Hi I ordered the Ardunio Mega and the Color LCD shield. I new to Ardunio but am a experienced programmer, and intermediate skill level in electronics. I haven’t managed to get it working. I was able to get a 20x4 LCD working but I need the flexibility of the Color LCD.
Here is what happens after soldering the headers on the board, I plugged it into the ardunio and then plugged in the USB. The back light comes on immediately. I then loaded the sample code and nothing, I tried the different variants of the code but still just a bright blueish screen.
I’m wondering if maybe the LCD controller (Epson / Phillips) could be the issue, or if maybe I have a bad board. The ardunio is new, the only other things I have done is the blinking LED.
I’ve done other electronics and embedded programming, I’m pretty good at soldering so I don’t think I damaged it in any way.
The Ardunio 5v pin was a little low, and the 3.3v pin was high so I wonder if maybe the Ardunio could actually have a voltage regulator issue. What should the tolerance be on the voltage pins.
I didn’t have time to do a full set of diagnostics on it, I will do so in the next few days but some specs or pointers would help. Also is there any sample code for this that just flashes between red and blue (or other color) and doesn’t use the library (this would help remove some of the variables for testing).
Did you read the comments on the SF product page ? There was some discussion of which Arduino’s were compatible with the color LCD shield due to some voltage oddness. Also there was this :
zada | January 20, 2011 at 1:17 PM1
Hi, I have one of these, when I connect it to Arduino Mega and use Peter’s code, but when I apply the power I get lots of fuzze pixels!
Also is Peter’s code for Epson or Philips or both?
Thanks.
pvk_vicky2000 | January 21, 2011 at 9:57 PM1
i think its for epson
because in the lcd_driver.h file he commented all the lines which had philips mentioned.
for it to work with philips u nee to comment all epson lines of code and uncomment philips’s lines.
Those fuzzy lines are a result of imprper connection with the 3.3v line or the D9 pin which is notoriously loose for me. after i soldered it rock tight it stopped fuzzing…mostly!
RocketManRC | January 25, 2011 at 1:14 PM1
This may save someone a bit of time: if you are trying to use this shield with the Mega 2560 you need to change line 245 in LCD_driver.h to:
#ifdef AVR_ATmega2560
Then it works fine.
Check out all the comments, you might find something useful there.
yes looked through the comments.
I saw this
SparkFun distributor PauloLenz | May 31, 2010 at 12:26 PM1
reply|report
The Color LCD Shield works with the Arduino Mega?
SparkFun Employee Jimb0 | June 1, 2010 at 9:19 AM1
reply|report
Sure. You’ll have to bit-bang the 9-bit SPI (like we do in the example code), but all the power and digital I/O pins do line up.
but I don’t know what he means by bit-bang and he said “like we do in the example code” so I figured it was already done.
It appears the comment you referred to has a image its just fuzzy I’m just getting the backlight, same if I just hook up the power header and no data headers.
I’ll dig a little deeper, I have another Ardunio on its way the basic one so I’ll be able to test with it tomorrow.
Yahh I got Peter Davenport’s (http://peterdavenport.posterous.com/) code to work so the board is good, thats the main thing I wanted to know. I wanted to make sure all the hardware was good before I started coding custom code against it. I learned a long time ago never to assume something works out of the box.
I did have to change in LCD_driver.h the line //#ifdef AVR_ATmega1280 to #ifdef AVR_ATmega2560 but after that it worked.
Posting this mainly if someone finds it in a search.
now time to get my sensors working, there is a new post for that issue.