I have probably reported this on the Form 1, but on my 1+ I noticed the Form display blinks after the peel process. Is this on purpose, or a technical limitation of the display? I already know the machine is working, so the blinking is not really adding anything since the print-job countdown is already animating. If it IS for aesthetic purpose, would it be possible to pulsate the display instead of a on/off blink? That might look better. Just an idea. I know this is a nit picky detail, but it’s such a lovely display to be “blinking” all the time.
It looks like a full screen refresh.
No idea what the purpose would be, though, since time is already refreshed in-place (i.e. there’s no reason not to refresh the layer number the same way).
The display is likely a self-contained unit with a serial interface that FL is buying off-the-shelf rather than something they designed in to their electronics. I would bet it supports “cursor indexing” that’d allow you to move to any arbitrary place on the display to draw new characters. But it’s less programming work to just repaint the entire display, and I’d guess there’s a “clear” command that has to precede each update, which causes the display to blank briefly before the update is displayed.
Sounds very plausible. I hadn’t looked up the display, but I think Bunnie had it in his tear down of a Form1 a while back. Probably just not high on the priority list for the embedded devs.
Ante’s closest here; it’s a full screen refresh. Its purpose is not aesthetic, but functional to ensure that the display continues to show the intended message/time should anything cause it to turn to gibberish between layers.
Thanks for clarifying Craig. I do recall an instance of gibberish in very early firmware and Form 1 (i.e. bad char display), so it makes complete sense.