5110 lcd module white backlight for arduino uno mega prototype made in china

The Due has two usb connectors, the one with the micro-usb AB connector is the native one capable to act as an USB host, that means you can connect compatible external usb peripherals to the board, such as mouse, keyboards, smartphones. While the other USB port with the type B connector is intended for debugging purposes.

The SAM3X has 512KB (2 blocks of 256KB) of flash memory for storing code. The bootloader is preburned in factory from Atmel and is stored in a dedicated ROM memory. The available SRAM is 96KB in two contiguous bank of 64KB and 32KB. All the available memory (Flash, RAM and ROM) can be accessed directly as a flat addressing space.

It is possible to erase the Flash memory of the SAM3X with the onboard erase button. This will remove the currently loaded sketch from the MCU. To erase, press and hold the Erase button for a few seconds while the board is powered.

Modular designs are always easy to develop & scale, and this also applies to electronics. Since Arduino is the go-to microcontroller for circuit prototyping and development, it is necessary to have additional modules that increase functionality to create customized projects. That is where Arduino Shields come in.

They are small boards that connect and stack onto the Arduino board to provide specific functions. If you have a project in development, here"s a close look at these modules, including a list of the compatible ones for different projects.

Arduino shields are plug-in or add-on boards attached to an Arduino board to provide extra functionalities. They have a similar pin position to the Arduino board and usually perform a specific function, such as communication or running a motor.

Arduino boards make it easy to play around with electrical components, placing them on a breadboard for easy connection. However, you should not assemble the final product with an external breadboard. It is neat and more professional to use expansion boards like Arduino Shields to set up the complete project.

Each Arduino shield must have a similar pin position and form factor as a standard Arduino board. Therefore, the power and ground pins should be on one 8-pin header, while the analog pins should be on one 6-pin header.

But not all Arduino boards have the same pin layout. For instance, Arduino UNO and MEGA are different. Therefore, you should choose a compatible board by looking at three factors.

Also, it is worth noting that not all shields require a link to every pin. Some use the serial, I2C, analog, or SPI pins to communicate with the Arduino PCB. You can have a stackable shield set up with as many shields as possible connected to one Arduino PCB, but don"t use overlapping pins.

The prototyping shield is one of the most uncomplicated Arduino shields because it features a prototyping area for soldering components. If soldering is too much work, you can attach the included 170-pin mini breadboard to the prototyping area.

An Arduino motor shield is critical for building RC cars and robots. There are several types, but the most popular one is the L293D, and it contains a 74HC595 Shift Register IC plus two L239D integrated circuits. It can power four 12V DC motors and two servo or stepper motors simultaneously.

A relay shield is a module used to control devices powered by the mains AC power line. It contains four mechanical relay power modules (each with a dedicated terminal connector) and four LEDs to indicate the relay"s state (NC or NO).

With a row and column matrix keypad, this shield has 16 buttons that you can map to different characters for input. Also, it features a dedicated header for connecting the LCD module of a Nokia 5110.

If you prefer a touchpad interface instead of keys, you can incorporate the capacitive touchpad shield into your Arduino project. It contains nine capacitive touchpads and a proximity sensor controller.

If you need several servo motors for a Hexapod robot or robotic arm, consider using this 16-channel, 12-PWM servo motor shield. It can also power LEDs using PWM signals.

If your Arduino project involves sending or receiving SMS messages, making or answering calls, and connecting to the internet via GPRS, you need to use a GSM/GPRS shield.

Some shields have Bluetooth modules for wireless communication over the serial interface, but you can get a single module for this function. You can control the board using AT commands, and some allow firmware flashing for feature updates. An example is the HC-05.

Even though most internet communications happen over WiFi, ethernet is still widely used, primarily for its high speeds. An ethernet shield can reach speeds of up to 100Mbps and features an RJ-45 jack for the ethernet cable.

WiFi shields like the ESP8266 are essential components in IoT projects because they provide wireless internet connectivity to Arduino PCBs. The module also features a microSD card slot, and it plugs into Arduino boards, eliminating the need for breadboarding or soldering.

An MP3 player music shield, like the VS1053 decoder IC, enables you to add high-quality audio to your electronic project. It can decode MP3, AAC, MIDI, WMA, & Ogg Vorbis audio formats and features a microSD card slot to store the music. Also, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

With the ST7735 TFT Driver IC controller, this shield displays 18-bit colors in a 160x128-pixel, 1.8-inch TFT LCD. The board also contains a 5-way navigation module and a microSD card slot.

