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Controlling the DMD. How simple can I get?

Nikita Ermoshkin
Prodigy 240 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: DLPC300

Hello E2E Community,

I am working on my own DLP light engine, and am starting from scratch. I want to build the simplest possible control system for the DMD. For now, my requirements are to simply control one mirror on the DMD at a time, preferably from a microcontroller like the Propeller or Arduino.

Is this possible? Is it absolutely necessary to use the DLPC and DLPA controllers? Any kind of literature on how to control the mirrors on the DMD directly would be helpful.

Thanks,

Nikita

  • 0
    Intellectual 425 points

    Hi Nikita, 

    this is what I should do more or less, controlling the mirrors on the DMD. Did you manage to solve this problem?

    Pablo

  • 0 in reply to Juan Pablo
    Prodigy 240 points

    The best solution I have found so far is using an FPGA controller (and after further reading, that's exactly what the LightCrafter uses). It looks like the DMD requires a high frequency clock to switch mirrors, and it appears to be asynchronous (can a TI engineer confirm this?) FPGA is completely new to me, and I have seen some starter kits on DigiKey and from Altera, so once I get my hands on one I will see what I can do. 

    On that note, does anyone know where I can get literature on how the DMD actually works (e.i. what is the serial protocol, how do I write to the CMOS memory, etc).

  • 0 in reply to Nikita Ermoshkin
    TI__Mastermind 30875 points

    Hello Nikita,

    The FPGA used in DLP LightCrafter not used for direct control of the DMD (DLP3000).  The FPGA here does minimal functionality of video mux b/w DM365 and external HDMI video input plus it generates signals for displaying patterns in the pattern sequence mode.

    The DLP chipset offered not allow direct control of the of the DMD. It is always via the controller chip. The lowest level possibility is of controlling the DMD is with Discovery D4100 chipset. The controller in this chipset accept n the LVDS data signals and feed it to the DMD directly for the display. You may want to have a look at it.

    Regards,

    Sanjeev

  • 0 in reply to Sanjeev
    Prodigy 240 points

    So what does the DM365 do that other controllers cannot?

    With the D4100, would I then use an FPGA controller to control it? Or would a simple micro controller do the job? And where can I find the literature on how to control the D4100?

    Thanks,

    Nikita

  • 0 in reply to Nikita Ermoshkin
    TI__Mastermind 30875 points

    Hello Nikita,

    We introduced DM365 in LightCrafter as an embedded processor to do basic jobs like talking with PC, configuring the FPGA and DLPC300. It also generate the video signals for display so almost a self contained system by itself. DM365 doesn't do any specific functionality related to DLP. 

    Discovery chipset related information can be found here http://www.ti.com/tool/dlpd4x00kit

    Regards,

    Sanjeev