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Archive for the ‘HD44780’ Category

A small 16x2 LCD display housed in a green and yellow hobby box.

If you’ve been pining for a retro-chic 16×2 LCD display to enhance your Windows computing experience, then [mircemk] has got you covered with their neat Windows-based LCD Info Panel.

Your everyday garden variety Arduino is the hero here, sitting between the computer’s USB port and the display to make the magic happen. Using the ‘LCD Smartie‘ software, the display can serve up some of your typical PC stats such as CPU and network utilization, storage capacity etc. It can also display information from BBC World News, email clients, various computer games and a world of other sources using plugins.

It’s clear that the intention here was to include the display inside your typical PC drive bay, but as you can see in the video below, this display can just about fit anywhere. It’s not uncommon to see similar displays on expensive ‘gamer’ peripherals, so this might be an inexpensive way for someone to bring that same LED-lit charm to their next PC build. You probably have these parts sitting in your desk drawer right now.

If you want to get started building your own, there’s more info over on the Hackaday.io page. And if PC notifications aren’t your jam, it’s worth remembering that these 16×2 displays are good for just about anything, like playing Space Invaders.

These days, there’s a huge variety of screens on the market for use with microcontrollers. OLEDs and graphic LCDs abound, while e-ink devices tempt the user with their clean look and low energy consumption. However, for many purposes, the humble HD44780 character LCD does the job just fine. If you’re using such a device, you might want to implement a simple menu system, and in that case, [MyHomeThings] has you covered.

The menu code is simple to modify and implement. It allows the user to define a certain number of menu items, along with button labels and functions to be executed with button presses. By default, it’s set up to work with  left and right function buttons, with up and down buttons to toggle through the menu’s various entries. This suits the commonly available Arduino shields which combine a 16×2 character LCD with a set of four tactile buttons in a cross formation. However, modifying the code to use an alternate button scheme would be simple for those eager to tweak things to their liking.

For the absolute beginner to programming, it’s a great way to put together a simple interface for your microcontroller projects. It’s the sort of thing you might use if you’d built a do-everything Arduino handheld device, as we’ve seen built before. If you find text menus too archaic for your purposes, though, be sure to sound off with your favourite solutions in the comments.

Cheap character LCD displays are more versatile than we give them credit for. Most of the cheapies have a 5×8 character display, which looks blocky but legible when you have an appropriate font. Where it gets fun is that most of the LCD displays also let you upload custom characters.

Taking this to the extreme, [numeric] abused the user-defined characters to write a tiny game of Tetris that would run in the 10×16 frame that you get when you combine four characters together. It’s tiny, it’s monochrome, and doesn’t play the Troika theme (which may be a good thing), but it’s playable. Check out the video below.

[numeric] has bravely put his code for doing this online (ZIP file) as well. It’s rough, to say the least — he did this in a weekend just for fun. But before you go jumping on him for C code in header files, note that this is pretty cool for a quick hack, and also that as good as the Arduino platform is at getting beginners into coding, it doesn’t teach them how to do things right. We wish our first steps into our own coding looked this cool.

This is Hackaday, and we’ve covered a couple Tetris games before. If an LCD display is too high-tech for you, consider Tetris on a DIY LED matrix. If that’s too small, how about Tetris on a skyscraper? Even HP engineers can’t resist the allure of the tiny bricks. And of course, there’s our badge for Hackaday Belgrade. It’s a simple game, and a great test of your skills on a limited system. What’s your favorite Tetris platform?


Filed under: Arduino Hacks

Cheap character LCD displays are more versatile than we give them credit for. Most of the cheapies have a 5×8 character display, which looks blocky but legible when you have an appropriate font. Where it gets fun is that most of the LCD displays also let you upload custom characters.

Taking this to the extreme, [numeric] abused the user-defined characters to write a tiny game of Tetris that would run in the 10×16 frame that you get when you combine four characters together. It’s tiny, it’s monochrome, and doesn’t play the Troika theme (which may be a good thing), but it’s playable. Check out the video below.

[numeric] has bravely put his code for doing this online (ZIP file) as well. It’s rough, to say the least — he did this in a weekend just for fun. But before you go jumping on him for C code in header files, note that this is pretty cool for a quick hack, and also that as good as the Arduino platform is at getting beginners into coding, it doesn’t teach them how to do things right. We wish our first steps into our own coding looked this cool.

This is Hackaday, and we’ve covered a couple Tetris games before. If an LCD display is too high-tech for you, consider Tetris on a DIY LED matrix. If that’s too small, how about Tetris on a skyscraper? Even HP engineers can’t resist the allure of the tiny bricks. And of course, there’s our badge for Hackaday Belgrade. It’s a simple game, and a great test of your skills on a limited system. What’s your favorite Tetris platform?


