Tag Archives: glcd

Time Input Dialog for Graphic LCD

GUI Frameworks of all modern OS like Windows, Linux (Qt & GTK+), MAC etc have a concept of standard dialogs. For example all applications running under Windows shows the same file open dialog for selecting a file. Similarly their are standard dialogs for folder selection, colour selection, font selection etc. This concept has several advantages, and the most important is a easy user interface. Since the user is already familiar with file selection in one application, he/she can use file open dialog of any application. Building on the same concept our GUI framework for ProGFX (avr glcd driver) will too have many standard dialogs for common user interface. In this tutorial we will build the "Time Input Dialog" that helps programmer ask the user to input time. The time could be anything like :- "On" or "Off" time for a relay in a timer application. Alarm time in an alarm clock application. Period start time in a school bell application. And many others. The programmer just need to call the function. void ShowGetTimeDlg(uint8_t *h,uint8_t *m,uint8_t *s,uint8_t *am_pm) It takes four parameters hour, minutes, second and am_pm. All parameters are passed by reference(pointer actually), this is because the function modifies the value of those variables. It shows a dialog as shown below :- Time Input Dialog The user can use the […]

DS1307 I2C RTCC Interface using SoftI2C lib

In the last tutorial, I explained you how to use our SoftI2C library to read and write a 24CXX series I2C EEPROM. Now I will continue our exploration and write a register access layer for the DS1307 chip. The DS1307 chip is a real time clock and calendar IC. The register access layer that we will develop provides the application programmer with function that reads and write the registers of DS1307. Remember that any piece of hardware appears to the CPU as a set of registers only. DS1307 has :- Seven Registers (from 0x00 to 0x06) that are used for timekeeping functions. One CONTROL register(0x07) for square wave generation setting (we don’t use this for simplicity). 56 bytes of battery backup RAM (from 0x08 to 0x3F) Fig. : A Simple DS1307 RTC Module.   Once the application programmer has access to functions that reads and writes to any register (specified by its address) inside DS1307 ic, he/she can easily get and set the time infos like sec,min,hour, am/pm, date,month,year etc. The register access layer is built over the core Soft I2C layer. The register access layer consists of the following three functions. void DS1307Init(void) { SoftI2CInit(); } /*************************************************** Function To Read Internal Registers of DS1307 ——————————————— address : Address of the register data: value of register is copied to this. […]

AVR Graphic LCD and Accelerometer Demo

Hello All!, Accelerometer applications are hot these days. So today I will show you how you can easily make a accelerometer add on for your AVR GLCD Board. Once you make this you can plug it into the AVR GLCD Board any time you wish to run a accelerometer based application on it. I will also provide a simple Open Source App for the AVR GLCD Board that can be used to test the accelerometer in no time. Developers can use this demo as a base for any accelerometer based app. Things you will need are A Veroboard or general purpose prototyping PCB (dotted one, not the line one). Female Burg Strips Female Burg Strip R/A MMA7260 Accelerometer Board Fig.: A Veroboard Marked for Cutting   Fig.: Veroboard Cut to Size   Fig.: Burg Strip Female   Fig.: Burg Strip Female Soldered to Veroboard.   Fig.: Burg Strip Female Soldered to Veroboard.   Fig.: 5 PIN Burg Strip Female Right Angle   Fig.: R/A Burg Strip Soldered.   Fig.: Just Ready!   Fig.: AVR GLD Dev Board   Fig.: Accelerometer Expansion Board Connected   Fig.: Accelerometer Connected.   Fig.: Accelerometer Connected with AVR GLCD Board   Fig.: AVR Accelerometer Ready! Connections     CONNECT TO GND Ground Supply Ground (EXP Port) VDD 3.3 V OUT SLEEP Sel2 G Select Pin2 […]

