Hello all,
Fisrt of all my name is Frank and I’m TOTALLY new to the Arduino concept but I like it very much!! I’m not totally new to uControllers but I am rusty.
I am looking for advice from the professionals on this forum
For a project that I want to start I want to connect the Nokia 6100 Color LCD Shield (from sparkfun.com) to the Arduino Mega 2560 and use it. Is this even possible??
I have found the library and some example code but I am not sure if I can use this two together (Arduino Mega en Nokia LCD Shield.)
I also want to connect 2 serial devices.
My question is what should I use? And what is the best choice for the a Arduino board, the Arduino Uno or Arduino Mega2560? The reason for my question is that I don’t want to buy an Arduino board and later find out I needed an other Arduino board.
Please advice me in this question,
Thanks in advance,
Frank
(I am assuming you are talking about this: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9363 )
The shield is designed for the Uno, but it could work on the Mega with a few rewirings. Normally, shields work with both the “normal” boards (uno, duemilanove, etc) and the Mega boards, but when using SPI, the pins don’t match up. Search for how to connect a SPI shield to an arduino mega and you’ll get lots of results.
Welcome Frank!
To answer your first question the [Sparkfun LCD Shield does indeed work with the MEGA 2560. What I suggest you do is go to the Sparkfun product page for the LCD Shield and download the linked code from Mark or Peter. I believe in LCD_driver.h at the bottom is the pin out configurations for the MEGA is listed there. IT is also at the top of that file as a #define so removing the comment is easy enough to get the code to use the right pinouts. As far as being a direct shield, I cant say. You may need to run wires to get the pins to work out correctly.
As far as using more than one device on the SPI bus you need another pin for the slave select. If you have looked at the code the SPI library is not used because the LCD controller is a 9bit serial and the SPI library is for 8bit. I too am using a project with more than one device on the SPI bus and I believe that the SPI library and LCD serial communication can live together as long as the baud rate is the same.
No one can answer which is the best Arduino choice for you. The UNO and the Mega2560 do not differ in functionality and deciding between the two is a function of how much more you need. If you never have a reason to use more than the number of functions the UNO provides why spend the extra money for what you don’t need. I have found using the UNO forced me to do more with less and come up with more efficient ways around problems rather than using pins and code.
Good Luck!