Introduction

Over the last year or two the rise of the single-board computer has captured the imagination and energy of many people, to the point where popular opinion has been that the Arduino world had been left behind. However this is far from the truth – there’s Arduino-compatible SBCs such as the pcDuino and now we have one from Intel  – the Intel Galileo.

Apparently the Galileo has been available in limited distribution for a few months, and now that the marketing machine has started up – we finally had the chance to order an Intel Galileo last week and now have one as the subject for this review. It’s our first look, based on information we could find at the time and some experimenting.

What’s in the box?

In the retail package we found the Intel Galileo itself:

… a diagram of what to do in the lid:

… and a universal AC to 5V 2A DC power supply with various fittings for different regions:

The only paper documentation was a safety and regulatory information booklet which gets recycled. We didn’t find a USB cable nor some stand-offs to lift the board off the bench a little.

Specifications

The Galileo is based a new chipset from Intel, the Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip. For the uninitiated, the Galileo is a single-board computer running a small version of Linux that can somewhat emulate an Arduino Uno R3 in software. The hardware specifications are as such (from the Arduino website):

• 400MHz 32-bit Intel® Pentium instruction set architecture (ISA)-compatible processor o 16 KBytes on-die L1 cache
  • 512 KBytes of on-die embedded SRAM
  • Simple to program: Single thread, single core, constant speed
  • ACPI compatible CPU sleep states supported
  • An integrated Real Time Clock (RTC), with an optional 3V “coin cell” battery for operation between turn on cycles.
• 10/100 Ethernet connector
• Full PCI Express* mini-card slot, with PCIe 2.0 compliant features
  • Works with half mini-PCIe cards with optional converter plate
  • Provides USB 2.0 Host Port at mini-PCIe connector
• USB 2.0 Host connector
  • Support up to 128 USB end point devices
• USB Device connector, used for programming
  • Beyond just a programming port – a fully compliant USB 2.0 Device controller
• 10-pin Standard JTAG header for debugging
• Reboot button to reboot the processor
• Reset button to reset the sketch and any attached shields
• Storage options:
  • Default – 8 MByte Legacy SPI Flash main purpose is to store the firmware (or bootloader) and the latest sketch. Between 256KByte and 512KByte is dedicated for sketch storage. The download will happen automatically from the development PC, so no action is required unless there is an upgrade that is being added to the firmware.
  • Default 512 KByte embedded SRAM, enabled by the firmware by default. No action required to use this feature.
  • Default 256 MByte DRAM, enabled by the firmware by default.
  • Optional micro SD card offers up to 32GByte of storage
  • USB storage works with any USB 2.0 compatible drive
  • 11 KByte EEPROM can be programmed via the EEPROM library.

However unlike other SBCs on the market – you don’t get any video or audio output.

Let’s have a quick look around the board. Here you can see the DC socket and microSD card socket:

 From the view below you can see the Arduino shield stacking headers and flash memory:

… more jumpers for settings, a USB host socket, USB connection (client) socket, RS232 via 3.5mm socket (!) and 10/100 Ethernet:

… and some nifty jumpers to select 3.3 or 5V operation for shields and IOREF:

… this jumper pair is to add a 3V battery to keep the real-time clock ticking over when the main supply is removed:

Perhaps a CR2032 button cell holder would be preferable, there’s plenty of room on the PCB. Finally – the two reset buttons:

If you want to reset your emulated Arduino, press the one on the left (labelled I). If you want to reboot the entire computer, press the one on the right (labelled X). This seems a little counter-intuitive, as you would imagine the button closer to the stacking headers would reset the Arduino. Note that if you reboot the computer, the last sketch you’ve uploaded will be removed and need to be uploaded again. Furthermore, more often than not rebooting the Galileo wasn’t entirely successful – and required a full removal of USB, power then replacing the power and USB to get another connection.

Turning the Galileo over reveals some fascinating PCB track patterns, and the mini-PCIe connector:

Getting Started

Having a slight bent towards Arduino, the first thing we like to do is get the blink sketch running. The documentation is scattered all over the place, so start from maker.intel.com and follow the links listed in the “Explore Intel makers” column. The closest thing to a quick setup guide can be downloaded here. There’s a video by what sounds to be a ten year old explaining the board – who signs off by telling us it’s ok to break something (hopefully not the Galileo at $77 a pop). Marketing FTW. Eventually we found the official Intel support page for the Galileo, so bookmark that for future reference.

However if you just want to get started as quickly as possible, keep reading. First, download the Arduino IDE for Galileo from here. Next, extract the IDE folder to your root directory – and don’t have any spaces in the folder name. For example, use:

c:\GalileoIDE

and not:

C:\Arduino IDEs\galileo IDE\

Now plug in your Galileo – and always plug the 5V power into the Galileo before the USB (use the “USB client” socket). For Windows the USB driver (for “Gadget Serial v2.4”) is in the IDE folder, just point Windows to the top Galileo Arduino IDE folder.

Note that it takes around twenty seconds for the PC to recognise the Galileo via USB (as the Galileo needs time to boot up – it’s running Linux). For Windows users – after loading the IDE, check which COM port has been allocated. For some reason the Galileo can’t deal with COM10 or higher. To change this, head over to the Device Manager. Open Ports (COM & LPT) then right-click the Galileo and click properties:

Next, click the Port Settings tab, then Advanced:

Then select a free COM port number that’s under 10, close all the dialogue boxes and restart the computer. After the reboot, load the IDE, select the right board and serial port in the Tools menu – then select Firmware Update in the Help Menu. If for some reason you put a memory card in the microSD card slot – remove it before this process.

A confirmation box will appear, so move forward and wait for the process to finish. Don’t touch the IDE, board or anything near the Galileo until this finishes. Read some kit reviews. The update process took eight minutes for us, however will depend on the speed of your Internet connection.

Finally, try the ubiquitous blink sketch. Once uploaded,  the tiny LED next to the coin cell jumpers will blink as requested. Now we’ll explore more about using the Galileo as an Arduino-compatible board.

How Arduino-compatible is the Galileo?