Touchscreens are popular input/output interfaces, and you can incorporate this shield into your project to include this functionality. You can get the screen in various sizes, but the 2.4-inch LCD is the most sought-after. It has a 320x240 pixel resolution and features a microSD card slot.

Several shields have microSD card slots, but if you need a dedicated one for applications like data logging, use the microSD module. It supports FAT FS implementation of FAT libraries and communicates with Arduino via SPI.

Designed around the MCP2515 CAN bus controller, this shield is ideal for low-speed, long-distance data transfer. It requires a CAN transceiver for single-ended to differential data line conversion and features an SPI interface.

This shield simplifies the process of adding Xbee modules to your project. It supports multiple wireless networks, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee. These make it an ideal choice for working on wireless projects like data transfer apps.

A GPS shield consists of a GPS receiver module and a microSD card slot for data logging. It exchanges data with the Arduino board over serial communication, while the SD card connects via SPI communication.

Based on the MAX3421 USB host/ peripheral controller (with SPI interface), this shield contains all the analog and digital circuitry required for full-speed USB connectivity to your Arduino UNO.

Smoke sensors are essential for safety applications, and this shield is ideal for adding LPG, carbon monoxide, smoke, and other toxic gas detection capabilities to your project.

An RS485 shield gives galvanic isolation between its bus and the Arduino board to prevent noise and interference. The device supports 2-wire (half-duplex) and 4-wire (full-duplex) data transfer and bases its design on the ISO3080, a completely isolated RS485 transceiver.

Not many devices use the MIDI communication protocol, but this shield is still ideal for controlling music samplers, synthesizers, sequencers, and more using Arduino. It creates a MIDI interface system with MIDI in & out ports and contains two configurable potentiometers for pitch, volume, and tone control.

If you are developing a power-sensitive project, get an energy shield. It contains a LiPo battery that can power the Arduino or Arduino-compatible board when the external power supply goes off. The battery charges when power is available and then switches to become the power source when the power supply goes off.

Last on the list is the camera shield. It provides a simple UI and an easy-to-use camera and connects to Arduino via SPI. The unit consists of a 3.2-inch touchscreen plus a microSD card slot.

In conclusion, Arduino shields are essential for Arduino projects because most Arduino boards are pretty basic. Plugging in these shields provides the features required to make your project a success. If you have any questions about these modules, reach out for further clarification.

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Here I’ve added a the 5110 LCD to a logger recording data from a BME280 & Tipping Bucket Rain gauge. If the BME  survives in our field environment, this will become a standard configuration for our climate stations. I’m not holding my breath though, as we’ve tested half a dozen RH sensors so far and none of them have gone the distance in high humidity environments that occasionally go condensing.

This year I want to tackle some projects that need live data out, so I’ve been sifting through the many display options available for Arduino. Unlike flashier projects, my goal was to find one that I could add to existing logger builds without sacrificing too much of the multi-year lifespan I had worked so hard to achieve. The low power winner by a fair margin was the Nokia 5110 Liquid-crystal Display  which you can pick up for around $2 from the usual sources. With the back-light off these displays pull between 100-400 μA, depending on the number of pixels turned on.

This screen uses a PCD8544 controller and the SPI protocol.  It will tolerate 5V, but it works best at 3.3V, which is perfect when you are driving it from an 8mhz ProMini. Each pixel on the display is represented by a single bit in the PCD8544’s RAM. Each byte in RAM correlates to a vertical column of 8 pixels. The X coordinate works on a per-pixel basis, and accepts values between 0 and 83. The Y coordinate accepts values of 0 – 5 which on this 48 pixel high screen, corresponds to 6 “rows of bytes” in the controller’s RAM. So bitmaps can only be displayed on a per row (& column) basis. The display is quite sluggish compared to competitors like the 0.96 I2C monochrome OLED and you have to handle any processing overhead on the Arduino.

