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These days, it’s easy enough to play games on the go. If you have a smart phone, you are pretty much set. That doesn’t mean you can’t still have fun designing and building your own portable gaming system, though.

[randrews] did just that. He started out by purchasing a small memory LCD display from Adafruit. The screen he chose is low power as far as screens go, so it would be a good fit for this project. After testing the screen with a quick demo program, it was time to start designing the circuit board.

[randrews] used Eagle to design the circuit. He hand routed all of the traces to avoid any weird issues that the auto router can sometimes cause. He made an efficient use of the space on the board by mounting the screen over top of the ATMega chip and the other supporting components. The screen is designed to plug in and out of the socket, this way it can be removed to get to the chip. [randrews] needs to be able to reach the chip in order to reprogram it for different games.

Once the board design was finished, [randrews] used his Shapeoko CNC mill to cut it out of a copper clad board. He warns that you need to be careful doing this, since breathing fiberglass dust is detrimental to living a long and healthy life. Once the board was milled out, [randrews] used a small Dremel drill press to drill all of the holes.

The final piece of the puzzle was to figure out the power situation. [randrews] designed a second smaller PCB for this. The power board holds two 3V coin cell batteries. The Arduino expects 5V, so [randrews] had to use a voltage regulator. This power board also contains the power switch for the whole system.

The power board was milled and populated. Then it was time to do some measurements. [randrews] measured the current draw and calculates that he should be able to get around 15 hours of play time using the two 3V coin cell batteries. Not bad considering the size.

[via Reddit]

Have you ever wondered how far your dog actually runs when you take it to the park? You could be a standard consumer and purchase a GPS tracking collar for $100 or more, or you could follow [Becky Stern's] lead and build your own simple but effective GPS tracking harness.

[Becky] used two FLORA modules for this project; The FLORA main board, and the FLORA GPS module. The FLORA main board is essentially a small, sewable Arduino board. The GPS module obviously provides the tracking capabilities, but also has built-in data logging functionality. This means that [Becky] didn’t need to add complexity with any special logging circuit. The GPS coordinates are logged in a raw format, but they can easily be pasted into Google Maps for viewing as demonstrated by [Becky] in the video after the break. The system uses the built-in LED on the FLORA main board to notify the user when the GPS has received a lock and that the program is running.

The whole system runs off of three AAA batteries which, according to [Becky], can provide several hours of tracking. She also installed a small coin cell battery for the GPS module. This provides reserve power for the GPS module so it can remember its previous location. This is not necessary, but it provides a benefit in that the GPS module can remember it’s most recent location and therefore discover its location much faster.

Learn how to use an inexpensive TFT colour  touch LCD shield with your Arduino. This is chapter twenty-nine of our huge Arduino tutorial series.

Updated 07/02/2014

There are many colour LCDs on the market that can be used with an Arduino, and in this tutorial we’ll explain how to use a model that is easy to use, has a touch screen, doesn’t waste all your digital output pins – and won’t break the bank. It’s the 2.8″ TFT colour touch screen shield from Tronixlabs:

And upside down:

As you can imagine, it completely covers an Arduino Uno or compatible board, and offers a neat way to create a large display or user-interface.  The display has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, supports up to 65536 colours and draws around 250mA of current from the Arduino’s internal 5V supply. 

And unlike other colour LCDs, this one doesn’t eat up all your digital output pins – it uses the SPI bus for the display (D10~D13), and four analogue pins (A0~A3) if you use the touch sensor. However if you also use the onboard microSD socket more pins will be required. 

With some imagination, existing Arduino knowledge and the explanation within you’ll be creating all sorts of displays and interfaces in a short period of time. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

Getting started

Setting up the hardware is easy – just plug the shield on your Arduino. Next, download the library bundle from here. Inside the .zip file is two folders – both which need to be copied into your …\Arduino-1.0.x\libraries folder. Then you will need to rename the folder “TFT_Touch” to “TFT”. You will notice that the Arduino IDE already contains a library folder called TFT, so rename or move it.

Now let’s test the shield so you know it works, and also to have some quick fun. Upload the paint example included in the TFT library – then with a stylus or non-destructive pointer, you can select colour and draw on the LCD – as shown in this video. At this point we’d like to note that you should be careful with the screen – it doesn’t have a protective layer.

