VGA terminal with ESP32

[David Richards]

I have here a low cost TTGO ESP32 VGA board which is easily configured as a VGA ANSI terminal using the ready made demo application supplied with the fabgl library for Arduino. Photo attached shows it running  a colour bar program (built for another system so a bit wrong) The menu overlaid is the terminal configuration screen, part of the terminal software itself running on the ESP32.

The serial connections are here directly connected to the serial port of my SC126, it is being the system console. The i/o connections could also go to a max3232 or serial to USB connector. Quite a versatile little device.

The inputs work at 5v logic levels and the unit is powered by a USB connector. Internally it is 3v3. I have it working with a USB keyboard through one of those old USB to PS/2 connectors, some keyboard / connectore combinations are ok, others not. There is a mouse input available too but its not used in this application.

Kind regards, David.

I 

[Colin MacArthur]

Looks GREAT, small & easy to use!

Do you have more info on the module & program?

THX

CM

[Tom Szolyga]

I have had one of these sitting on my bench for a while.  Would you explain the serial connection to the SC126?  My  TGO ESP32 VGA board  does not have the 4 pin, right angle connector populated.   Is this the interface and what are the signals?

Thanks,

Tom

[Jay Cotton]

Hi Tom

Long time no see.

Here is a link to the GITHUB for this vga project.

https://github.com/fdivitto/FabGL

There is a schematic there, and a board layout.  I think that should cover all the questions.

JC

[Terry Fox]

Here is a pix of the one I use as a serial terminal.  It is an earlier version of the TTGO, where I had to find the proper pins for the serial port, but it works fine.  The four serial connections are GND, power, TxD and RxD, which go to a typical TTL to RS232 module.  the red wire is 3.3V to RS232 adaptor, yellow goes to GPIO2 (top right connection on esp32 sub module), and blue goes to GPIO32 (sixth connection down on bottom of esp32 submodule).  If you aren't using RS232 voltage levels, the RS232 converter for the VGA32 is probably not used.

Newer versions of the TTGO VGA32 have a serial port breakout already on the board I think.

73 terry, n4tlf

[David Richards]

Hi Tom, Colin

Expanding on the link given above by Jay, I'm using a V1.4 eSP32 VGA board, I think it has more connections broken out than earlier versions. I added the 8 pin header into the PCB holes in the board.   The boards are available from all the usual suppliers, I got mine from ebay, just search for TTGO ESP32 VGA V1.4 

The software is one of the examples which are part of the fabgl Arduino library.

Kind regards, David.