Arduino Pro 328 + LCD-09351 = gibberish?

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi,

I bought the Arduino Pro 328(http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9219) and the Serial Graphic LCD 128 X 64(http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9351) and am having trouble outputting text.

here is my setup;

  • a 6V battery connected to the ext pins on the Arduino Pro

    LCD’s Vin => Arduino’s Power Vin

    LCD’s GND => Arduino’s Power GND

    LCD’s Rx => Aruduino’s Digital Pin5


    • The Arduino software is set up to use Arduino duemilanove or Nano w/ ATMega 328 board.

    I am using the latest NewSoftwareSerial library

    I have the following Arduino sketch;

    #include <NewSoftSerial.h>

NewSoftSerial lcdSerialPort = NewSoftSerial(8, 5);

long SERIAL_BAUD = 9600;
long LCD_BAUD = 115200;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(SERIAL_BAUD);
  delay(5000);
  lcdSerialPort.begin(115200);
  delay(5000);
    
  lcdSerialPort.print("t");  
}
void loop() {}

    I power off the LCD by flipping the power switch to BATT while uploading the sketch and turn it to EXT once I get the upload complete message. I see the Sparkfun flame on the LCD, and then I see garbage text.

    I have the Arduino on a breadboard(female headers are on the way and right now I’m using a breadboard to connect to various pins).

    Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

    2

    Anyone have any tutorial/samples that can run on this?

    I even tried the sketch from NCWP(http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/204) - commented out the RFID/GPS/LED stuff and tried to get the welcome text to display and I’m getting gibberish output.

    Strange thing is, if I connect to a different MCU, the LCD works(I can send it commands and text without problems).

    3

    Thanks to Robert of SparkFun, we were able to figure out the problem.

    It turns out my NewSoftwareSerial library was messed up!

    I did the following;

  • - downloaded the latest NewSoftwareSerial library
  • - exited out of ArduinoIDE
  • - deleted old NewSoftwareSerial folder from my Arduino/libraries folder
  • - copied the new NewSoftwareSerial folder to the Arduino/libraries folder

    • Restarted ArduinoIDE, compiled and downloaded my sketch and it works!

    For the record, one of my sample sketches are as follows;

    #include <NewSoftSerial.h>

NewSoftSerial LCD=NewSoftSerial(2,3); //LCD Rx -> Pin 3

long baudRate = 115200;
void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
  LCD.begin(baudRate);
  clearScreen();      
}

void loop()
{
  LCD.print("test");
  Serial.print("test");
  delay(2000);
}

void clearScreen(){
  LCD.print(0x7C,BYTE);
  LCD.print(0x00,BYTE);
}

    Good luck to all