tinkerkit lcd module schematic factory

Now move the content of the downloaded “Tinkerkit Drivers” folder inside the Arduino drivers subfolder. At this point it’s important to know that the TinkerKit! (and also the Arduino) boards works in this way: they have two “states”. One is called “bootloader state” that lasts for about seven seconds after you plug the board into the usb port, then it goes into “sketch mode”. Every time you power the board (or reset it) it goes into bootloader mode, then sketchbook mode after seven seconds. We have to install a driver for each mode.

Press the reset button on the TKLCD board, without closing the Device Manager. Once restarted, for the first 7 seconds, while it’s in bootloader mode, you should see an unknown “Arduino Leonardo” in the device list, right click on it and select “Uninstall“. A pop-up confirmation window appears, press OK. (sometimes Windows shows the “unknown device” at the top of the list and not under the “ports” sub-menu)

Now that we have uninstalled the Leonardo drivers for the LCD, we have to install them again. Press reset again on the TKLCD board, and when the unknown “Arduino Leonardo” pops up from the ports menu, right-click then “Update driver software“

Press the reset button, Windows should see a “TinkerKit LCD bootloader”, then after 8 seconds it turns again into an unknown Arduino Leonardo. Repeat the right click, update driver procedure that we did in steps 12 to 14.

Now the LCD is installed on your Windows PC. After installing it, you can select the Arduino Leonardo board from the IDE every time that you want to use the TinkerKit! LCD.

With the TKLCD module you can write text on the module’s screen in a few minutes. It has an LCD display on board and it requires a dedicated software library that is available here. The LCD can be used like a regular module by plugging it into the TinkerKit! shield or as an independent component; it has in fact a microcontroller and a USB port on board that make it a fully-fledged LCD-shaped Arduino Leonardo.

Using a four-connectors wire or 4-pin jumper wire, the LCD module can be hooked-up to the SERIAL port on the TinkerKit! Shield. To work properly it has to be loaded with the right firmware; it is nothing more than a particular Arduino sketch and it’s located inside the examples of the TKLCD library. You can open it from File->Examples->TKLCD->SerialFirmware Mind that this firmware must be uploaded on the LCD module, and not on an Arduino. Connect the module using the USB cable, (the Arduino software recognizes it as an Arduino Leonardo) then load the firmware. You don’t have to upload the firmware every time, just remember to reload it if you upload something else on the module, and then you want to use it again from the serial. Once the firmware is uploaded and the module is connected to the Serial port, open the Arduino software and include the following libraries:TKLCD, LiquidCrystal and Wire. The TKLCD library has two different classes, one for each use; in our case, we are using it via serial port so we have to declare it as TKLCD_Serial in the globals (before the setup):

One of the cool features of the LCD module is that it doesn’t need an Arduino or TinkerKit! shield to run. It can be connected straight to the USB port of your computer exactly like an Arduino Leonardo, then, once the code is finished, just select “Arduino Leonardo” from the board’s list and upload. To control the LCD we have to include the following libraries: TKLCD, LiquidCrystal and Wire, then declare the LCD as TKLCD_Local in the globals (before the setup):

From now on we have a series of methods that we can apply to the lcd object it inside the loop function. Just browse into the examples folder of the TKLCD library or read the library’s reference to see all of them.

The TinkerKit! LCD module mounts nine connectors on the board. Six of these, the ones with the three-pins layout, can be used with other TinkerKit! modules. Don’t be confused by the labels, the A0, A1 and A2 are analog inputs and D5, D6 and D11 are outputs but they can also be used as digital inputs. Use them like regular inputs and outputs, just remember to include the TinkerKit! library in addition to the TKLCD and to declare them using the right port:

In the following sketch we use the LCD module to display the temperature. We use it as a stand-alone module with a thermistor connected directly to one of its input ports.

The TinkerKit! LCD also supports TWI connections. TWI stands for “Two-Wire Interface” and it’s another way to call the I2C bus technology. Basically it allows to connect multiple devices in series. This means that you can hook a large number of LCD screens, connecting them “in-line” using the two TWI ports, one for input and one for output. One of them must be the master (or you can use a TInkerKit! shield), while the others must run the TWI firmware. The TWI port has four pins, that’s why we need the 4-pin cable to connect them.

First of all let’s connect two modules, then we move to the code. We need the TKLCD library that you can download from the library section of the website. If you downloaded it already, be sure to have the last version because TWI support has been added only recently.

Between the examples of the TKLCD library, there is one that is called TwiFirmware. We have to load it into one of or our LCD modules, the other module doesn’t need a firmware.

Ok, that was rather easy, but the cool thing about TWI is that you can connect as much modules as you want. Now we try to connect three LCD modules. One will be the local master and the other two are TWI slaves. We have to load them with the TWI firmware.

If we have more than one TWI, in order to understand which one we are controlling we need to define a different address for each. Let’s open the TwiFirmware example in the TKLCD library and then, at line 88, there’s this command:

Every TWI module has an address that is defined in this line of the firmware program. By default it’s 0×33 but we can change it. If we have more than one module we have to define a different address for each module. Now we set one address to 0×33 and the other to 0×44, then we upload them.

Now all we have to do is program the master module. We don’t have to change barely anything from our program, we still have to declare just one TWI, but in the loop we have to set a different address everytime that we want to change the target TWI LCD. This is done using lcd.setActiveAddress(NEW_ADDRESS).

You actually have to go to the 2 wire i2c tutorial to see the pinout of serial though Derp its not in the serial tutorial go figure. like so many problems with tinkerkit it was a great Idea and supported by arduino and radioshack they were not good at support or tutorials etc. so they failed.