The first thing we like to do with new boards that differ from the classic Uno is to run a speed test, and for this we use the following sketch by Steve Curd from the Arduino forum:

//
// Pi_2
//
// Steve Curd
// December 2012
//
// This program approximates pi utilizing the Newton's approximation.  It quickly
// converges on the first 5-6 digits of precision, but converges verrrry slowly
// after that.  For example, it takes over a million iterations to get to 7-8
// significant digits.
//
// I wrote this to evaluate the performance difference between the 8-bit Arduino Mega,
// and the 32-bit Arduino Due.
// 

#define ITERATIONS 100000L    // number of iterations
#define FLASH 1000            // blink LED every 1000 iterations

void setup() {
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);        // set the LED up to blink every 1000 iterations
  Serial.begin(57600);
}

void loop() {

  unsigned long start, time;
  unsigned long niter=ITERATIONS;
  int LEDcounter = 0;
  boolean alternate = false;
  unsigned long i, count=0;
  float x = 1.0;
  float temp, pi=1.0;

  Serial.print("Beginning ");
  Serial.print(niter);
  Serial.println(" iterations...");
  Serial.println();

  start = millis();  
  for ( i = 2; i < niter; i++) {
    x *= -1.0;
    pi += x / (2.0f*(float)i-1.0f);
    if (LEDcounter++ > FLASH) {
      LEDcounter = 0;
      if (alternate) {
        digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
        alternate = false;
      } else {
        digitalWrite(13, LOW);
        alternate = true;
      }
      temp = 40000000.0 * pi;
    }
  }
  time = millis() - start;

  pi = pi * 4.0;

  Serial.print("# of trials = ");
  Serial.println(niter);
  Serial.print("Estimate of pi = ");
  Serial.println(pi, 10);

  Serial.print("Time: "); Serial.print(time); Serial.println(" ms");

  delay(10000);
}

It calculates Newton Approximation for pi using an infinite series. For comparison an Arduino Due takes 690 ms, an Arduino Mega 2560 takes 5765 ms, and a pcDuino v2 can do it in 9 to 43 ms (depending on what else is running on Linux). So out of the box, the Galileo takes 279 ms:

Out of the box there is 262144 bytes available for sketches. As the Arduino is emulated, the hardware for I/O is a little different than you may have expected, and provided by a variety of I2C port expanders, MUXs and so on. For example I2C can only run at 100 kHz in master mode, no slave mode, and similar restrictions on SPI as well. Again, review this page to learn more about the internal hardware differences between an Arduino Uno and Intel Galileo.

Visit this page and scroll down to the block diagram for a visual representation, and while you’re there – review the entire page to learn more about the specific Arduino Uno R3 implementation on the Galileo. A lot of work has been done to allow successful emulation of the Arduino using the Quark CPU and internal OS. For example the EEPROM library just works, and has 11264 bytes of storage.

You can get an idea of what is supported “out of the box” by reviewing the libraries included with the Galileo’s IDE installation, for example:

So most of the basic requirements are covered at the time of writing. And unlike some other SBCs emulating Arduino, the onboard Ethernet “just works” as it should with the Ethernet library – and the USBHost library can take advantage of the matching socket on the board. Again – research is the key, so spend some time determining if the Galileo can solve your problems.

One interesting example of the limitations of the “emulated” Arduino is the speed, and this has been highlighted by Al Williams of Dr Dobb’s journal – who ran a simple sketch to see how fast a digital output pin could be set. As GPIO is provided by external SPI- and I2C-based interface ICs, there will be a speed hit. But how much? Naturally we can’t use port manipulation so we’re back to simple digitalWrite functions with the following sketch:

int pin = 2;
boolean a = false;
void setup() 
{                
  pinMode(pin, OUTPUT);     
}

void loop() 
{
  digitalWrite(pin, a=!a);
}

An Arduino Uno running the sketch was clocked at 96.34 kHz:

… and the Intel Galileo was clocked at … 225.2 Hz:

This test isn’t a criticism of the Galileo, just an example of what you need to keep in mind when using it. If you’re curious about the real-time clock it’s accessed via Linux. Finally, there’s a list of known issues on the Intel forum – so check this out to get a grip on what is and is not working in terms of Arduino compatibility. One more thing – you will need a memory card installed if you want the Galileo to remember sketches after power-off.

Update – thanks to our friends (!) at reddit, you can push some I/O faster – see this post in the Intel forum.

Linux – internal

The Galileo arrived pre-loaded with a very light version of Linux, however due to the lack of video output you need to access the “computer” via some old-school methods. And thus one method is via Telnet over Ethernet. If you don’t have a Telnet client, try PuTTY. To get started, ensure you have your Galileo connected to power, client USB to PCm and to your LAN. Then upload the following sketch to your Galileo:

// https://communities.intel.com/message/213624
void setup()
{
  system("telnetd -l /bin/sh");
}

void loop()
{
  system("ifconfig eth0 > /dev/ttyGS0");
  sleep(10);
}

The observant will notice by using the system function you can send instructions to the Linux command line from your Arduino sketch. And any resulting output text can be sent to the serial monitor by directing it to ttyGS0.

Anyhow, the above sketch will run the ifconfig command and return relevant networking data about your Galileo – including its IP address:

Once you have the IP address, you can Telnet in and command your Galileo just like it’s 1992:

Don’t get too excited, there isn’t that much installed (e.g. no gcc or make). For more information on the Poky linux, visit the project page. Apart from running vi my *nix memory is a bit vague, however the onboard system is quite minimal. If you want to do anything serious, such as use a WiFi or other PCIe card – you’ll need to boot your Galileo with an external OS stored on a microSD card. Another way of looking at the Galileo is that it’s a board not for development with, but for running code built on a different system and then loaded onto the Galileo.

Linux – external

As I haven’t been a *nix user for a very long time, it didn’t seem worthwhile to spend a whole day preparing for an installing the external OS on the Galileo for review. However from what I can tell you’ll need to do this to run anything substantial including WiFi adaptors, python, node.js and so on. Which in my personal opinion sort of ruins the Galileo for me. Other SBCs can do all of this a lot easier, cheaper and with better documentation.

Arduino Support

As the Galileo is from Intel and not Arduino, you need to ask for support in the Intel forum. This will be an interesting test for Intel, will they invest in a substantial support effort or just stand back and say it’s all open source? Time will tell. In the meanwhile there is a gallery hosted by Intel with links to different projects.

Conclusion

Once again – remember that the Galileo is a limited single-board computer that emulates (to a certain, varying degree) an Arduino Uno R3. It is a contender if you need to integrate some Arduino-based control with software running on a light Linux machine, and all in a compact board. Or if you want to experiment with USB host and Ethernet on the Arduino platform at the same time, this could be a cheaper and more powerful option. Support is there if you can use Google, however this is not the idea beginners’ Arduino board. So don’t be a sheep and rush out and buy one after reading the marketing blurb – do your own research first.

Personally I would say that if you have a need for the specific hardware interfaces of the Galileo, and have a full understanding of the board limitations – then it’s the board for you. Otherwise if you want to experiment with a full single-board computer with Arduino compatibility, get a pcDuino. Full-sized images are available on flickr.