Afraid the quality of our camera doesn’t do the screen any justice, however the still image looks better:

Using the LCD 

Moving on, let’s start with using the display. In your sketches the following libraries need to be included using the following lines before void setup():

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>

… and then the TFT library is initialised in void setup()

Tft.TFTinit();

Now you can use the various functions to display text and graphics. However you first need to understand how to define colours.

Defining colours

Functions with a colour parameter can accept one of the ten ten predefined colours – RED, GREEN, BLUE, BLACK, YELLOW, WHITE, CYAN, BRIGHT_RED, GRAY1 and GRAY2, or you can create your own colour value. Colours are defined with 16-but numbers in hexadecimal form, with 5 bits for red, 6 for green and 5 for blue – all packed together. For example – in binary:

MSB > RRRRRGGGGGGRRRRR < LSB

These are called RGB565-formatted numbers – and we use these in hexadecimal format with our display. So black will be all zeros, then converted to hexadecimal; white all ones, etc. The process of converting normal RGB values to RGB565 would give an aspirin a headache, but instead thanks to Henning Karlsen you can use his conversion tool to do the work for you. Consider giving Henning a donation for his efforts.

Displaying text

There are functions to display characters, strings of text, integers and float variables:

Tft.drawChar(char, x, y, size, colour);          // displays single character variables
  Tft.drawString(string, x, y, size, colour);      // displays arrays of characters
  Tft.drawNumber(integer, x, y, size, colour);     // displays integers
  Tft.drawFloat(float, x, y, size, colour);        // displays floating-point numbers

In each of the functions, the first parameter is the variable or data to display; x and y are the coordinates of the top-left of the first character being displayed; and colour is either the predefined colour as explained previously, or the hexadecimal value for the colour you would like the text to be displayed in – e.g. 0xFFE0 is yellow.

The drawFloat() function is limited to two decimal places, however you can increase this if necessary. To do so, close the Arduino IDE if running, open the file TFTv2.cpp located in the TFT library folder – and search for the line:

INT8U decimal=2;

… then change the value to the number of decimal places you require. We have set ours to four with success, and the library will round out any more decimal places. To see these text display functions in action,  upload the following sketch:

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>

char ascii = 'a';
char h1[] = "Hello";
char h2[] = "world";
float f1 = 3.12345678;

void setup()
{
  Tft.TFTinit(); 
}

void loop()
{
  Tft.drawNumber(12345678, 0, 0, 1, 0xF800);
  Tft.drawChar(ascii,0, 20,2, BLUE);
  Tft.drawString(h1,0, 50,3,YELLOW);
  Tft.drawString(h2,0, 90,4,RED);  
  Tft.drawFloat(f1, 4, 0, 140, 2, BLUE);      
}

… which should result in the following:

To clear the screen

To set the screen back to all black, use:

Tft.fillScreen();

Graphics functions

There are functions to draw individual pixels, circles, filled circles, lines, rectangles and filled rectangles. With these and a little planning you can create all sorts of images and diagrams. The functions are:

Tft.setPixel(x, y, COLOUR);                  
// set a pixel at x,y of colour COLOUR

Tft.drawLine(x1, y1, x2, y2, COLOUR);        
// draw a line from x1, y1 to x2, y2 of colour COLOUR

Tft.drawCircle(x, y, r, COLOUR);             
// draw a circle with centre at x, y and radius r of colour COLOUR

Tft.fillCircle(x, y, r, COLOUR);             
// draw a filled circle with centre at x, y and radius r of colour COLOUR

Tft.drawRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2 ,COLOUR);   
// draw a rectangle from x1, y1 (top-left corner) to x2, y2 (bottom-right corner) of colour COLOUR

Tft.Tft.fillRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2 ,COLOUR);   
// draw a filled rectangle from x1, y1 (top-left corner) to x2, y2 (bottom-right corner) of colour COLOUR

The following sketch demonstrates the functions listed above:

