Sometimes, news come on silent paws…
The last weeks have been tough. Besides developing and entertaining my readers with round touch control with 1° resolution (here, here and here), I had a few “engineering samples” and a new Nextion Editor version on my desk to do beta testing. No, please remain seated! It will most probably take still a few weeks until sales can start and the new Editor will be released. But perhaps, some of you saw something coming. Why else would I have insisted on the circular touch control? Finally, I was asked to contribute a still more advanced version of it to the new firmware demo software which my Canadian friend and colleague Patrick has created at the same time. What are we getting? Suspense… drum roll…
A sneak preview of the upcoming Nextion Edge Series HMI
Technically, the Edge Series has much in common with the Intelligent series: A CPU clock frequency of 200MHz, a flash memory of 128MB, and 524288 (512k) Bytes of RAM, capacitive touch. Where is then the difference? Let’s look at them from behind, first. Surprise: They are incredibly thin! And my Chinese colleagues invented a new mounting system, combining some advantages from the unboxed and boxed versions, and they eliminated the need for an extra bezel: Make the appropriate cutout in whatever housing, pull the protection paper off from the HMI display’s back edge to make use of the self glueing coating (by 3M), position the HMI, and you are done!
And that picture reveals the 3 new formats: We will get two round HMI displays, one with 2.1″ diameter, and one with 2.8″ diameter, and a rectangular version with a 4.3″ diagonale. What we can already see from the back view: Like on the Nextion Intelligent series, there is a speaker connector. There is also the IO connector for the flat ribbon cable. While on the PCB of the 4.3″ rectangle display, there is also enough space for the RTC battery holder, a small 2pin connector, similar to the speaker connector, allows to connect an external battery to the smaller round screens.
But, to me, the most amazing is the high resolution: While the 4.3″ Intelligent display comes with 272 x 480 pixels, the 4.3″ Edge HMI comes with 480 x 800 pixels which is 3 times more pixels on the same area! The smaller round displays come both with a visible area which is the inner circle of a 480 x 480 pixel square. Especially on the 2.1″ round HMI, seeing each detail in HD quality is simply extraordinary!
When I took the following picture, it was important to me to show a size comparison with the boxed 4.3″ Intelligent series HMI. At the same screen size, almost 3 times more pixels and so much smaller and less bulky in its outer dimensions. I really think, I’ll have new favorite toys!
Now that we’ve had a look onto the 2.1″ and 4.3″ displays, my lab assistant proudly presents the 2.8″ version with the start page of the new firmware demo by Patrick:
Challenges to come
New screen formats require new design approaches. Especially when we switch from rectangular to round screens. That’s why we anticipated the rotary control. But, did you notice the curved text above the rotary knob with its graduations? Stay tuned, we will see this and much more on the Sundays to come! And with a bit of luck and effort, we’ll have the required tools already at hands when the sales of the new Edge HMIs will start.
Last, but not least
You have any questions, comments, critics, or suggestions? Just send me an email to thierry (at) itead (dot) cc! 🙂
And, by the way, if you like and you find useful what I write, and you are about to order Nextion stuff with Itead, please do so by clicking THIS REFERRAL LINK! To you, it won’t forcibly make a change for your order but on some products, you may even get a 10% discount using the coupon code THIERRYFRSONOFF. In ever case, it will pay me perhaps the one or the other beer or coffee. And that will motivate me to write still more interesting blogs 😉