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”.

[Note – Intel Galileo purchased for review by tronixstuff.com and not a promotional consideration]

The post Review – Intel Galileo Arduino-compatible Development Board 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.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”.

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

Updated 03/02/2014

There are many colour LCDs on the market that can be used with an Arduino, and for this tutorial we’re using a relatively simple model available that is available from suppliers such as Tronixlabs, based on a small LCD originally used in Nokia 6100 mobile phones:

These are a convenient and inexpensive way of displaying data, or for monitoring variables when debugging a sketch. Before getting started, a small amount of work is required.

From the two examples we have seen, neither of them arrive fitted with stacking headers (or in Sparkfun’s case – not included) or pins, so before doing anything you’ll need to fit your choice of connector. Although the LCD shield arrived with stacking headers, we used in-line pins as another shield would never be placed on top:

Which can easily be soldered to the shield in a few minutes:

 While we’re on the subject of pins – this shield uses D3~D5 for the three buttons, and D8, 9, 11 and 13 for the LCD interface. The shield takes 5V and doesn’t require any external power for the backlight. The LCD module has a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels, with nine defined colours (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, brown, orange, pink) as well as black and white.

So let’s get started. From a software perspective, the first thing to do is download and install the library for the LCD shield. Visit the library page here. Then download the .zip file, extract and copy the resulting folder into your ..arduino-1.0.xlibraries folder. Be sure to rename the folder to “ColorLCDShield“. Then restart the Arduino IDE if it was already open.

At this point let’s check the shield is working before moving forward. Once fitted to your Arduino, upload the ChronoLCD_Color sketch that’s included with the library, from the IDE Examples menu:

This will result with a neat analogue clock you can adjust with the buttons on the shield, as shown in this video.

It’s difficult to photograph the LCD – (some of them have very bright backlights), so the image may not be a true reflection of reality. Nevertheless this shield is easy to use and we will prove this in the following examples. So how do you control the color LCD shield in your sketches?

At the start of every sketch, you will need the following lines:

#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd;

as well as the following in void setup():

lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63)

With regards to lcd.init(), try it first without a parameter. If the screen doesn’t work, try EPSON instead. There are two versions of the LCD shield floating about each with a different controller chip. The contrast parameter is subjective, however 63 looks good – but test for yourself.

Now let’s move on to examine each function with a small example, then use the LCD shield in more complex applications.

The LCD can display 8 rows of 16 characters of text. The function to display text is:

lcd.setStr("text", y,x, foreground colour, background colour);

where x and y are the coordinates of the top left pixel of the first character in the string. Another necessary function is:

lcd.clear(colour);

Which clears the screen and sets the background colour to the parameter colour.  Please note – when referring to the X- and Y-axis in this article, they are relative to the LCD in the position shown below. Now for an example – to recreate the following display:

… use the following sketch:

// Example 28.1
#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd;

void setup()
{
 // following two required for LCD
 lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
 lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63)
}

void loop()
{
 lcd.clear(BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 0,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 15,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 30,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 45,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 60,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 75,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 90,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 105,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 do {} while (1>0);
}

In example 28.1 we used the function lcd.clear(), which unsurprisingly cleared the screen and set the background a certain colour.

Let’s have a look at the various background colours in the following example. The lcd.clear()  function is helpful as it can set the entire screen area to a particular colour. As mentioned earlier, there are the predefined colours red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, brown, orange, pink, as well as black and white. Here they are in the following example:

// Example 28.2

int del = 1000;
#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd; 
void setup() 
{ 
  // following two required for LCD 
  lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
  lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63) 
}

void loop()
{
 lcd.clear(WHITE);
 lcd.setStr("White", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("Black", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(YELLOW);
 lcd.setStr("Yellow", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(PINK);
 lcd.setStr("Pink", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(MAGENTA);
 lcd.setStr("Magenta", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(CYAN);
 lcd.setStr("Cyan", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(BROWN);
 lcd.setStr("Brown", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(ORANGE);
 lcd.setStr("Orange", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(BLUE);
 lcd.setStr("Blue", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(RED);
 lcd.setStr("Red", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(GREEN);
 lcd.setStr("Green", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
}

And now to see it in action. In this demonstration video the colours are more livid in real life, unfortunately the camera does not capture them so well.

Now that we have had some experience with the LCD library’s functions, we can move on to drawing some graphical objects. Recall that the screen has a resolution of 128 by 128 pixels. We have four functions to make use of this LCD real estate, so let’s see how they work. The first is:

lcd.setPixel(int colour, Y, X);

This function places a pixel (one LCD dot) at location x, y with the colour of colour.

Note – in this (and all the functions that have a colour parameter) you can substitute the colour (e.g. BLACK) for a 12-bit RGB value representing the colour required. Next is:

lcd.setLine(x0, y0, x1, y1, COLOUR);

Which draws a line of colour COLOUR, from position x0, y0 to x1, y1. Our next function is:

lcd.setRect(x0, y0, x1, y1, fill, COLOUR);

This function draws an oblong or square of colour COLOUR with the top-left point at x0, y0 and the bottom right at x1, y1. Fill is set to 0 for an outline, and 1 for a filled oblong. It would be convenient for drawing bar graphs for data representation. And finally, we can also create circles, using:

lcd.setCircle(x, y, radius, COLOUR);

// Example 28.3

#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd;
int del = 1000;
int xx, yy = 0;

void setup()
{
  lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
  lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63)
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));
}

void loop()
{
  lcd.setStr("Graphic Function", 40,3, WHITE, BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("Test Sketch", 55, 20, WHITE, BLACK); 
  delay(5000);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("lcd.setPixel", 40,20, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  for (int a=0; a<500; a++)
  {
    xx=random(160);
    yy=random(160);
    lcd.setPixel(WHITE, yy, xx);
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("LCDDrawCircle", 40,10, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<2; a++)
  {
    for (int b=1; b<6; b++)
    {
      xx=b*5;
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, WHITE);
      delay(200);
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, BLACK);
      delay(200);
    }
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<3; a++)
  {
    for (int b=1; b<12; b++)
    {
      xx=b*5;
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, WHITE);
      delay(100);
    }
    lcd.clear(BLACK);
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<3; a++)
  {
    for (int b=1; b<12; b++)
    {
      xx=b*5;
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, WHITE);
      delay(100);
    }
    lcd.clear(BLACK);
  }
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("LCDSetLine", 40,10, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<160; a++)
  {
    xx=random(160);
    lcd.setLine(a, 1, xx, a, WHITE);
    delay(10);
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("LCDSetRect", 40,10, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<10; a++)
  {
    lcd.setRect(32,32,64,64,0,WHITE);
    delay(200);
    lcd.clear(BLACK);
    lcd.setRect(32,32,64,64,1,WHITE);
    delay(200);
    lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
}

Conclusion

Hopefully this tutorial is of use to you. and you’re no longer wondering “how to use a color LCD with Arduino”. They’re available from our tronixlabs store. 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”.