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>

int x, y, x1, x2, y1, y2, r;

void setup()
{
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));
  Tft.TFTinit(); 
}
void loop()
{
  // random pixels
  for (int i=0; i<500; i++)
  {
    y=random(320);
    x=random(240);
    Tft.setPixel(x, y, YELLOW);
    delay(5);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random lines
  for (int i=0; i<50; i++)
  {
    y1=random(320);
    y2=random(320);    
    x1=random(240);
    x2=random(240);    
    Tft.drawLine(x1, y1, x2, y2, RED);   
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random circles
  for (int i=0; i<50; i++)
  {
    y=random(320);
    x=random(240);
    r=random(50);
    Tft.drawCircle(x, y, r, BLUE); 
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random filled circles
  for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
  {
    y=random(320);
    x=random(240);
    r=random(50);
    Tft.fillCircle(x, y, r, GREEN); 
    delay(250);
    Tft.fillCircle(x, y, r, BLACK);     
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random rectangles
  for (int i=0; i<50; i++)
  {
    y1=random(320);
    y2=random(320);    
    x1=random(240);
    x2=random(240);    
    Tft.drawRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, WHITE);   
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random filled rectangles
  for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
  {
    y1=random(320);
    y2=random(320);    
    x1=random(240);
    x2=random(240);    
    Tft.fillRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, RED);   
    delay(250);
    Tft.fillRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, BLACK);       
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen
}

… with the results shown in this video.

Using the touch screen

The touch screen operates in a similar manner to the other version documented earlier, in that it is a resistive touch screen and we very quickly apply voltage to one axis then measure the value with an analogue pin, then repeat the process for the other axis.

You can use the method in that chapter, however with our model you can use a touch screen library, and this is included with the library .zip file you downloaded at the start of this tutorial.

The library does simplify things somewhat, so without further ado upload the touchScreen example sketch included with the library. Open the serial monitor then start touching the screen. The coordinates of the area over a pixel being touch will be returned, along with the pressure – as shown in this video.

Take note of the pressure values, as these need to be considered when creating projects. If you don’t take pressure into account, there could be false positive touches detected which could cause mayhem in your project.

Now that you have a very simple method to determine the results of which part of the screen is being touched – you can create sketches to take action depending on the touch area. Recall from the example touch sketch that the x and y coordinates were mapped into the variables p.x and p.y, with the pressure mapped to p.z. You should experiment with your screen to determine which pressure values work for you.

In the following example, we don’t trigger a touch unless the pressure value p.z is greater than 300. Let’s create a simple touch-switch, with one half of the screen for ON and the other half for OFF. Here is the sketch:

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <TouchScreen.h> 

// determine the pins connected to the touch screen hardware
// A0~A3
#define YP A2   // must be an analog pin, use "An" notation!
#define XM A1   // must be an analog pin, use "An" notation!
#define YM 14   // can be a digital pin, this is A0
#define XP 17   // can be a digital pin, this is A3 

#define TS_MINX 116*2
#define TS_MAXX 890*2
#define TS_MINY 83*2
#define TS_MAXY 913*2

// For better pressure precision, we need to know the resistance
// between X+ and X- Use any multimeter to read it
// The 2.8" TFT Touch shield has 300 ohms across the X plate
TouchScreen ts = TouchScreen(XP, YP, XM, YM);

void setup() 
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Tft.TFTinit(); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen
}

void loop() 
{
  // a point object holds x y and z coordinates
  Point p = ts.getPoint();
  p.x = map(p.x, TS_MINX, TS_MAXX, 0, 240);
  p.y = map(p.y, TS_MINY, TS_MAXY, 0, 320);
  Serial.println(p.y);
  if (p.y < 160 && p.z > 300) // top half of screen?
  {
    // off
    Tft.fillCircle(120, 160, 100, BLACK);     
    Tft.drawCircle(120, 160, 100, BLUE); 
  } else if (p.y >= 160 && p.z > 300)
  {
    // on
    Tft.fillCircle(120, 160, 100, BLUE); 
  }
}

What’s happening here? We divided the screen into two halves (well not physically…) and consider any touch with a y-value of less than 160 to be the off area, and the rest of the screen to be the on area. This is tested in the two if functions – which also use an and (“&&”) to check the pressure. If the pressure is over 300 (remember, this could be different for you) – the touch is real and the switch is turned on or off.

… and a quick demonstration video of this in action.

Displaying images from a memory card

We feel this warrants a separate tutorial, however if you can’t wait – check out the demo sketch which includes some example image files to use.

Conclusion

By now I hope you have the answer to “how do you use a touch screen LCD with Arduino?” and had some fun learning with us. You can get your LCD from Tronixlabs. And if you enjoyed this article, or want to introduce someone else to the interesting world of Arduino – check out my book (now in a third printing!) “Arduino Workshop”.

