New connection enables a wide choice of display size and style

MikroElektronika offers a new open standard – DISCON – that defines display socket and display board, enabling simple installation and replacement of any display on a development board with the DISCON socket. By attaining the goal of a universal standard for display type add-on boards, months of wasted development time and money are saved, and huge design flexibility and scalability are possible.

Comments Nebojsa Matic, CEO of MIKROE: “With DISCON, we are ensuring absolute compatibility between the development board and any of the supported displays, regardless of their size and type.”

The DISCON standard specifies functional and æsthetic demands that must be respected in the development process. This incorporates the physical layout of the display board, communication and power supply pins, the size and shape of the display board, and the silkscreen marking conventions for the add-on boards and sockets. It allows all sizes and styles of TFT display to be employed – currently 3.5", 4.3", 5" and 7" units, and capacitive, capacitive with bezel, capacitive with frame, and resistive styles are supported.

The display board socket comprises a 2 x 20-pin connector with a proprietary pin configuration and silkscreen markings. The connector is a female 2 x 20-pin device on a standard 2.54mm pitch, and it can also have a polarisation post for simpler positioning of the display board. The pin-out consists of four groups of pins – I2C, GPIO, data pins for the parallel data port, and optional control pins - along with power supply pins.