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

Updated 03/02/2014

There are many colour LCDs on the market that can be used with an Arduino, and for this tutorial we’re using a relatively simple model available that is available from suppliers such as Tronixlabs, based on a small LCD originally used in Nokia 6100 mobile phones:

These are a convenient and inexpensive way of displaying data, or for monitoring variables when debugging a sketch. Before getting started, a small amount of work is required.

From the two examples we have seen, neither of them arrive fitted with stacking headers (or in Sparkfun’s case – not included) or pins, so before doing anything you’ll need to fit your choice of connector. Although the LCD shield arrived with stacking headers, we used in-line pins as another shield would never be placed on top:

Which can easily be soldered to the shield in a few minutes:

 While we’re on the subject of pins – this shield uses D3~D5 for the three buttons, and D8, 9, 11 and 13 for the LCD interface. The shield takes 5V and doesn’t require any external power for the backlight. The LCD module has a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels, with nine defined colours (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, brown, orange, pink) as well as black and white.

So let’s get started. From a software perspective, the first thing to do is download and install the library for the LCD shield. Visit the library page here. Then download the .zip file, extract and copy the resulting folder into your ..\arduino-1.0.x\libraries folder. Be sure to rename the folder to “ColorLCDShield“. Then restart the Arduino IDE if it was already open.

At this point let’s check the shield is working before moving forward. Once fitted to your Arduino, upload the ChronoLCD_Color sketch that’s included with the library, from the IDE Examples menu:

This will result with a neat analogue clock you can adjust with the buttons on the shield, as shown in this video.

It’s difficult to photograph the LCD – (some of them have very bright backlights), so the image may not be a true reflection of reality. Nevertheless this shield is easy to use and we will prove this in the following examples. So how do you control the color LCD shield in your sketches?

At the start of every sketch, you will need the following lines:

#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd;

as well as the following in void setup():

lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63)

With regards to lcd.init(), try it first without a parameter. If the screen doesn’t work, try EPSON instead. There are two versions of the LCD shield floating about each with a different controller chip. The contrast parameter is subjective, however 63 looks good – but test for yourself.

Now let’s move on to examine each function with a small example, then use the LCD shield in more complex applications.

The LCD can display 8 rows of 16 characters of text. The function to display text is:

lcd.setStr("text", y,x, foreground colour, background colour);

where x and y are the coordinates of the top left pixel of the first character in the string. Another necessary function is:

lcd.clear(colour);

Which clears the screen and sets the background colour to the parameter colour.  Please note – when referring to the X- and Y-axis in this article, they are relative to the LCD in the position shown below. Now for an example – to recreate the following display:

… use the following sketch:

// Example 28.1
#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd;

void setup()
{
 // following two required for LCD
 lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
 lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63)
}

void loop()
{
 lcd.clear(BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 0,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 15,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 30,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 45,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 60,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 75,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("ABCDefghiJKLMNOP", 90,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("0123456789012345", 105,2, WHITE, BLACK);
 do {} while (1>0);
}

In example 28.1 we used the function lcd.clear(), which unsurprisingly cleared the screen and set the background a certain colour.

Let’s have a look at the various background colours in the following example. The lcd.clear()  function is helpful as it can set the entire screen area to a particular colour. As mentioned earlier, there are the predefined colours red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, brown, orange, pink, as well as black and white. Here they are in the following example:

// Example 28.2

int del = 1000;
#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd; 
void setup() 
{ 
  // following two required for LCD 
  lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
  lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63) 
}

void loop()
{
 lcd.clear(WHITE);
 lcd.setStr("White", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(BLACK);
 lcd.setStr("Black", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(YELLOW);
 lcd.setStr("Yellow", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(PINK);
 lcd.setStr("Pink", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(MAGENTA);
 lcd.setStr("Magenta", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(CYAN);
 lcd.setStr("Cyan", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(BROWN);
 lcd.setStr("Brown", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(ORANGE);
 lcd.setStr("Orange", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(BLUE);
 lcd.setStr("Blue", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(RED);
 lcd.setStr("Red", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
 lcd.clear(GREEN);
 lcd.setStr("Green", 39,40, WHITE, BLACK);
 delay(del);
}

And now to see it in action. In this demonstration video the colours are more livid in real life, unfortunately the camera does not capture them so well.

Now that we have had some experience with the LCD library’s functions, we can move on to drawing some graphical objects. Recall that the screen has a resolution of 128 by 128 pixels. We have four functions to make use of this LCD real estate, so let’s see how they work. The first is:

lcd.setPixel(int colour, Y, X);

This function places a pixel (one LCD dot) at location x, y with the colour of colour.

Note – in this (and all the functions that have a colour parameter) you can substitute the colour (e.g. BLACK) for a 12-bit RGB value representing the colour required. Next is:

lcd.setLine(x0, y0, x1, y1, COLOUR);

Which draws a line of colour COLOUR, from position x0, y0 to x1, y1. Our next function is:

lcd.setRect(x0, y0, x1, y1, fill, COLOUR);

This function draws an oblong or square of colour COLOUR with the top-left point at x0, y0 and the bottom right at x1, y1. Fill is set to 0 for an outline, and 1 for a filled oblong. It would be convenient for drawing bar graphs for data representation. And finally, we can also create circles, using:

lcd.setCircle(x, y, radius, COLOUR);