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Giu
30

How to use an LCD displays – Arduino Tutorial

arduino, HD44780, LCD Commenti disabilitati su How to use an LCD displays – Arduino Tutorial 

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by codebender_cc @ instructables.com:

The LiquidCrystal library allows you to control LCD displays that are compatible with the Hitachi HD44780 driver. There are many of them out there, and you can usually find them by the 16-pin interface.

In this tutorial you will learn how to use LCD 16×2 display (and 20×4) with Arduino uno.

You will also learn how to use lcd.begin(), lcd.print() and lcd.setCursor() functions

How to use an LCD displays – Arduino Tutorial – [Link]

Lug
15

Door Lock Provides Peace of Mind With Real-Time Security

arduino hacks, arduino mega, door lock, EEPROM, HD44780, lock Commenti disabilitati su Door Lock Provides Peace of Mind With Real-Time Security 

arduino door lock

[HSP] got tired of locking his door with a key, so he decided to upgrade to a keypad system which he’s designed himself.

It uses an Arduino Mega with the standard 44780 display, a standard keypad, and the “key override” (shown above) for fun. The locking mechanism is a standard 12V actuator based lock which was modified to run off of only 7.5V, by softening up the spring inside and running it upside down (as to let gravity help do the work). The whole system draws less than half a watt on standby, and engaging the lock peaks at only 4-7W.

What’s really clever about this design is how he locks it from inside the room. He’s programmed the Arduino to write 1 to address 128 of the EEPROM — at power on it will increment this by 1, and after 5 seconds, it will reset to 1. This means it can detect a quick power cycle, so you can lock the door by turning it off, turning it on for a few seconds, and turning it off and on again — he did this so he didn’t have to make a button or console, or any kind of wireless control on the inside.

Now we know that kind of adds a huge flaw to the overall security of the system… but [HSP] learned his lesson last time he built something “too” secure.

The relay board is inside the box on the wall on the outside, and the lock is only locked with power. This is insecurity by design. This is to keep the casual people out. The door itself is thin wood with cardboard in between. I previously had a lock which was locked on power failure, and the machine (Windows) running it, crashed. I got to climb through the roof window, 7 meters up to get inside without trashing the door, so now I have a little respect for the possibility of failure, and design my systems for the expected threat-level.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Giu
19

Interfacing LCD to Arduino uno

arduino, HD44780, JHD162A, LCD Commenti disabilitati su Interfacing LCD to Arduino uno 

interfacing-LCD-to-arduino

praveen @ circuitstoday.com writes:

LCD modules form a very important part in many arduino based embedded system designs. So the knowledge on interfacing LCD to arduino is very essential in designing embedded systems. This article is about interfacing a 16×2 LCD to Arduino. JHD162A is the LCD module used here. JHD162A is a 16×2 LCD module based on the HD44780 driver from Hitachi. The JHD162A has 16 pins and can be operated in 4-bit mode or 8-bit mode. Here we are using the LCD module in 4-bit mode. First, I will show you how to display plain text messages on the LCD module using arduino and then few useful projects using LCD and arduino. Before going in to the details of the project, let’s have a look at the JHD162A LCD module.

Interfacing LCD to Arduino uno - [Link]

Set
13

Adding a display to a USB digital scale

arduino, arduino hacks, HD44780, scale Commenti disabilitati su Adding a display to a USB digital scale 

arduino_scale

[Oleg] found himself in possession of a Stamps.com Model 510 5lb digital scale.  It’s a great scale, but only works as a USB HID device. In other words, it’s a digital scale without a digital display. He decided he wanted it to be more standalone, so he added a Toshiba HD44780 (compatible) display. An Arduino UNO and USB Host shield were used to make it happen. His sketch simply polls the scale and outputs the weight on the display.

In this case, he used the USB Host Shield from Circuits at Home, but a brief look shows they use the same MAX3421 controller chip as Sparkfun and other versions of the board. You might also be able to pull off the same functionality with an AVR running V-USB, though admittedly it wouldn’t be so easy.

We haven’t found a great way to add USB host mode to projects other than shields like the one [Oleg] used. If you know of a better way, share your ideas in the comments.

Of course, if this isn’t hardcore enough for you, forget using a consumer scale – make your own from scratch!


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Dic
29

Netduino and LCD interfacing tutorial

arduino, HD44780, LCD, Mcu, Netduino Commenti disabilitati su Netduino and LCD interfacing tutorial 

NetduinoIndexPageTopBanner

Embedded Lab has started a new tutorial series on Netduino programming and interfacing. This is the second tutorial in the series where interfacing between an HD44780 based character LCD and Netduino Plus is discussed.

Netduino and LCD interfacing tutorial – [Link]



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