VGA

I would like to be able to output VGA from AVR projects. VGA LCDs (used) are incredibly cheap. I don't need incredibly high resolution.

The main limit is cost, if the project is close to $25, then I might as well just add a rasPi. I think the best approach is to use SRAM to buffer a bitmap and then sync that up with the monitor.

This sram chip would work. There are some "tsop adapter" relatively cheap.

• http://hackaday.com/2010/11/23/vga-interfacing-avr-microcontrollers/
• http://www.theresistornetwork.com/2013/03/avr-vga-generation.html
• http://dqydj.net/how-to-produce-640x480-vga-color-video-from-an-arduino/
• http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=11608
• http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=955
• http://tinyvga.com/avr-sdram-vga

This might work well with double buffering - two ram chips one in read mode, one in write mode and a single bit to switch.

It may also be just fine to accept a certain amount of flicker. Allow the mcu to interrupt the graphics driver. During the interrupt the driver will output black pixels. This allows us to update sections of the image as the mcu needs to. It would be good for displaying mostly static data (text, images) but allows a much higher resolution.

Display sizes in standard graphics modes:

width	height	colors	bytes
640	480	16	153,600
800	600	16	240000