Product Review

It's a mini HDMI decoder board! So small and simple, you can use this board as an all-in-one display driver for TTL displays, or perhaps decoding HDMI/DVI video for some other project. This breakout features the TFP401 for decoding video, and for the touch version, an AR1100 USB resistive touch screen driver.

The TFP401 is a beefy DVI/HDMI decoder from TI. It can take unencrypted video and pipe out the raw 24-bit color pixel data - HDCP not supported! It will decode any resolution from 25-165MHz pixel clock, basically up to 1080p. We've used this breakout with 800x480 displays, so we have not specifically tested it with higher resolutions. We added a bunch of supporting circuitry like a backlight driver and configured it for running basic TTL display panels such as the ones we have in the shop

You can even power the display and decoder from a USB port. For example, with a 5" 800x480 display and 50mA backlight current, the current draw is 500mA total. You can reduce that down  370mA by running the backlight at half-brightness (25mA). With the backlight off, the decoder and display itself draws 250mA. If you want more backlight control, there's a PWM input, connect that to your microcontroller or other PWM output and you can continuously dim the backlight as desired

We have two versions, one is video only and one is video+touch. This one is video only! If you want a screen that you can poke at, get the +touch version and pair it with a screen that has a resistive touch overlay. The USB port then acts as both power and data, with the touch screen appearing like a USB mouse.

This driver is designed specifically as a small and easy to use display driver for our 40-pin TTL displays. In particular, we suggest it for use with single board computers (or desktop/laptops!) with DVI/HDMI output like the Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black. You can power the driver over USB and then feed it video via the HDMI por