LCD Shield - DFROBOT

So recently I worked on a project where I wanted to have a simple display show the temperature and humidity as well as have a button to trigger a timer.  This was meant to be a resin casting assistant, hence the name "RES-ASSIST".

TFT LCD Touchscreen Display

TFT LCD Screens are great.  They have really good resolution, they can be used as an input device and give you a lot of flexibility in terms of display.  The downside with the cheap chinese versions (like the one shown below), you can't turn the LCD backlight on and off.  So you either have to have it on completely or off completely.

I purchased this one on amazon, and it didn't come with any drivers or instructions, however reviews indicated (and I confirmed) that https://github.com/prenticedavid/MCUFRIEND_kbv this library will make it work.  It still took some tweaking.

Songle Relay

These power relays are great for simple control of turning power on and off to a device.  The tricky part is finding any information on exactly how the pin mapping is setup.

Rise and Smile Project

The original goal of this project was to provide a way to send messages to my kids before I went to work since I go in very early and don't see them in the morning.  This simple device can receive messages from a computer or phone over a local LAN, and displays the text on its screen.

Adafruit 4x3 Phone Matrix Keypad (with I2C)

This entry details the setup for using the Adafruit Phone style 4x3 Matrix Keypad.  I liked the way this one looked, even though there wasn't good documentation how to use it.  I wanted to prevent utilizing so many digital pins, so I went the I2C route with the PCF8574 board.

Arduino IDE Paths

When developing in the Arduino IDE there are a number of paths for where specific examples or libraries are stored, or can be stored for easy access.

By preferences set in the IDE you can set where your own generated sketches are.

From here, an internal libraries folder is created.  Any files placed within that path are considered part of the system path, and therefore files can be included with the <*.h> syntax.

There are also the following:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\libraries
• C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Arduino15

Push Button (non latch)

When adding non latching push buttons to an arduino, it's not obvious from the button itself how the signal flows through its prongs.  In the image below, top two prongs are shorted, and the bottom two are shorted.  The switch essentially joins the top to the bottom when pressed.

Traditional methods of wiring for these buttons are as shown.  A pull-down resistor method on the left, and a pull-up resistor method on the right.