rfduino lcd panel library factory

Most projects today require wireless connectivity for remote control, and several options are available for this function. However, the RFduino board stands out because it is tiny and features Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which is highly energy efficient. We will look at this board in detail below to explain its specifications and how to use it to send/receive data. Let"s get started!

RF is a combination of two terms: RF and duino. RF stands for radio frequency, while duino is short for Arduino. So the RFduino is an Arduino-compatible development kit with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy that provides wireless communication via radio frequencies. The compact, finger-tip-sized board operates at 3V and runs an ARM Cortex M0 CPU with 8kb RAM and 128kb flash memory.

Most RFduino boards come with a USB shield to power the module and transfer your source code from the Arduino IDE in your computer to the board via the USB port. This USB shield is usually a 3.3V regulator. You can get these additional shields for the board.

The RFduino board can communicate with any Bluetooth 4.0 LE smartphone or tablet. Initially, Android devices were incompatible with the Bluetooth module because they lagged in wireless network interaction nature. And because they are the majority, few devices could connect to the Bluetooth module. Only the iPhone 4 and 5 were compatible with the device when launched. But this low-energy Bluetooth is now available on Android devices, and we"ll use an Android app for this project.

Download the RFduino library, then transfer the file to the board"s hardware storage directory. After that, download and install the FTDI USB driver, then start the Arduino IDE. Select "RFduino board" from the tools menu to set up the board for uploading and running the code.

The advertisement data property should not exceed ten characters. And the device name (RFduino BLE) is the discoverable name that will show up when other BLE-enabled devices search for the device.

The RFduinoBLE_onReceive function should show the first received byte of the incoming data in the Arduino serial monitor. For instance, if you send the number 100 using the serial app on the phone, the Arduino serial monitor will display one on your computer.

To conclude, the RFduino is a compact and easy-to-integrate Arduino-compatible board for any project. So you should consider using the device for your project if you need wireless smartphone control via Bluetooth Low Energy. Most smartphones today are BLE compatible, so you only need a BLE serial app for communication. Also, sending data between the two requires minimal coding, meaning it is not such a challenging task. So get in touch if you need more information about your project. That"s it for now. Thank you.

In this post I will show you a little sketch and iOS app I made to send long strings to an RFduino and display them on an LCD display. By the end you will have something like the below:

Grab your RFduino, breadboard, LCD screen and potentiometer. Connect them as shown below. Although the diagram shows a 2×16 display I used a 4×20 LCD screen (couldn’t find 4×20 on Fritzing!) but this will work with a 2×16 with some minor adjustments to the Arduino sketch.

The Arduino sketch uses the RFduino library so the BLE hard work is already done for us. Although everything in this example is quite simple there is a fair bit of code because I have implemented the following to make it a bit more interesting: auto one line scrolling text, RSSI signal strength and meter, and a temperature display. I have tried to keep it all separate in the code and have commented on how it all works but if you have any questions post a comment.

The most important part of the Arduino code is the section where the data is received from the BLE connection and how it is all put together in one string. The simplest way I could think of doing this was to put an identifier character at the beginning of every string I sent to the RFduino. When the RFduino receives data it checks the first character (data[0]) and if it is a ‘1’ is knows the following characters in data[] are the first part of the incoming string. If the first character is a ‘2’ it will know the following characters in data[] are be appended to the string of already received characters.

As we can only send 12 characters over the standard RFduino setup this method reduces this to 11 characters, as the first character is now the identifier. For example if I wanted to send “Hello world how are you today?” it would be sent like this:

Of course you can also add more check conditions for data[0] which when activated will do other functions. For example, in my full code you will see that when a ‘0’ is received the RFduino resets its display string to the default message that it displays after setup.

//scrolling - modified version of http://nishantarora.in/tutorial-arduino-16x2-lcd-how-to-scroll-only-one-line-at-a-time-while-keeping-the-other-constant.naml

Load up the sketch on your RFduino and turn it on. If all has worked correctly you should be greeted by the following screen and if you have a standard RFduino app on your phone you should see “Display” come up when you search for devices.

RFduino have been kind enough to produce a bare bones iOS framework that we can use to get our app started. However, there a few setup steps required before it will work correctly.

Make a new iPhone project with a single view. Drag the RFduino folder from the above file path and make sure you copy the files and add to the project target.

2. Delete your original AppDelegate.h and AppDelegate.m files. Don’t worry there are replacement AppDelegate files in the imported RFduino folder that will take over the role of AppDelegate.

6. Open ViewController.h and replace the contents with the following code. This adds a property for rfduino and sets the ViewController as a delegate of RFduinoDelegate.

We will use that later. Now lets add some properties to the ViewController.h for the rfduino, text field and UILabel for the device name that we will display.

Unless I have forgotten something this will now work. Run the app with the RFduino on and send strings of length >12 to your heart’s content. It should look like this when complete.

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The purpose of this guide is to get your 0.96″ color LCD display successfully operating with your Arduino, so you can move forward and experiment and explore further types of operation with the display. This includes installing the Arduino library, making a succesful board connection and running a demonstration sketch.

Although you can use the display with an Arduino Uno or other boad with an ATmega328-series microcontroller – this isn’t recommended for especially large projects. The library eats up a fair amount of flash memory – around 60% in most cases.

(As the display uses the ST7735S controller IC, you may be tempted to use the default TFT library included with the Arduino IDE – however it isn’t that reliable. Instead, please follow the instructions below).

Please check that the library has been installed – to do this, select the Sketch > Include Libraryoption in the IDE and scroll down the long menu until you see “ER-TFTM0.96-1” as shown below:

The library used is based on the uTFT library by Henning Karlsen. You can find all the drawing and other commands in the user manual – so download the pdf and enjoy creating interesting displays.