The post Tutorial – Arduino and TFT Color Touch Screen appeared first on tronixstuff.

Learn how to use an inexpensive TFT colour  touch LCD shield with your Arduino. This is chapter twenty-nine of our huge Arduino tutorial series.

Updated 07/02/2014

There are many colour LCDs on the market that can be used with an Arduino, and in this tutorial we’ll explain how to use a model that is easy to use, has a touch screen, doesn’t waste all your digital output pins – and won’t break the bank. It’s the 2.8″ TFT colour touch screen shield from Tronixlabs:

And upside down:

As you can imagine, it completely covers an Arduino Uno or compatible board, and offers a neat way to create a large display or user-interface.  The display has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, supports up to 65536 colours and draws around 250mA of current from the Arduino’s internal 5V supply. 

And unlike other colour LCDs, this one doesn’t eat up all your digital output pins – it uses the SPI bus for the display (D10~D13), and four analogue pins (A0~A3) if you use the touch sensor. However if you also use the onboard microSD socket more pins will be required. 

With some imagination, existing Arduino knowledge and the explanation within you’ll be creating all sorts of displays and interfaces in a short period of time. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

Getting started

Setting up the hardware is easy – just plug the shield on your Arduino. Next, download the library bundle from here. Inside the .zip file is two folders – both which need to be copied into your …Arduino-1.0.xlibraries folder. Then you will need to rename the folder “TFT_Touch” to “TFT”. You will notice that the Arduino IDE already contains a library folder called TFT, so rename or move it.

Now let’s test the shield so you know it works, and also to have some quick fun. Upload the paint example included in the TFT library – then with a stylus or non-destructive pointer, you can select colour and draw on the LCD – as shown in this video. At this point we’d like to note that you should be careful with the screen – it doesn’t have a protective layer.

Afraid the quality of our camera doesn’t do the screen any justice, however the still image looks better:

Using the LCD 

Moving on, let’s start with using the display. In your sketches the following libraries need to be included using the following lines before void setup():

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>

… and then the TFT library is initialised in void setup()

Tft.TFTinit();

Now you can use the various functions to display text and graphics. However you first need to understand how to define colours.

Defining colours

Functions with a colour parameter can accept one of the ten ten predefined colours – RED, GREEN, BLUE, BLACK, YELLOW, WHITE, CYAN, BRIGHT_RED, GRAY1 and GRAY2, or you can create your own colour value. Colours are defined with 16-but numbers in hexadecimal form, with 5 bits for red, 6 for green and 5 for blue – all packed together. For example – in binary:

MSB > RRRRRGGGGGGRRRRR < LSB

These are called RGB565-formatted numbers – and we use these in hexadecimal format with our display. So black will be all zeros, then converted to hexadecimal; white all ones, etc. The process of converting normal RGB values to RGB565 would give an aspirin a headache, but instead thanks to Henning Karlsen you can use his conversion tool to do the work for you. Consider giving Henning a donation for his efforts.

Displaying text

There are functions to display characters, strings of text, integers and float variables:

  Tft.drawChar(char, x, y, size, colour);          // displays single character variables
  Tft.drawString(string, x, y, size, colour);      // displays arrays of characters
  Tft.drawNumber(integer, x, y, size, colour);     // displays integers
  Tft.drawFloat(float, x, y, size, colour);        // displays floating-point numbers

In each of the functions, the first parameter is the variable or data to display; x and y are the coordinates of the top-left of the first character being displayed; and colour is either the predefined colour as explained previously, or the hexadecimal value for the colour you would like the text to be displayed in – e.g. 0xFFE0 is yellow.

The drawFloat() function is limited to two decimal places, however you can increase this if necessary. To do so, close the Arduino IDE if running, open the file TFTv2.cpp located in the TFT library folder – and search for the line:

INT8U decimal=2;

… then change the value to the number of decimal places you require. We have set ours to four with success, and the library will round out any more decimal places. To see these text display functions in action,  upload the following sketch:

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>

char ascii = 'a';
char h1[] = "Hello";
char h2[] = "world";
float f1 = 3.12345678;

void setup()
{
  Tft.TFTinit(); 
}

void loop()
{
  Tft.drawNumber(12345678, 0, 0, 1, 0xF800);
  Tft.drawChar(ascii,0, 20,2, BLUE);
  Tft.drawString(h1,0, 50,3,YELLOW);
  Tft.drawString(h2,0, 90,4,RED);  
  Tft.drawFloat(f1, 4, 0, 140, 2, BLUE);      
}