This screen’s been around for a very long time, so there’s are a huge number of easy to use, highly functional libraries for Arduino. But they tend to focus on things like speed or endless font options which are not important for most data logging applications. And these libs assume your project can afford to lose up to ⅓ of the available program & variable memory just driving the display. Most also require the hardware SPI lines, but our project needs those for SD cards, which are finicky enough without some pokey LCD gumming up the works: the 5110 maxes out at 4mbps, and this slows the bus significantly .

Those fat libs were non-starters for our project, and I had almost given up on this display when I found Ilett’s Ardutorial offering a bare-bones method more suitable for our resource limited data loggers. If you haven’t discovered Julians YouTube channel yet then you are in for a treat because if Andreas Spiess is the maker worlds answer to Werner Herzog, then Julian is surely their equivalent to Bob Ross.  I don’t know if he’s growing “Happy little trees” with his DIY hydroponics, but I can say that the gentle timbre of his “Gooood morning all” reduces stress faster than a warm cup of Tea.  And his “Arduino sandwiches” are brilliant examples of minimalist build technique.

Julians original implementation included a 500 byte 5×7 font.h file (which you can find at several locations) and  I’ve rolled that font array into some code based on his work and posted it to .  You will find lots of other examples based on the shiftout method on Github, but for some reason many people insist in retooling that tiny bit of code into, you guessed it, even more libraries…

I tweaked Julians code in a couple of important ways. First, I added PROGMEM to move the font(s) into the program memory space. Second, I added a method to print large numbers to the screen by repeating the same WriteString->WriteCharacter->WriteData pattern two times: once for the “upper half” of the numbers, and then again for the “lower half” of the numbers after re-positioning the cursor to the next line.

To make this limited large-number font I first composed a black & white bitmap for each number with a graphic editor, and then loaded that .bmp file into the LCD assistant program as described in this instructables tutorial.  I started with a bitmap that was 11 pixels wide, by 16 pixels high (though you can use any arbitrary size you want – just remember to leave the blank spacer row at the bottom) and for this two-pass ‘sliced-letters’ method I set vertical & little endian encoding in LCD assistant. I then put the top 11 bytes in the Big11x16numberTops[] array & the lower 11 bytes for each number in the Big11x16numberBottoms[] array.

Those number printing functions could be eliminated with better use of pointers, but I liked having the readability afforded by a few extra lines of code.

The stuff I posted on Github assumes you are using a standard 6-pin arrangement shown in most Nokia 5110 hookup guides you will find on the web. But once I had that wrangled, I realized that it would be possible to reduce the number pins needed to drive the display.  You will have to tweak that default example by commenting out the RS & CS commands if you implement the pin-power changes I’m suggesting here…

I use Deans micro-plugs  for multi-wire applications like this. The unused pin here is the normal Vcc, with the A0 pin-power supply indicated with a dash on the red line.

The shiftout method can be used with any pins you want, and most of my builds have A0-A3 available. With those dedicated wires the PCD8544’s chip select (CS) line can be connected to GND telling the screen that it’s always the selected device. This would be bad if it was connected to the hardware SPI lines shared with the SD card, but since we are using re-purposed anlaog lines, there is no conflict. One minor drawback is that since we are now using all the analog lines (I use A6 & A7 too) we can’t read a floating pin for RandomSeed().

Getting rid of the RESET line is a little trickier. The data sheet says that the RS line must be low while power stabilizes and should then be pulled high within 100ms of power on. Several people create an auto-reset situation by connecting the screens reset to the Arduino’s reset line. Others make the low-high transition with an RC network across the supply for a delayed rising signal. This can even be driven by the DC line (which is low in command mode and high in data mode)

OR … a photocell divider embedded in that clear epoxy would let you enable the backlight dynamically – with the appropriate mosfet for the connection type.

If you use the back-light in the default configuration, the screen can potentially draw up to 80mA (4 white LEDs at 20mA each). The back-light pin is usually connected to a transistor, so you can PWM all 4 LEDs at once for variable lighting control, but the peak currents are still too high for direct pin-powering unless you add some kind of series resistor.  A 10k pot gives you a simpler method to adjust the screen brightness, but I found that a 3k3 series resistor brought the total display current down to ~1mA with decent readability( & blue LEDs are brighter than white).  Adding an in-line slide switch provides a way to completely disable the back-light for long deployments.  With the entire display safely below Arduino’s pin-current limit, you can then power it by writing a driver pin high or low in output mode.