// Example 28.3

#include "ColorLCDShield.h"
LCDShield lcd;
int del = 1000;
int xx, yy = 0;

void setup()
{
  lcd.init(PHILIPS); 
  lcd.contrast(63); // sets LCD contrast (value between 0~63)
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));
}

void loop()
{
  lcd.setStr("Graphic Function", 40,3, WHITE, BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("Test Sketch", 55, 20, WHITE, BLACK); 
  delay(5000);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("lcd.setPixel", 40,20, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  for (int a=0; a<500; a++)
  {
    xx=random(160);
    yy=random(160);
    lcd.setPixel(WHITE, yy, xx);
    delay(10);
  }
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("LCDDrawCircle", 40,10, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<2; a++)
  {
    for (int b=1; b<6; b++)
    {
      xx=b*5;
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, WHITE);
      delay(200);
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, BLACK);
      delay(200);
    }
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<3; a++)
  {
    for (int b=1; b<12; b++)
    {
      xx=b*5;
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, WHITE);
      delay(100);
    }
    lcd.clear(BLACK);
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<3; a++)
  {
    for (int b=1; b<12; b++)
    {
      xx=b*5;
      lcd.setCircle(32, 32, xx, WHITE);
      delay(100);
    }
    lcd.clear(BLACK);
  }
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("LCDSetLine", 40,10, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<160; a++)
  {
    xx=random(160);
    lcd.setLine(a, 1, xx, a, WHITE);
    delay(10);
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK);
  lcd.setStr("LCDSetRect", 40,10, WHITE, BLACK);
  delay(del);
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  for (int a=0; a<10; a++)
  {
    lcd.setRect(32,32,64,64,0,WHITE);
    delay(200);
    lcd.clear(BLACK);
    lcd.setRect(32,32,64,64,1,WHITE);
    delay(200);
    lcd.clear(BLACK); 
  }
  lcd.clear(BLACK); 
}

Conclusion

Hopefully this tutorial is of use to you. and you’re no longer wondering “how to use a color LCD with Arduino”. They’re available from our tronixlabs store. 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 Color LCD appeared first on tronixstuff.

Introduction

Over the last year there have been a few crowd-funded projects that offered very inexpensive Arduino-compatible boards. Frankly most of them weren’t anything out of the ordinary, however one of them is quite interesting due to the particular design of the board, and is the subject of this review.

An established company Iteadstudio ran a successful Indiegogo campaign last December to fund their “Iteaduino Lite – Most inexpensive full-sized Arduino derivative board”. Having a spare US$5 we placed an order and patiently waited for the board. Being such a low price it was guaranteed to raise the funding – but was it worth the money? Or the effort? Possibly.

The board

In typical fashion the board arrived in bare packaging:

 The Iteaduino Lite isn’t that surprising at first glance:

To the new observer, it looks like an Arduino board of some sort. Nice to see all those GPIO pins with double breakouts. No surprises underneath:

The URL on the bottom is incorrect, instead visit http://imall.iteadstudio.com/iteaduino-lite.html. Looking at the board in more detail, there are some interesting points of difference with the usual Arduino Uno and compatibles.

The USB interface is handled with the Silabs CP2102 USB to UART bridge IC:

The next difference is the power circuitry – instead of using a linear voltage regulator, Itead have used a contemporary DC-DC converter circuit which can accept between 7 and 24V DC:

Furthermore, the entire board can operate at either 5V or 3.3V, which is selected with the slide switch in the above image. Finally – the microcontroller. Instead of an Atmel product, Itead have chosen the LogicGreen LGT8F88 microcontroller, a domestic Chinese product:

And there are only two LEDs on the Iteaduino Lite, for power and D13. The LED on D13 ins’t controlled via a MOSFET like other Arduino-compatibles, instead it’s simply connected to GND via a 1kΩ resistor.

Getting started with the Iteaduino Lite

The stacking header sockets will need to be soldered in – the easiest way is to insert them into the board, use an shield to hold them in and flip the lot upside down:

Which should give you neatly-installed headers:

Watch out for the corners of the board, they’re quite sharp. Next, you need to install the USB driver for the CP2102. My Windows 7 machine picked it up without any issues, however the drivers can be downloaded if necessary.

Finally a new board profile is required for the Arduino IDE. At the time of writing you’ll need Arduino IDE v1.0.5 r2. Download this zip file, and extract the contents into your ..\Arduino-1.0.5-r2\hardware folder. The option should now be available in the Tools > Board menu in the IDE, for example:

From this point you can run the blink example to check all is well. At this point you will realise one of the limitations of the Iteaduino Lite – memory. For example:

You only have 7168 bytes of memory for your sketches – compared to 32, 256 for an Arduino Uno or compatible. The reason for this is the small capacity of  …

The LogicGreen LGT8F88 microcontroller

This MCU is a Chinese company’s answer to the Atmel ATmega88A. You can find more details here, and Itead also sells them separately. The LGT8F88 offers us 8Kbyte of flash memory of which 0.7KB is used by bootloader, 1 KB of SRAM and 504 bytes (count ’em) of EEPROM. Apparently it can run at speeds of up to 32 MHz, however the LGT8F88 is set to 16 MHz for the Iteaduino Lite.

According to Logic Green, their LGT8F88 “introduce a smart instruction cache, which can fetch more instructions one time, effectively decrease memory accessing operations“. So to see if there’s a speed bump, we uploaded the following sketch – written by Steve Curd from the Arduino forum. It calculates Newton Approximation for pi using an infinite series:

//
// Pi_2
//
// Steve Curd
// December 2012
//
// This program approximates pi utilizing the Newton's approximation.  It quickly
// converges on the first 5-6 digits of precision, but converges verrrry slowly
// after that.  For example, it takes over a million iterations to get to 7-8
// significant digits.
//
// I wrote this to evaluate the performance difference between the 8-bit Arduino Mega,
// and the 32-bit Arduino Due.
// 

#define ITERATIONS 100000L    // number of iterations
#define FLASH 1000            // blink LED every 1000 iterations

void setup() {
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);        // set the LED up to blink every 1000 iterations
  Serial.begin(57600);
}

void loop() {

  unsigned long start, time;
  unsigned long niter=ITERATIONS;
  int LEDcounter = 0;
  boolean alternate = false;
  unsigned long i, count=0;
  float x = 1.0;
  float temp, pi=1.0;

  Serial.print("Beginning ");
  Serial.print(niter);
  Serial.println(" iterations ...");
  Serial.println();

  start = millis();  
  for ( i = 2; i < niter; i++) {
    x *= -1.0;
    pi += x / (2.0f*(float)i-1.0f);
    if (LEDcounter++ > FLASH) {
      LEDcounter = 0;
      if (alternate) {
        digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
        alternate = false;
      } 
      else {
        digitalWrite(13, LOW);
        alternate = true;
      }
      temp = 40000000.0 * pi;
    }
  }
  time = millis() - start;

  pi = pi * 4.0;

  Serial.print("# of trials = ");
  Serial.println(niter);
  Serial.print("Estimate of pi = ");
  Serial.println(pi, 10);

  Serial.print("Time: "); 
  Serial.print(time); 
  Serial.println(" ms");

  delay(10000);
}

For a baseline comparison, an Arduno Uno R3 completes the calculations in 5563 ms:

… and the Iteaduino Lite completed it in 5052 ms:

So that’s around a 10% speed increase. Not bad at all. The LGT8F88 also has the requisite GPIO, SPI, and I2C available as per normal Arduino Uno boards. You can download the data sheet with more technical details from here. Frankly the LGT8F88 is an interesting contender in the marketplace, and if Logic Green can offer a DIP version at a good price, the ATtiny fans will have a field day. Time will tell.

