The present invention provides a bar indicator that minimizes the burden placed
on the microcontroller. A horizontal bar indicator is generated that requires very
little microcontroller firmware overhead, allowing a less powerful microcontroller
to be used in the application. The reduced firmware requirement translates into
smaller microcontroller firmware ROM requirements, thus enabling a lower cost system
to be realized. The bar indicator uses a single byte written to a counter to represent
the size of the bar. This byte written to the counter is readily available from
the actual parameter value representing the size of the bar without significant
additional calculation. The OSD video coming from the OSD logic is overridden with
a pixel overwrite when the location of the bar indicator is located. The bar overwrites
whatever is located at the position of the bar indicator. The pixel override occurs
for a predetermined time. For example, if the bar indicator is set to the maximum
range then the time may be twice as long as compared to the time to display a bar
indicator that is set to at 50% of the range.
