[ARDUINO] RE: Continuing with the Arduino theme....

[Karl W4KRL]

Terry,

Thanks, and it is nice to see the responses you are getting from your "What
are you building request?"

The eBay display I am using has the classic Arduino shield pin arrangement
and plugs directly into the UNO. It uses an SPFD5408 driver chip which seems
to use the same commands as the ILI9325 drivers used by the name brands but
is probably subtly different. I could not get it to work with the Lady Ada
library but the vendor in Hong Kong immediately sent me the library and some
datasheets. I could not get that to work either but I stripped the code down
to small functions and it started to work. It died as soon as I added other
functions back into the code.

The painful lesson I learned after three days of struggling is that a
software reset is not enough. I have to pull the USB connector out of the
Arduino for 30 seconds (25 seconds is not enough) to reset the display
hardware. I also printed out the TFTLCD.h file to determine the graphic
primitives and started to work directly with them. Now it is very rare to
lock up the display. I still cannot get the sample files fully working but
my own code seems OK. The Arduino forum has similar stories from others
using the Lady Ada, Sparkfun and Seeeduino displays. So what I at first
thought was junk turned out to be a good bargain. I have since used the
document compare feature of MS Word to look for differences between the Lady
Ada library and the one from the vendor - they appear to be identical.

Struggling with the code was also a good way to learn C++. I still need a
cheat sheet to write IF and WHILE statements. I am finding the "C++ Language
Tutorial" by Juan Soulie' at www.cplusplus.com to be very helpful. 

Now that I have the user interface pretty well complete the next step is
setting up the serial link with the miniVNA. That will take me into new
territory.

Regards,
Karl W4KRL 




-----Original Message-----
From: wb4jfi at knology.net [mailto:wb4jfi at knology.net] 
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 7:17 PM
To: Karl W4KRL; tacos AMRAD
Subject: Re: Continuing with the Arduino theme....

Congrats of the progress Karl!  I'm excited to see someone working on these
types of projects.  I have a few displays around here, including the
SeeedStudio one from Radio Shack.  I need to figure out the differences, if
any.

I just ordered two of a similar display (I think) from ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/280909341858?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fsch%2Fi.
html%3F_nkw%3D280909341858%26_rdc%3D1

They are $17.99 with free shipping, and are the ones that is being used on
the STM32F4Discovery boards by John from AQRP.  I wonder if they are the
same ones that you used?

Are other AMRADers doing similar stuff?  I see that Andre has an article in
the latest newsletter about an Arduino-based project.

Thanks again for the progress update, I can't wait to see your next Youtubes
- as I won't make Winterfest.
73, Terry, WB4JFI