Product Preview – AVR Graphical LCD Development Board

To bring graphic LCD to the reach of every embedded system engineer we have developed a complete hardware and software suite that can be used to develop rich graphical application easily and quickly. More information on graphical programming with GLCD and AVR ATmega series MCU is discussed in the following articles. Part I – Introduction to GLCD and Hardware Setup Part II – Downloading and Installing ProGFX! Part III – Explains Graphic Primitive Functions. Part IV – Font and Text Handling Functions. The aim is to create a common hardware and software platform to create and share graphical applications. The user can concentrate only on application level, leaving the low level details handled by ProGFX. The advantage is that the end application can be easily shared among the user of ProGFX boards. The applications are more usable because any ProGFX programmer can easily understand the application logic (due to clean uniform api) and modify the application to suit their need. eXtreme Electronics, India will work towards releasing many open source ProGFX applications for their users. AVR Graphical LCD Development Board   AVR Graphical LCD Development Board     Product Features Out of the Box performance (Just bring it out and power up!) Step by step tutorial to learn Graphic Programming. Can be programmed by ISP Programmer. On board ATmega32A PU […]

Handling Text and Fonts in Graphic LCD

ProGFX supports advance function to draw text on graphical LCD screen. ProGFX support multiple fonts, fonts with variable width characters, absolute pixel based positioning, and utility function to get the dimension of text in any specified font. The last feature is used to cleanly position text relative to other graphic and text objects on screen. So lets get started. First you will need a tool that will help convert any Windows Font to ProGFX compatible format. Thanks to Mr. F. Maximilian Thiele we have a great tool called Font Creator. You can download it from here. Download GLCD Font Creator It is a Java application so you need the Java Runtime to use it. Launch the app using start.bat file. You will get a screen similar to this. Font Creator Main Screen From file menu select "New Font" , and configure the New Font Dialog as follows. New Font Dialog Name = Arial12 Import Font = Arial Size =12 And click ok. From Export Menu Select "Export Font", Give it the name "Arial12.h" while saving. Create a Atmel Studio Project with GFX Support. The steps are given in the following tutorials. Hello World Project with Atmel Studio 6. Setting up ProGFX Project using AVR Studio. Name the AVR Studio Project as "FontDemo". Open the project folder in Windows Explorer (or […]

Interfacing KS0108 based 128×64 Graphical LCD with AVR MCU.

Those how are building microcontroller based project for little long must have got bored with the good old character LCDs. Whether you are bored or your application require to present more data to the user in a better way, you need Graphic LCD. Character LCD Interfacing is quite easy so every one uses it, but when I comes to Graphic LCD you need a well written and powerful graphic library. Its not enough that you read the LCD datasheet and connect it your MCU and start sending data. Because the LCD just appears to be block of memory whose contents are directly visible on screen. The datasheet can only guide you how to access this memory. You just can’t do much by writing to the memory. The graphic library is a piece of software that has complex algorithms to render graphic primitives like line, rectangles, circles, images and more. It also helps load fonts and render text and numbers on screen. So it provide high level access to the LCD screen and applications can be written much more easily. While I was researching for graphic library for the GLCDs, I found some but I was not fully satisfied by any of them. So I began to write a clean, powerful, portable and easy to use library that can handle sever […]

Using LCD Module with AVRs

When you start working with LCD modules you will start feeling the real power of MCU and your imaginations will be touching sky you will wonder how many exciting a powerful gadgets you can create and that’s so very easily. LCD Modules can present textual information to user. It’s like a cheap “monitor” that you can hook in all of your gadgets. They come in various types. The most popular one can display 2 lines of 16 characters. These can be easily interfaced to MCU’s, thanks to the API( Functions used to easily access the modules) we provide. LCD interfacing is just fun ! Fig: A 16×2 LCD Module Buy LCD Modules Online In India   PIN Configurations. The lcd modules has 16 PINs for interfacing. The details are given below. LCD Module Pin Configuration 1 VSS (GND Supply) 2 VCC (+5V) 3 VEE (Contrast Adjust) 4 RS 5 R/W 6 E 7 DB0 8 DB1 9 DB2 10 DB3 11 DB4 12 DB5 13 DB6 14 DB7 15 LED + 16 LED –   Connection with ATmega8/ATmega168 etc. The lcd module can be easily connected to the any 28 pin AVR MCU like ATmega8/ATmega168/ATmega328 etc. The diagram below shows the LCD connection with AVR MCUs port pins. Fig: Connection with 28 PIN AVR MCUs Connect the required pins of […]