This gives you a way to perform a hard reset any time you want provided you tie the screens RS line to that switched power with a 4k7 pullup resistor, and re-run the initializationsequence after restoring power.

Boards with pin vias on both sides make it easier to add the RST & CE connections. The orange wires shown here thread through the housing to a slide switch which disables the backlight connection for surface deployments. This example connects power to the backlight, but

All four control lines must be brought low when you de-power the display or you will get a 13mA leak current through the controller after vcc goes low. Only the power pin needs to be driven high to start the screen later in the main loop, but don’t forget to run the init each time you power up.

My tests so far have shown reliable operation of pin-powered 5110’s through more than 8000 ‘long-sleep’ power cycles. In applications where I want to display data on the screen on for long periods of time,  I still depower the screen during the new sensor readings. This lets me know when the logger is capturing data and forces a periodic re-synch with the bus. I don’t know how long these displays would run continuously without that step, but I’m sure the coms would eventually go AWOL without some kind of regular reset.

No screen is much use on our project unless it can withstand some bumping around in the real world, and ideally we want one that is dive-able. For several years my go-to solution has been to pot surface mounted LED’s and sensors in Loctite E30CL. I like this epoxy because the slow cure usually sets clear because bubbles have time to rise to the surface without a vacuum treatment. My first attempts looked great the night of the pour, but I got a nasty surprise the following morning. You see I usually mount sensors in small ½-1 inch wells, but the 5110 required a ring more than 2” in diameter. The contraction of the epoxy in this 10mm deep well caused pressure marks on the edges of the screen, and a significant brown spot in the center of the display where the text became inverted.

Successive small pours worked better. Here the back-light reflects off of the edges of the epoxy that seeped under the screen before it finished setting. The display in this photo has a 3k3 series resistor in the backlight circuit.

The next attempt was much more successful, as I built up the epoxy a few mm at a time like the layers of an onion. As each layer hardened, it protected the screen from the contraction of the subsequent layers above.  The trick was to bring the first pour to the base of the pcb, and the second pour to “just barely” cover the surface of the screen. The epoxy penetrates about 1/3 of the way into the display housing but this does not interfere with readability as those edges are invisible under natural lighting conditions. That epoxy is actually under the LCD, in the air gap between the transparent glass LCD sandwich and the white reflector plastic which holds the thin LCD in place between the metal rim and the PCB.  I’ll try future pours at different angles to see if that lets the space under the LCD fill completely. Looking at the epoxy penetration, it’s clear that the black edges in pour #1 were places where the LCD was compressed on both sides, and the brown discoloration was from pressure on top with no support below.

The results for the second batch looked good and the screens worked beautifully with full marine submersion for about two days. Then some kind of chemical reaction with the sea-water started fogging the epoxy, and by day three I was glad I’d created the large number fonts because the 5×7’s were completely unreadable.   Once we were back home, a bit of elbow grease & 800 grit removed the foggy surface rind, and a layer of conformal coating restored clarity. I think my next builds will add the coating to the epoxy surface at the start.

I also noted some screen discoloration from pressure at about 3m depth, indicating that even a thick layer of epoxy bows too much for a deeper deployment. I’ve ordered some 1/4“ plexiglass disks to provide a surface with a bit more chemical resistance, and will post an update on how that works after the next fieldwork trip. I’m hoping that provides a bit more pressure protection too, but the shore hardness of the epoxy is 85, and PMMA (plexiglass) is only a few steps above that at 90. I might try polycarbonate as well.

There is so much more to explore with this screen, including live graphing libraries, and display controls so I expect it will keep me amused for a while since I can add it to any of the current logger builds. Several are out in the wild now for long term tests, andI’m currently working on a script to move those fonts (and a few other things) into the 328p’s internal eeprom. If all goes well I’ll release that ultra low memory footprint version of the code shortly.

After several builds using the this LCD screen I finally got around to (not counting EEprom.h) And that’s with three copies of the output functions because of the simple 2-pass method I’m using to display the large numbers.  A small price to pay for live data output on our loggers!

I’m connecting the OLED with the same analog line connections used for the Nokia, but I’ve added a delayed-high RC bridge because the OLED is pickier about the reset input than the Nokias. In hindsight a similar method is probably a good idea for the Nokia screens as well, though you might need to experiment a bit with the resistor/cap values to get the timing right.

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