… which should result in the following:

To clear the screen

To set the screen back to all black, use:

Tft.fillScreen();

Graphics functions

There are functions to draw individual pixels, circles, filled circles, lines, rectangles and filled rectangles. With these and a little planning you can create all sorts of images and diagrams. The functions are:

Tft.setPixel(x, y, COLOUR);                  
// set a pixel at x,y of colour COLOUR

Tft.drawLine(x1, y1, x2, y2, COLOUR);        
// draw a line from x1, y1 to x2, y2 of colour COLOUR

Tft.drawCircle(x, y, r, COLOUR);             
// draw a circle with centre at x, y and radius r of colour COLOUR

Tft.fillCircle(x, y, r, COLOUR);             
// draw a filled circle with centre at x, y and radius r of colour COLOUR

Tft.drawRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2 ,COLOUR);   
// draw a rectangle from x1, y1 (top-left corner) to x2, y2 (bottom-right corner) of colour COLOUR

Tft.Tft.fillRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2 ,COLOUR);   
// draw a filled rectangle from x1, y1 (top-left corner) to x2, y2 (bottom-right corner) of colour COLOUR

The following sketch demonstrates the functions listed above:

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>

int x, y, x1, x2, y1, y2, r;

void setup()
{
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));
  Tft.TFTinit(); 
}
void loop()
{
  // random pixels
  for (int i=0; i<500; i++)
  {
    y=random(320);
    x=random(240);
    Tft.setPixel(x, y, YELLOW);
    delay(5);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random lines
  for (int i=0; i<50; i++)
  {
    y1=random(320);
    y2=random(320);    
    x1=random(240);
    x2=random(240);    
    Tft.drawLine(x1, y1, x2, y2, RED);   
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random circles
  for (int i=0; i<50; i++)
  {
    y=random(320);
    x=random(240);
    r=random(50);
    Tft.drawCircle(x, y, r, BLUE); 
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random filled circles
  for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
  {
    y=random(320);
    x=random(240);
    r=random(50);
    Tft.fillCircle(x, y, r, GREEN); 
    delay(250);
    Tft.fillCircle(x, y, r, BLACK);     
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random rectangles
  for (int i=0; i<50; i++)
  {
    y1=random(320);
    y2=random(320);    
    x1=random(240);
    x2=random(240);    
    Tft.drawRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, WHITE);   
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen

    // random filled rectangles
  for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
  {
    y1=random(320);
    y2=random(320);    
    x1=random(240);
    x2=random(240);    
    Tft.fillRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, RED);   
    delay(250);
    Tft.fillRectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2, BLACK);       
  }
  delay(1000); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen
}

… with the results shown in this video.

Using the touch screen

The touch screen operates in a similar manner to the other version documented earlier, in that it is a resistive touch screen and we very quickly apply voltage to one axis then measure the value with an analogue pin, then repeat the process for the other axis.

You can use the method in that chapter, however with our model you can use a touch screen library, and this is included with the library .zip file you downloaded at the start of this tutorial.

The library does simplify things somewhat, so without further ado upload the touchScreen example sketch included with the library. Open the serial monitor then start touching the screen. The coordinates of the area over a pixel being touch will be returned, along with the pressure – as shown in this video.

Take note of the pressure values, as these need to be considered when creating projects. If you don’t take pressure into account, there could be false positive touches detected which could cause mayhem in your project.

Now that you have a very simple method to determine the results of which part of the screen is being touched – you can create sketches to take action depending on the touch area. Recall from the example touch sketch that the x and y coordinates were mapped into the variables p.x and p.y, with the pressure mapped to p.z. You should experiment with your screen to determine which pressure values work for you.

