MSP430 Wrist Watch Project

Larsie, creator of the MSP430 Online Editor, got his first batch of SPI B/W LCD displays. He’s not quite sure yet what to do with them yet. He made a watch with a similar LCD, but with the I2C version. The case is 3-D printed from Shapeways. He’s taking feature requests right now in his build thread.

The display  is SPI-based, but it uses a 9-bit SPI interface. The first bit is decides whether it’s a write to the display memory or a config-command. As far as I understand, the USCI-chips don’t support 9 bits, while the USI ones do. I’ve made a bitbanging driver for it so far, and it works ok. I guess with an HW-driver it’ll be updating faster. I’ll see if maybe it can be tweaked onto the USCI peripheral by sending 2 bytes.

The features are:

- small (34 x 30 mm physical size. Viewing area 28×19)
- 3-line SPI 9-bit (Driver Sitronix ST7579-G2)
- low power
- backlight
- black and white LCD
- approx 3 USD cost

I made a watch with the earlier LCD display (i2c-version) I was using.  The SPI-display is slightly smaller, but the display quality is similar (slightly better on the SPI display). I will have 250 of these, so if anyone is interested in this display for projects, let me know. I’m planning on making some packs that are finished soldered and can be sold in the shop, but it’s relatively easy to solder these displays onto a board for your own projects also.