FTDI Chip integrated more support facilities into its Embedded Video Engine (EVE) technology, the basis for its FT800 and FT801 graphics controllers that support WQVGA and QVGA displays. The controllers render image data line-by-line rather than pixel-by-pixel, thereby dispensing with the need for a frame buffer. The FT801 also includes a capacitive touch controller interface, through which multiple touch points can be simultaneously determined for detection of complex gestures.
The new support facilities include a Windows-based behavior modeling software tool dubbed the EVE Emulator Library. It can emulate the display and touch functions of the FT800 without the need for any hardware, as well as quickly create demos. This tool benefits from an exact SPI/I2C interface configuration and consistent memory map of FT800/FT801 silicon. EVE sample applications employ a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) to make the application logic fully independent from the hardware platform. Sample applications can be adapted on the EVE emulator without the need to alter the application logic.
The Windows-based EVE Screen Editor enables engineers to study display commands and experiment with generating their own display lists to control EVE ICs. It can also be utilized to access a number of the various EVE development platforms available (such as the VM800B, VM800C and recently unveiled VM800BU, which has an integrated USB interface) via FTDI Chip’s MPSSE cable, without having to write any supplementary code.
FTDI also added more Arduino libraries to serve both the FT800 and FT801 controller devices, which can be downloaded from the company’s website.