Human-machine interface display solution based on Nuvoton N9H26 gaming platform

I don’t know when it started, but RGB LED has become a standard feature in the PC gaming market, from motherboards, cases, display cards, keyboards, mice, monitors, etc. Now, RGB seems to be unable to meet the needs of experienced players. More dazzling and cool products are needed to bring players richer visual enjoyment. Therefore, HMI (human-machine interface) has slowly penetrated this gaming field. LCD can be seen in motherboards, water cooling heads, cases, power supplies, etc.

Nuvoton Technology provides the emWin development platform, which uses Nuvoton's N9H microprocessor series. This is a complete human-machine display interface solution platform that supports displays with a maximum resolution of 1024x768 pixels. Because the N9H series uses ARM926EJ-S as the core, it runs at a speed of 300 MHz and can drive a color 1024x768 pixel parallel port (Parallel Port) at most. It has a built-in TFT LCD controller and 2D graphics accelerator, and the color saturation can reach 1.6 million colors (24 bits) LCD screen output. The high resolution and high color saturation can provide users with a smoother and more gorgeous display effect for the human-machine display interface. It is equipped with an H.264 image decompression engine, which can smoothly play compressed videos on the human-machine interface. It also has a built-in voice decoder to streamline the peripheral circuits of human-machine interface applications with sound playback. In addition, the series has a built-in maximum of 64 MB DDRII SDRAM memory, which provides ample hardware storage and computing space, allowing developers to have design flexibility when using emWin software.

Here we also introduce emWin, a powerful drawing platform. emWin is an embedded graphical interface library developed by the German company Segger. It can draw a variety of 2D graphics, and also supports image display in BMP, JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats, and supports text in multiple languages. emWin also provides a variety of tools for developers to use.

We understand the problems that customers often encounter in development. For HMI development, we not only provide mature hardware, but also provide Windows APP and templete FW to accelerate initial evaluation and early development.

Based on the human-machine interface display of the PC gaming platform, we provide relevant information, time and various customized screens for displaying hardware monitoring, so that customers can quickly develop their own products based on this template. The following is a display screen.

Scenario application diagram

Display board photos

Solution Block Diagram

Core technology advantages

● N9H26 provides JPEG decoder, supporting up to 120 fps @ VGA

● N9H26 provides H.264 video decoder, supporting up to 25 fps @ 720p

● N9H26 provides 2D graphics accelerator

● GUIBuilder provided by SEGGER emWin Library makes it easier for developers to develop

● N9H26 has rich storage interface SPI Flash/ NAND Flash / USB

● N9H26 uses MCP technology to integrate 64MB DDR2, which can reduce PCB space and reduce EMI problems

● Provide eSports HMI reference materials and test tools to accelerate evaluation and development

● Reference design passed 4 kV ESD test

Solution Specifications

● N9H26K61N series uses 32-bit ARM926EJ-S core

● Maximum operating frequency up to 264 MHz

● 8 KB instruction cache (I-cache) and 8 KB data cache (D-cache)

● Stacked 64 MB DDR2 memory in one package

● Provide 128-pin, greatly reducing PCB size and electromagnetic interference (EMI)

● N9H26K61N: one USB full-speed Host and one USB full-speed Device

● System boot source supports SPI Flash/ NAND Flash / USB device

● Video Codec supports MJPEG codec and hardware 720P H.264 codec

● LCD control interface supports RGB565/ RGB666/ RGB888 interface, maximum resolution: 1024 x 768

● Image input supports CCIR656/CCIR601 interface, maximum resolution: 3 million pixels

● Dual SD Host interface, supports SD/ SDIO/ eMMC