RS Components has introduced two new graphic display controller ICs from Bridgetek that target the development of next-generation graphics displays for human machine interface (HMI) applications.

The BT815/816 controllers are the third generation of embedded video engine (EVE) devices. Delivering support for display, audio and touch capabilities, they enable engineers to quickly and efficiently design high-resolution displays and robust HMI solutions with a lower bill-of-material cost.

The architecture used in the BT815/816 series can support adding display capabilities to a wide range of 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit enabled MCU systems, over a simple SPI interface. Making use of an object-oriented approach to develop the final displayed image which is rendered line by line the EVE solution facilitates rapid development of static and animated displays with full touch control and no expensive frame-grabbing memory on the bill of materials.

New with the BT815/816 series is the addition of a dedicated flash port, complementing the on-chip 1Mb RAM, for storing and accessing additional display assets without impacting system design bandwidth.

ASTC (Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression) decoding is also now supported, further extending the usability of available memory. The addition of this bitmap compression algorithm has enabled larger font tables, animations and other display objects to be applied more efficiently.

Both ICs have video playback capabilities and support graphics rendering for SVGA resolutions up to 800 × 600-pixel screens: the BT816 offers support for displays with four-wire resistive touchscreens; and the BT815 is designed for use with capacitive touchscreens offering multi-touch operation.

Other key features include: digital audio output pin, extended command set including the new Flash memory access, bitmap rotation around a user defined point, and Unicode string support.