Re: [avr-chat] Storing B&W bitmap images into Flash : file format suggestion ?

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Juergen Harms wrote:
> In case your display is an eDIP 240,

Nope, I am using a more standard / "bare" LCD module, with no built-in
intelligence. I just access the LCD controller (T6963) directly through
its parallel interface. I also bought the touch panel optiion which
again comes (as far as I can see.. haven't yet rceived it..) with zero
kind of controller be it software or hardware. This way I have full
control of the LCD and I can reinvent the wheel and create a GUI from
scratch for my project. I find it a lot of fun, as well as necessary to
learn all the basics ! 

I am using this panel from Matrix-Orbital:

http://www.matrixorbital.com/mopglt240128dbyfy-p-1063.html


A big collective thank you to all of you for all the information you
provided, both on and off list (thanks Bob ! ;-), too much to reply to
each of you individually ! I will investigate all these leads in the
coming days, and come back if necessary...

But I can already draw a first conclusion, though : I posted my
question here because I wanted to know what the pros do, so that I can
do it the "propre" way, rather than my own dirty hacks, because I also
use this project to try to find a job as a low-flying (B.Eng Hons
level) embedded engineer, so it's important that I do things like real
world engineers do, so that I have a chance to be taken seriously
during job interviews.

But in this case it seems that there is no consensus, and that every
chap does it his own way. That's great I guess, this way it's therefore
perfectly acceptable for me to use whatever solution suits me best in
my current project ! :-)

I can see several type of options though:

1) find a binary file format with no "pollution" in it.

2) take any format and post-process it/"clean" it, using existing
utilities or writing my own using a small C program

3) use an utility to generate C source files.

Option 3) would be great, as it would be very easy to incorporate to
the program and use afterward. It would just be an array in flash.
Otherwise I would have to create new sections, modify the makefile to
link them, etc, it's less flexible I find, and I have zero experience
with that.

Yep David, I am still very much on Linux, not just "mainly" as you say,
but "exclusively" !  :-D
So I am using Gimp to draw my bitmaps, and yes I know of ImageMagik,
though never used it so far but it may well come to use here indeed...
And wow, indeed Gimp appears to have filters to save pictures as C
source files, buried inside an incredibly long list of file formats !
Will look at this closely for sure !


Thanks again for al your help, much appreciated !
Sorry for the long post, but it's difficult to make it short when so
many people reply to give me so many interesting ideas ! ;-)


Regards,

--
Vince, now with plenty enough material to start working on the thing...