I managed to snag a used PicoCalc, and it has the older ILI9488 LCD. I haven’t had the chance to get home and play with, but does anybody know if you can swap the ILI9488 with the newer ST7796SP panel? Also, does Madcock’s firmware support both?
I wasn’t aware that there are two different hardware panels. There was some mention of that on discord a while ago, that a new panel might be coming (possibly to help prevent the frequent damage during assembly), but I never saw evidence that the panel changed. My PicoCalc was one of the earliest (I ordered a few days after it was announced and I think got mine in the second batch?) and it works.
Earlier builds of PicoMite didn’t have support for ST7796SP – that was something Peter added later. But as far as I know both versions worked on all the PicoCalcs out there. The earlier driver was slower though, especially noticable when scrolling text, and there was a speedup with the ST7796SP driver.
I’m also not sure anyone has ever confirmed what the screen hardware in the PicoCalc actually is. Basically it’s just a “generic Chinese panel” that seems to support these drivers. As far as I know it’s still possible someone could discover a better way to initialize the panel, or find some mode or setting that was previously unknown.
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the ILI9488 came when I did OPTION LIST, and I’m so used to the other 2 listing the ST7796SP, I assumed it was the older panel.
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If you really want a new LCD just email Alex.
But, it does cost money, but it may be covered under warranty (probably not tho, because nothing is broken)
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Ya, the panel may very well may be some generic cludge. I’m going to swap out the panel with a spare to see if it works. Betting it will.
This is a used one I just picked up, and it entirely works, so I wouldn’t consider trying to warranty it. If it works with the spare, I was going to emailing Alex and buying a couple panels as more of a “just in case” then a replacement.
Finding it was really serendipitous because I was just thinking that it be nice if I could get a third one for cheap to test out some ideas on. Got lucky and did!
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There is only one panel. We simply don’t know what driver chip is in it, only that it’s largely compatible with the command set in those other chips.
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I guess that means its time for the community to come together and make an alternative screen board.
are we in agreement that it isn’t the st7365p whose datasheet is in clockworkpi’s github repo?
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