Power Circuit

The DC-DC circuit promises 5V output, with up to 24V DC input – so we cranked the input to 24V,  put a 1A load on the 5V output – and put the DSO over 5V to measure the variations – with a neat result:

So no surprises there at all, the Iteaduino Lite gives you more flexible power supply options than the usual Arduino board. However an eagle-eyed reader notes that a few of the capacitors are only rated at 25V – especially the two right after the DC socket/Vin. You can see this in the schematic (.pdf). So take that into account, or drop your Vin to something more regular such as below 12V.

Conclusion

The Iteaduino Lite is an interesting experiment in bargain Arduino-compatible boards. However we say “why bother?” and just get a Uno R3-compatible board.

At the end of the day – why bother with this board? For a little extra you can get boards with the ATmega328P or 32U4 which gives you 100% compatibility. Nevertheless, this was an interesting experiment. Full-sized images are available on flickr. 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 Review – Iteaduino Lite “nearly 100% Arduino-compatible” board appeared first on tronixstuff.

Introduction

Working with GSM modules and by extension Arduino GSM shields can either be a lot of fun or bring on a migraine. This is usually due to the quality of module, conditions placed on the end user by the network, reception, power supply and more.

Furthermore we have learned after several years that even after following our detailed and tested tutorials, people are having trouble understanding why their GSM shield isn’t behaving. With this in mind we’re very happy to have learned about a free online tool that can be used to test almost every parameter of a GSM module with ease – AT Command Tester. This software is a Java application that runs in a web browser, and communicates with a GSM module via an available serial port.

Initial Setup

It’s simple, just visit http://m2msupport.net/m2msupport/module-tester/ with any web browser that can run Java. You may need to alter the Java security settings down to medium. Windows users can find this in Control Panel> All Control Panel Items  > Java – for example:

Once the security settings have been changed, just visit the URL, click ‘accept’ and ‘run’ in the next dialogue box that will appear, for example:

And after a moment, the software will appear:

Once you’re able to run the AT Command Tester software, the next step is to physically connect the hardware. If you’re just using a bare GSM module, a USB-serial adaptor can be used for easy connection to the PC. For Arduino GSM shield users, you can use the Arduino as a bridge between the shield and PC, however if your GSM shield uses pins other than D0/D1 for serial data transmission (such as our SIM900 shield) then you’ll need to upload a small sketch to bridge the software and hardware serial ports, for example:

//Serial Relay – Arduino will patch a serial link between the computer and the GPRS Shield
//at 19200 bps 8-N-1 Computer is connected to Hardware UART
//GPRS Shield is connected to the Software UART

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial mySerial(7,8); // change these paramters depending on your Arduino GSM Shield

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(19200);
  //Serial.println(“Begin”);
  mySerial.begin(19200);

}

void loop()
{
  if (mySerial.available())
    Serial.write(mySerial.read());
  if (Serial.available())
    mySerial.write(Serial.read());
}

Using the software

Once you have the hardware connected and the Arduino running the required sketch, run the software – then click “Find ports” to select the requried COM: port, set the correct data speed and click “Connect”. After a moment the software will interrogate the GSM module and report its findings in the yellow log area:

 As you can see on the left of the image above, there is a plethora of options and functions you can run on the module. By selecting the manufacturer of your GSM module form the list, a more appropriate set of functions for your module is displayed.

When you click a function, the AT command sent to the module and its response is shown in the log window – and thus the magic of this software. You can simply throw any command at the module and await the response, much easier than looking up the commands and fighting with terminal software. You can also send AT commands in batches, experiment with GPRS data, FTP, and the GPS if your module has one.

To give you a quick overview of what is possible, we’ve made this video which captures us running a few commands on a SIM900-based Arduino shield. If possible, view it in 720p.

Conclusion

Kudos to the people from the M2Msupport website for bringing us this great (and free) tool. It works – so we’re happy to recommend it. 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”.

Introduction

Working with GSM modules and by extension Arduino GSM shields can either be a lot of fun or bring on a migraine. This is usually due to the quality of module, conditions placed on the end user by the network, reception, power supply and more.

Furthermore we have learned after several years that even after following our detailed and tested tutorials, people are having trouble understanding why their GSM shield isn’t behaving. With this in mind we’re very happy to have learned about a free online tool that can be used to test almost every parameter of a GSM module with ease – AT Command Tester. This software is a Java application that runs in a web browser, and communicates with a GSM module via an available serial port.

Initial Setup

It’s simple, just visit http://m2msupport.net/m2msupport/module-tester/ with any web browser that can run Java. You may need to alter the Java security settings down to medium. Windows users can find this in Control Panel> All Control Panel Items  > Java – for example:

Once the security settings have been changed, just visit the URL, click ‘accept’ and ‘run’ in the next dialogue box that will appear, for example:

And after a moment, the software will appear:

Once you’re able to run the AT Command Tester software, the next step is to physically connect the hardware. If you’re just using a bare GSM module, a USB-serial adaptor can be used for easy connection to the PC. For Arduino GSM shield users, you can use the Arduino as a bridge between the shield and PC, however if your GSM shield uses pins other than D0/D1 for serial data transmission (such as our SIM900 shield) then you’ll need to upload a small sketch to bridge the software and hardware serial ports, for example:

//Serial Relay – Arduino will patch a serial link between the computer and the GPRS Shield
//at 19200 bps 8-N-1 Computer is connected to Hardware UART
//GPRS Shield is connected to the Software UART

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial mySerial(7,8); // change these paramters depending on your Arduino GSM Shield

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(19200);
  //Serial.println(“Begin”);
  mySerial.begin(19200);

}

void loop()
{
  if (mySerial.available())
    Serial.write(mySerial.read());
  if (Serial.available())
    mySerial.write(Serial.read());
}

Using the software

Once you have the hardware connected and the Arduino running the required sketch, run the software – then click “Find ports” to select the requried COM: port, set the correct data speed and click “Connect”. After a moment the software will interrogate the GSM module and report its findings in the yellow log area:

 As you can see on the left of the image above, there is a plethora of options and functions you can run on the module. By selecting the manufacturer of your GSM module form the list, a more appropriate set of functions for your module is displayed.

When you click a function, the AT command sent to the module and its response is shown in the log window – and thus the magic of this software. You can simply throw any command at the module and await the response, much easier than looking up the commands and fighting with terminal software. You can also send AT commands in batches, experiment with GPRS data, FTP, and the GPS if your module has one.

