I’m new with this Arduino thing but I’ve bought and studied for a week now and I’d like to test some stuff. I have purchased the Arduino Starter Kit so I’m - at least kind of… - familiar with basic soldering and others. What I’d like to ask before making my purchase is are the following components compatible with each others? I don’t actually have any specific project in my mind, I just want to test stuffs with Arduino and maybe (hopefully, though) someday create something sweet for myself. – And yes, I know I have a long path to go, but still…
So, here’s the list of the components I would like to put on a test in a one ‘big’ project:
- LilyPad Arduino USB - ATmega32U4 Board (DEV-12049)
LilyPad Vibe Board (DEV-11008)
SparkFun Micro OLED Breakout (LCD-13003)
Polymer Lithium Ion Battery - 110mAh (PRT-00731)
Bluetooth SMD Module - RN-41 (WRL-11786)
So yeah, as you can see, USB connection (which works as a charger as well…), vibration, small display, battery and bluetooth connection. I do know I need crystal(s), capacitors, etc. but I’m just asking about the main components at this point. If these components are not compatible with each others, which components you suggest instead? I’m not so familiar with USB charger combined with battery, so that’s why I’d like to use this board because I read it doesn’t require any ‘extra work’ with it. And the battery naturally doesn’t need to be big, like display neither, because this is just for testing purposes to get familiar with the components.
After I know the components I start looking for the correct crystal(s), capacitors, tactile buttons (if I have interest testing those in this project as well; for shutting down the display, scrolling through the different text arrays, …) and screws.
As for the BT and OLED … I believe they can work w/the LP USB but I have to ask … why a LP ? They are short on IO pins to talk to other things. For example D2, D3 are the I2C pins needed to talk to the OLED. You want a UART w/it’s Tx and Rx pins to talk to the BT but these aren’t brought out to pads. You can use 2 other IO pins and “special” software to emulate a slow UART. That leave’s only 5 free pins (1 to be used to control the motor).
Ah, of course. Completely forgot the amount of mA the vibe board needs to run. Shame on me!
First of all, I chose this LP board because, like I said, I want to get familiar with different type of connections and it includes USB charger as well. In the Arduino Starter Kit I already used a cell battery, so I think it would be nice to learn something new. However, I read it’s kind of hard to ‘build’ one on your own and this board already has the feature. So that’s why I chose this specifically.
And when it comes to BT and OLED selections… Well, BT because I want to know how to transfer data from one device to another using BT connection (as for now). That specific OLED display because of I2C connections. Like I’ve mentioned in my previous thread I’d like to start start doing with I2C. So this gives me good practice.
Thank you for your response for this! Like I said, I may forget some things (or I simply couldn’t find the information I need…) so I wanted to double check these. This is just for experimental usage only, so it basically doesn’t matter if I run short of IO pins - as long as I have enough of them!
So if I understood correctly, the OLED do work without any doubts, but for BT I need UART and this board doesn’t offer one so I need a ‘special’ software. Is it hard to create and how slow connection are we talking about? Or do you suggest me to find another BT (if there are any with something else than UART?)
EDIT: What if I use [this (see here: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12819) BT instead of the other one I mentioned before? I saw it uses I2C connection as well, which fits my purposes really well! I know this product is mainly used for Audio, but actually I could also add a little speaker for this project as well to test the audio mechanics between two devices over BT connection.
heikkik:
So if I understood correctly, the OLED do work without any doubts, but for BT I need UART and this board doesn’t offer one so I need a ‘special’ software. Is it hard to create and how slow connection are we talking about? Or do you suggest me to find another BT (if there are any with something else than UART?)
I'm no BT expert but I think most are controlled via commands passed to their serial port. And for you that means an emulated (via software) UART. This isn't hard, there's a standard library included as part of the Arduino IDE. But doing in software does tie up the micro. I don't know what speeds are realistic w/your LP; 9600 certainly, 115k certainly not.
Now it only does a subset of BT4.0, the BLE or BT Smart part. Not good for transferring large amounts of data but “simple” to get working communications across platforms (PC-Windows, iOS, Android). It talks over an [SPI channel, which is semi-available via those pads in the middle of the LP board.](Serial Peripheral Interface - Wikipedia)
Awesome, thank you for your reply. I’ll certainly read about the BC127 module link you gave. Also thank you for the point out to the Adafruit and more specifically to the product. I’m not looking for to transfer a huge amount of data. Just basic stuffs like when I do something e.g. from PC it transfers the data via BT and display some text on the OLED display – for example, something like that.
I think those links and info you gave me will definitely be really helpful for me!