Project Log 2013 - Temperature to Thermostat Part 2

For this post I'm going to show the display that I added for the temperature guage project. Also, I decided to turn this project into a more generic sensor system--attach the sensor I want and activate the appropriate code.

As I mentioned previously, for the prototype I used a shift-register to turn on/off LEDs. Now I'll be displaying the data on an i2C RGB LCD display "shield" (meaning it fits on top of my boarduino), because that's much cooler than a plan-old-LCD.

If you missed it in the previous post, here's the code for the prototype: Temperature Guage 1 @ codebender.

This post will be short because I've been very busy but I want to share. In future posts I'll continue to go over this stuff in much deeper detail.

Here are a few pictures of the display and it's i2C controller board.

The i2C controlled  RGB LCD 16x2 character display (is so dope)

Above is the display and i2C board mounted on my boarduino. Not to mention: 5 buttons + reset button just waiting to be used.

A clearer shot of the display and it's i2C board

Holding the RGB shield (in my hand) so you can see the header 

pins that snuggly fit into my boarduino on the right

The test code is basically the example that came with the Adafruit library (I changed the text). The buttons are currently programmed to change the display's color. It has some pretty colors!

I can snap this display on my Arduino Uno or my boarduino. This'll be my display for all my sensor projects.

I've already starting writing new code for displaying information and also for a menu. My current thoughts are  to load several of my sensor functions onto the microcontroller and then pick what sensor I'm going to use from a menu (it won't be completely user friendly or failsafe, but that's OK). Depending on what I pick the program will try to use the appropriate function to interpret the data it gets.

I'm specing out small PCB boards for holding my sensors. I'll use some "ribbon" cabling to attach the sensor unit to headers on boarduino's project space (look above, you can see all the open silver holes ready for electronics!). Also, at least 2 MOSFETS are going on that board so I can use my data to turn things on and off (peltier generator may be the first cool thing I use that with).

The next few posts will be simplistic like this. I'll cover a little detail of each bit of the project. None of this is really written as a how-to... just a journal of what I'm messing with at the moment.