Hello!
Why do you want him to start with a character LCD? He says explicitely he wants
to experiment with a
graphic lcd. It sounds like selling a coffee maker to a
customer coming for a vacuum cleaner.
Now to reply the original question.
1. According to my experience (I wrote about 20 ~ 30 drivers), serial transmission
is very common for low resolution system (e.g 128 x 64 black & white). Parallel
is more common for higher resolution / color LCDs (e.g. QVGA color).
2. Mobile phone LCDs are available and can be used in any application. I developed
a driver for a QVGA using an MSP430. Here is a demonstration. The input is
16-bit, parallel. The TFT controller is inside of the LCD, so you can drive it with
any microcontroller which can drive at least 16 pins + 5~6 control lines.
By the way, the picture take time to display because they have to be read
one by one from the SD card (the MSP430 I used has 16k RAM only, so I can't
even load a full icon.
As for the japanese characters, they are in a serial flash. They are read and
decompressed one by one, which also takes time.
3. It would be nice to know what you are confused about.
Dora.
Kurenai_ryu said:
if you are learning, is best to start with a text LCD, the hdt44780-like LCD, or just 16x2 LCD (also they come in may sizes from 8x1 to 20x4 characters or more!) it's easy, it's well know, many people work with them everyday. also there is a plenty of code for them!
it's better to begin with a parallel LCD, so you can learn how to initialize it propertly, how to issue commands, and send data...
if you already can do that easily,you can aim to a Graphic-LCD like a LM12864L with a KS0108 controller like. it's something like the hdt44780, but with different commands,
after that you can aim to any GLCD, but you need to know which controller it has an how is the wiring or the pinage...
many sites offers the GLCD with datasheets and code examples, just check that all the info could be achieved with the controllers you will use.