EarthLCD.com, the recognized leader in smart, touch LCDs announced the introduction of the ezLCD-303 and the immediate availability of their EarthSEMPL 2.0 firmware. With the release of the EarthSEMPL 2.0 firmware, the ezLCD-3xx product family now features procedural commands to allow the ezLCD to act as a standalone controller that can replace programmable logic controllers (PLC) and human machine interface (HMI) units/devices.

EarthLCD.com's ezLCD-303 Smart Touch LCD (Photo: Business Wire)

According to market research published by MarketsandMarkets (www.marketsandmarkets.com), “Human Machine Interface (HMI) Market Global Forecast & Analysis (2012 -2017),” the total market is expected to reach $4.5 billion by 2017, at a CAGR of 10.13% from 2012 to 2017.

“Since 2003, EarthLCD.com has built the ezLCD family of smart touch LCD clients for embedded systems that provide an easy-to-program and integrate color TFT LCD,” said Randy Schafer, EarthLCD.com's president and CEO. “Over 2,500 of our customers have integrated ezLCDs into their medical, instrumentation and industrial products. With this new firmware introduction, we expect to further enhance our customer's capabilities and product offerings.”

While the ezLCD-3xx can still be used as a GUI client, it can now also operate as a standalone touchscreen controller featuring nine general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins that can be configured as three serial uarts, one I²C master, one serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus master, five analog input/output (I/O) and nine digital I/O pins. Standard and custom I/O expansion modules are also available from EarthLCD.com to add RS232, RS485 and other functionality. The new added commands include GOTO, GOSUB, IF THEN, FOR and WHILE.

“Incorporating controller functionality improves the options for engineering development,” said Rich Obermeyer, EarthLCD.com's vice president of engineering. “The on-board flash drive allows easy updating of bitmaps and macros. And with the development tools and USB driver pre-installed on the flash drive, development can begin in minutes instead of hours.”

The ezLCD-303 features a 3.5 inch smart, color touch TFT LCD providing 320x240 pixel resolution, 65,536 colors (16-bit), 350 Nit brightness, LED backlight, 500:1 contrast ratio and an integrated four-wire resistive touchscreen. Its intelligent control module includes a GPU, 16-bit CPU, 4MB flash memory, USB 2.0 and RS232/TTL interfaces. The ezLCD-303 operates at +3.3V supply voltage, extremely low power at 130mA typical and offers a -20°C to +60°C operating temperature. It is RoHS compliant and measures 4.08 x 2.52 x .86 inches.

The EarthSEMPL programming language is Windows 7, XP, Linux, and OSX compatible.

Both the ezLCD-303 and EarthSEMPL 2.0 firmware is available from the company's website and the EarthSEMPL 2.0 firmware currently ships with all of EarthLCD.com's ezLCD-3xx products. Pricing for the ezLCD-303 starts at $129.00 each. EarthLCD.com will also design custom models for annual orders in quantities of one thousand and above.

About EarthLCD.com

Founded in 1994, EarthLCD.com is a U.S.-based division of Earth Computer Technologies, Inc. that specializes in designing and manufacturing cost effective LCD products for industrial and OEM applications worldwide. The company's mantra of “We Make LCDs Work” has successfully earned them recognition as the supplier of choice for LCD connectivity. For more information, visit www.earthlcd.com.

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