To give you a quick overview of what is possible, we’ve made this video which captures us running a few commands on a SIM900-based Arduino shield. If possible, view it in 720p.

Conclusion

Kudos to the people from the M2Msupport website for bringing us this great (and free) tool. It works – so we’re happy to recommend it. 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 Easily test and experiment with GSM modules using AT Command Tester appeared first on tronixstuff.

Introduction

In this tutorial we’ll explain how to use the GPIO pins of the Arduino implementation in the pcDuino v2 and v3. As the v3 is now available you can use it as well, and it’s interchangeable with the v2. Although the pcDuino v2 is Arduino-compatible, there are a few differences that you need to be aware of – in order to make your projects a success and also to avoid any costly mistakes.

This tutorial builds on the knowledge from the initial review, so if pcDuino v2 is new to you please review this article before moving on. In this instalment we’ll run through the following:

• ADC (analogue to digital)
• Digital input and outputs
• PWM (pulse-width modulation)
• I2C bus
• SPI bus

Using ADC pins

Just like an Arduino Uno or compatible, the pcDuino v2 has six ADC pins, in the expected locations:

Using the pcDuino v2’s ADC pins is quite straight forward, however you just need to remember a few things about the hardware – that the maximum input voltage on A0 and A1 is 2V – and 3.3V for A2~A5.

Although there is an AREF pin on the board, this function isn’t supported at the time of writing. From the software perspective A0 and A1’s values have a 6-bit resolution and can fall between 0 and 63 (0~2V), otherwise the others have a 12-bit resolution and thus return values between 0 and 4095 (0~3.3V). Using the ADC pins is simple, and demonstrated in the following sketch:

// pcDuino v2 ADC demonstration

#include <core.h> // for pcDuino

int a0, a1, a2, a3, a4, a5;

void setup() 
{
}

void loop() 
{
  // read all the ADCs
  a0 = analogRead(0);
  a1 = analogRead(1);
  a2 = analogRead(2);
  a3 = analogRead(3);
  a4 = analogRead(4);
  a5 = analogRead(5);
  // display ADC values to console
  printf(A0, A1,   A2,   A3,   A4,   A5\n);
  printf(%d  %d  %d  %d  %d  %d\n, a0, a1, a2, a3, a4, a5);
  printf(n);
  delay(1000);
}

… which results with the following in the console:

Digital outputs

The pcDuino v2’s implementation of digital outputs aren’t anything out of the ordinary – except that you are limited to a maximum voltage of 3.3V instead of the usual 5V. Furthermore you can only source 4mA from each pin. However if you have some 5V-only shields that you must use with your pcDuino v2 – there is a Voltage Translation board that can be used to solve the problem:

However using 3.3V for new designs shouldn’t be an issue – new sensors, ICs and so on should be 3.3V-compatible. And with the pcDuino v2 you get an extra four digital I/O pins, located next to the SPI grouping as shown below:

These are simply addressed as D14~D17. Now back for a quick demonstration with the typical LEDs. As the current sourced from each GPIO pin cannot exceed 4mA, you need to use a resistor to keep things under control. Using the LED wizard, by entering a 3.3V supply, 2.1V forward voltage for our LEDs and a 4mA current – the resistor value to use is 330Ω.

If you’re having a lazy attack and use 560Ω, the current will be around 2.5mA with acceptable results. We’ve done just that with the following demonstration sketch:

// pcDuino v2 digital output demonstration

#include <core.h> // for pcDuino

void setup() 
{
  pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(6, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(7, OUTPUT);  
  digitalWrite(4, LOW);  
  digitalWrite(5, LOW);
  digitalWrite(6, LOW);
  digitalWrite(7, LOW);  
}

void loop() 
{
  for (int i = 4; i < 8; i++)
  {
    digitalWrite(i, HIGH);
    delay(250);
    digitalWrite(i, LOW);
  }
}

… and the results in this video.

Digital inputs

When using the digital pins as inputs, just treat them as normal except they have a maximum input voltage of 3.3V for HIGH. Again – just keep thinking “3.3V”.

Using the I2C data bus

The I2C bus (or “two wire interface”) is a common serial data bus used for interfacing all manner of devices with a microcontroller. You can find a background on the I2C bus and Arduino tutorial here. Just like an Arduino Uno R3, the I2C bus pins are both A4 and A5 (for SCL and SDA) and can also be found up near D13, for example.

The limitations for the pcDuino v2’s version of I2C bus are few – the maximum speed is 200 kHz, it only uses 7-bit addresses and you can’t use the pcDuino in slave mode. However there are 2.2kΩ pullup resistors which can save using them with external circuitry.

We demonstrate the I2C bus by writing data to and reading it from a Microchip 24LC256 EEPROM (which is handy in itself as there isn’t any EEPROM function on the pcDuino v2). This is demonstrated with an Arduino Uno in part two of our I2C tutorials.

Connection is very easy – pins 1 to 4 of the EEPROM are connected to GND, pin 5 to SDA, pin 6 to SCL, pin 7 to GND and pin 8 to 3.3V. Finally a 0.1uF capacitor is placed across 3.3V and GND.

The sketch to read and write values to the EEPROM is simple, and apart from the #include <core.h> for the pcDuino all the other functions operate as normal.

// pcDuino I2C demonstration

#include <core.h> // for pcDuino
#include <Wire.h>   for I2C
#define chip1 0x50  device bus address for EEPROM

// always have your values in variables
unsigned int pointer = 69;  // we need this to be unsigned, as you may have an address  32767
byte d=0;  // example variable to handle data going in and out of EERPROMS

void setup()
{
  Wire.begin();  // wake up, I2C!
}

void writeData(int device, unsigned int add, byte data) 
// writes a byte of data 'data' to the chip at I2C address 'device', in memory location 'add'
{
  Wire.beginTransmission(device);
  Wire.write((int)(add  8)); // left-part of pointer address
  Wire.write((int)(add & 0xFF)); // and the right
  Wire.write(data);
  Wire.endTransmission();
  delay(10);
}

byte readData(int device, unsigned int add) 
// reads a byte of data from memory location 'add' in chip at I2C address 'device' 
{
  byte result;  // returned value
  Wire.beginTransmission(device);  // these three lines set the pointer position in the EEPROM
  Wire.write((int)(add  8));  // left-part of pointer address
  Wire.write((int)(add & 0xFF)); // and the right
  Wire.endTransmission();
  Wire.requestFrom(device,1); // now get the byte of data...
  result = Wire.read();
  return result;  // and return it as a result of the function readData
}

void loop()
{
  printf(Writing data...\n);
  for (int a=0; a10; a++)
  {
    writeData(chip1,a,a);
  }
  printf(Reading data...\n);
  for (int a=0; a10; a++)
  {
    d=readData(chip1,a);    
    printf(Pointer %d holds %d.\n,a,d);
  }
}

… which results with the following output in the console:

As you now know, using I2C isn’t hard at all. A lot of beginners shy away from it – or run screaming for the nearest library for their part. You don’t need libraries – spend a little time now learning about I2C and you’re set for life.

