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

[Sean Sheedy]

Another useful hack for the MiniVNA is to wire it to a battery pack and 
a Bluetooth USB to Serial converter, and switch it to serial mode 
internally.  With Bluetooth on a laptop presenting a serial port, you 
can use the same apps, but now the MiniVNA can be relatively remote, 
like at a feed point.  I don't recall the details because it has been 
several years and I recently misplaced my MiniVNA.

A really nice solution would be to replace the laptop with an Android 
phone.  I'm not sure if someone has written an Android app that uses 
Bluetooth SPP to communicate with a MiniVNA but that would be a useful 
project.  The oldest Android versions won't support Bluetooth SPP, but 
phones from about two years back should.  You could dedicate a phone to 
this purpose.  Then you would have a completely battery powered solution 
with the able to be located some distance from the MiniVNA.

And of course, you can also buy a pair of Bluetooth modules from 
Microcenter and use those with the Arduino.  I think they have the 
Sparkfun Silver modules.  Replace the serial port between MiniVNA and 
Arduino with a pair of these.  IIRC they can be set up so you can pair 
them and they'll look like serial devices to the Arduino, with little 
fuss. YMMV.

Sean AI4ID

On 01/26/2013 01:53 AM, wb4jfi at knology.net wrote:
> OK Karl, sounds good on all.
>
> I played with the MiniVNA a few years ago, and still have one here.  I 
> built several of them (from bare boards) at one time.  I have the 
> documentation that describes what you need to send it, and what it 
> ends back in response, if you haven't figured that stuff out yet.  It 
> seemed to be pretty simple. Let me know if you need it.
> 73,
> Terry, WB4JFI
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Karl W4KRL
> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2013 1:02 AM
> To: tacos AMRAD ; Terry Fox WB4JFI
> Subject: [ARDUINO] RE: Continuing with the Arduino theme....
>
> 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
>
>
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