In the following example, we don’t trigger a touch unless the pressure value p.z is greater than 300. Let’s create a simple touch-switch, with one half of the screen for ON and the other half for OFF. Here is the sketch:

#include <stdint.h>
#include <TFTv2.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <TouchScreen.h> 

// determine the pins connected to the touch screen hardware
// A0~A3
#define YP A2   // must be an analog pin, use "An" notation!
#define XM A1   // must be an analog pin, use "An" notation!
#define YM 14   // can be a digital pin, this is A0
#define XP 17   // can be a digital pin, this is A3 

#define TS_MINX 116*2
#define TS_MAXX 890*2
#define TS_MINY 83*2
#define TS_MAXY 913*2

// For better pressure precision, we need to know the resistance
// between X+ and X- Use any multimeter to read it
// The 2.8" TFT Touch shield has 300 ohms across the X plate
TouchScreen ts = TouchScreen(XP, YP, XM, YM);

void setup() 
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Tft.TFTinit(); 
  Tft.fillScreen(); // clear screen
}

void loop() 
{
  // a point object holds x y and z coordinates
  Point p = ts.getPoint();
  p.x = map(p.x, TS_MINX, TS_MAXX, 0, 240);
  p.y = map(p.y, TS_MINY, TS_MAXY, 0, 320);
  Serial.println(p.y);
  if (p.y < 160 && p.z > 300) // top half of screen?
  {
    // off
    Tft.fillCircle(120, 160, 100, BLACK);     
    Tft.drawCircle(120, 160, 100, BLUE); 
  } else if (p.y >= 160 && p.z > 300)
  {
    // on
    Tft.fillCircle(120, 160, 100, BLUE); 
  }
}

What’s happening here? We divided the screen into two halves (well not physically…) and consider any touch with a y-value of less than 160 to be the off area, and the rest of the screen to be the on area. This is tested in the two if functions – which also use an and (“&&”) to check the pressure. If the pressure is over 300 (remember, this could be different for you) – the touch is real and the switch is turned on or off.

… and a quick demonstration video of this in action.

Displaying images from a memory card

We feel this warrants a separate tutorial, however if you can’t wait – check out the demo sketch which includes some example image files to use.

Conclusion

By now I hope you have the answer to “how do you use a touch screen LCD with Arduino?” and had some fun learning with us. You can get your LCD from Tronixlabs. And if you enjoyed this article, or want to introduce someone else to the interesting world of Arduino – check out my book (now in a third printing!) “Arduino Workshop”.

Bike sharing systems like New York's Citi Bike may be taking off, but it's doubtful that many participants can find every station without checking a map. Thankfully, Adafruit has unveiled a smart helmet project that could help at least a few of those riders get to their destinations while keeping their eyes on the road. The DIY effort feeds locations to an Arduino-based Flora board and its positioning add-ons, which in turn use a string of NeoPixel LEDs on the helmet as turn indicators. Commuters just have to watch for blinking lights to know where to go next. While the system isn't easy to set up when cyclists have to manually enter coordinates, it is flexible: the open-source code lets it adapt to most any bike sharing system or headpiece. As long as you can get over looking like a Christmas tree on wheels while you navigate, you can build a smart helmet of your own using the instructions at the source link.

Filed under: GPS, Transportation, Alt

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Source: Adafruit

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Adafruit's Flora wearable platform is barely a year old, yet it already has a little sibling on the way -- and we do mean little. The newer Gemma is Arduino-programmable over USB like its relative, but measures just over half the size of the Flora at an inch in diameter. It's even bordering on cute, as far as circuit boards go. Before developing any grand visions of wearable computers, though, be aware that Gemma's features scale down with its size: there's only three input/output pins, and a limited amount of memory won't let it handle more than about a dozen of Adafruit's NeoPixel lights. All the same, any aspiring tailor willing to trade flexibility for subtlety in a costume will likely want to sign up for notification of the Gemma's in-stock date at the source link.

Filed under: Wearables

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Source: Adafruit

There’s a new Arduino in town, this time designed in conjunction with Adafruit. It’s the Arduino Micro, a very neat little board designed for breadboard use.

Ostensibly an upgrade of the long in the tooth Arduino Nano, the new Micro takes all the best features of the new Arduino Leonardo and shrinks them down to a convenient stick of gum-sized package. It’s powered by the ATmega32u4 microcontroller, and with a MicroUSB port is able to emulate keyboards, mice and other USB input devices.

Of course with any microcontroller dev board, comparisons must be drawn between the Arduino Micro and the very popular Teensy USB dev board. Like the Teensy boards (and the new Arduino Leonardo), the Micro is able to function as a USB keyboard or mouse. The Teensys, though, is loaded with LUFA making it able to emulate just about anything from mice, USB audio devices, and MIDI synths.