Using the SPI data bus

Again we have some SPI tutorials for Arduino, so check them out first if the concept is new to you. Writing to an SPI device with the pcDuino v2 isn’t tricky at all, you have the 3.3V hardware limitation and the SPI pins are in the same location (D10~D13) or in a separate group on the board:

Furthermore the maximum SPI speed is 12 MHz and the pcDuino v2’s  implementation of SPI can only work as a master. However in the sketch there are a few differences to note. To demonstrate this we’ll control a Microchip MCP4162 digital rheostat via SPI to control the brightness of an LED. Here is the circuit:

And now for the sketch. Take note of the fourth line in void setup() –  this is used to set the SPI bus speed to 12 MHz. You can also reduce the speed with other multipliers such as 32, 64 and 128 to slow it down even further. The other point to note is the use of SPI.transfer(). With the pcDuino v2 there are two parameters – the first is the data to send to the SPI device, and the second is either

SPI_CONTINUE

if there is another byte of data following immediately, or

SPI_LAST

if that is the last byte for that immediate transfer. You can see this use of the paramters within the function setValue() in the demonstration sketch below.

// pcDuino SPI demonstration

#include <core.h>  // for pcDuino
#include <SPI.h>
int ss = 10;
int del = 1000;

void setup()
{
  SPI.begin();
  SPI.setDataMode(SPI_MODE3);
  SPI.setBitOrder(MSBFIRST);
  SPI.setClockDivider(SPI_CLOCK_DIV16);
  pinMode(ss, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(ss, HIGH);
}

void setValue(int value)
{
  digitalWrite(ss, LOW);
  SPI.transfer(0, SPI_CONTINUE);
  SPI.transfer(value, SPI_LAST);
  digitalWrite(ss, HIGH);
}

void loop()
{
  setValue(255);
  delay(del);
  setValue(223);
  delay(del);
  setValue(191);
  delay(del);
  setValue(159);
  delay(del);
  setValue(127);
  delay(del);
  setValue(95);
  delay(del);
  setValue(63);
  delay(del);
  setValue(31);
  delay(del);
  setValue(0);
  delay(del);
}

When using the SPI bus, relevant data will appear in the console, for example:

And finally the demonstration video to show you it really works – you can see the output voltage from the rheostat and the matching LED brightness.

Receiving data from the SPI bus is equally as simple, however at the time of writing we don’t have an SPI device to demonstrate this, so please refer the SPI part of the pcDuino guide. Finally, you can’t use PWM on D10 or D11 when using the SPI bus in your sketch.

Pulse-width modulation

You can simulate analogue output using PWM with a pcDuino v2 – however there are two types of PWM pins available. The first is found on digital pins D3, D9, D10 and D11 – they are simulated PWM – and have a low range of zero to twenty at 5 Hz. There are two hardware PWM pins – D5 and D6, which  run at 520Hz and have the full range of 0~255 available in analogWrite(). Once again – they output 3.3V. Furthermore, you can’t use pinMode() functions or the SPI bus if using D10 and/or D11 for PWM.

Conclusion

Now you should have an understanding of the features and limitations of using GPIO pins with your pcDuino v2 Arduino sketches. And finally a plug for my own store – tronixlabs.com – offering a growing range and Australia’s best value for supported hobbyist electronics from adafruit, DFRobot, Freetronics, Seeed Studio and much more.

Have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe  for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column, or join our forum – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website.

The post Tutorial – pcDuino GPIO with Arduino IDE appeared first on tronixstuff.

Introduction

Every month Australian electronics magazine Silicon Chip publishes a variety of projects, and in February 1994 they published the “90 Second Digital Message Recorder” project. That was a long time ago, however you can still find the kit today at Altronics (and at the time of writing, on sale for AU$26), and thus the subject of our review.

The kit offers a simple method of recording and playing back 90 seconds of audio, captured with an electret microphone. When mounted in a suitable enclosure it will make a neat way of leaving messages or instructions for others at home.

Assembly

The kit arrives in typical Altronics fashion:

… and includes everything required including IC sockets for the ISD2590 and the audio amplifier:

The PCB missed out on silk-screening – which is a pity:

however it is from an original design from twenty years ago. The solder mask is neat and helps prevent against lazy soldering mistakes:

Finally the detailed instructions including component layout and the handy Altronics reference guide are also included. After checking and ordering the resistors, they were installed first along with the links:

 If you have your own kit, there is a small error in the instructions. The resistor between the 2k2 and the 10uF electrolytic at the top of the board is 10k0 not 2k2. Moving on, these followed by the capacitors and other low-profile components:

The rest of the components went in without any fuss, and frankly it’s a very easy kit to assemble:

 The required power supply is 6V, and a power switch and 4 x AA cell holder is included however were omitted for the review.

How it works

Instead of some fancy microcontrollers, the kit uses an ISD2590P single chip voice recording and playback IC:

It’s a neat part that takes care of most of the required functions including microphone preamp, automatic gain control, and an EEPROM to store the analogue voltage levels that make up the voice sample. The ISD2590 samples audio at 5.3 kHz which isn’t CD quality, but enough for its intended purpose.

Apart from some passive components for power filtering, controls and a speaker amplifier there isn’t much else to say. Download the ISD2590 data sheet (pdf), which is incredibly detailed including some example circuits.

Operation

Once you apply power it’s a simple matter of setting the toggle switch on the PCB down for record, or up for playback. You can record in more than one session, and each session is recorded in order until the memory is full. Then the sounds can be played back without any fuss.

The kit is supplied with the generic 0.25W speaker which is perhaps a little weak for the amplifier circuit in the kit, however by turning down the volume a little the sound is adequate. In this video you can see (and hear) a quick recording and playback session.

Conclusion

This kit could be the base for convenient message system – and much more interesting than just scribbling notes for each other. Or you could built it into a toy and have it play various tunes or speech to amuse children. And for the price it’s great value to experiment with an ISD2590 – just use an IC socket. Or just have some fun  – we did.  Full-sized images are available on flickr. 

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”.