 12:51

Re: Advice about screen

Post by Graylag »

I am slightly disappointed with screen quality as well, but you have to accept it as cost for simplicity and low price. There are three basic ways of how to output video signal from RPi Zero - HDMI, Composite and SPI through GPIO. For start we can forget about SPI (or other GPIO) screen, because there is no way to push through so much data with reasonable refresh rate. The HDMI could be used, but the screen would be more expensive, device larger and we would lose ability to connect external screen. And then we have composite - crappy quality, but cheap, simple and functional. Should I be designing Raspiboy, I would make exactly same decision as Pierre did.

Solution would be to make more complex electronics, most likely integrated with controler (to save space) and utilizing HDMI and having onboard splitter for external output. This is btw great idea for hypotetical v2.0 revision, but you cannot do it for reasonable cost unless you start producing (and selling) it in large quantities - 10 000 pieces would probably be reasonable minimum. Considering only about 5000 Raspiboys have been sold (my guess, correct me if I am wrong), it would probably kill the project even before start.

Information about fixed resolution of Composite Vinc3Has3 posted is interesting. If there were way how to improve picture quality just by SW it would be great.
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Pietze
Posts: 29
Joined: Tue 10 Oct 2017 17:59

Re: Advice about screen

Post by Pietze »

Thanks Vinc3Has3 for this information! This was something, I needed to know.

I really wish I could get that native 240p images... I'm still hunting for a good handheld solution, because something like a GPD XD has a 16:9 screen ratio. Having a GBA with a AGS-101 screen + Everdrive isn't a solution for me either, since its very expensive and it lacks support for the other handhelds.
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