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18th JC: Birduino


I just reported on Frequency that I’ll put a break into working on it up to past Christmas, because I’ll need to wait for a Christmas gift from Tina…

When googling though the internet to learn more about LCD screens, especially touch ones, I discovered a video on Youtube with the game Birduino based on „Flappy Bird“. 

I think, this would be a nice cache, when including this principle inside a main geocaching sketch… What’s your opinion, my friend?

The explanations inside the video are very helpful and I think, it should sooooo difficult to make it happen. I just ordered a LCD screen and a shield for it. The shield is needed, because all inputs of the LCD a running with 3.3V while (most) Arduinos are offering 5V output.

Last week I was from Tuesday to Friday late evening on a business trip: Hamburg - Paris/France - Madrid/Spain - Toulouse/France - and back home. During the flight I read a lot about Arduino programming. Here’re the most important topics, I’ve learned:

  • #define: is the old fashioned way to declare variables which will never change (as e.g. the pins used)
  • const int, const String, const ...: is much better
  • by declaring variables as „const“ you’ll save some memory (One of my sketches went down from 8%/34% to 7%/24%. Not so bad!)
  • volatile: a variable being changed inside a loop, which is called by an interrupt, should be declared like this (e.g. „volatile int flag_button_pressed = 0“

Also I read a lot about the libraries used inside this sketch and started programming. Unfortunately the ordered shieds didn’t arrived yet, so I’m programming „blind“...


Tuesday, 11/8/2016

I’ve made a lot of progress:

IMG 2009


Can’t test the game, because the screen is broken and touching doesn’t work… More tomorrow (I hope…)!


Sunday, 11/20/2016

The sketch is finished, but I have a big problem with the new TFT displays. The old one was working pretty fine (see above), but it was broken. So I’ve bought some new ones. But the display is quite ugly:

TFT new


I surfed a lot through the internet, but I’ve found no solution. Now I’ve just sent an eMail to Sainsmart. Let’s see if they’ll answer and will offer a trick…


Monday, 11/21/2016

A lot of guys are talking about Sainsmart as Sainshit, but I’ve sent them an eMail yesterday and got response already today. The asked me about the precise SKU and I tried to answer. Let’s see, what will be their response...

screen-capture

Meanwhile I stepped deeper into the sketch and modified the parameters for the bird falling or jumping. I think, the sketch is ready now and I’ve put it into your DropBox, Tim. But you need also to copy (or „steal“) some libraries: UTFT and URTOUCH…  The parts, you will need are mentioned at the header of the sketch. So you can order and already start to learn, how to fly the bird through the openings of the pillars...


Tuesday, 11/22/2016 - It’s done!!!

The next eMail I received from Sainsmart was polite, but not leading to any progress because they told me, I should contact the stores, where I’ve bought the TFTs. I bought one from Eckstein Komponente and 2 from Amazon. First I phoned with Amazon. What a surprise: They even didn’t fetched what I wanted. I asked for a technical solution and they offered a return and full refund. Nice, but…

Next call was with Eckstein Komponente. Much more interesting to help. They’ll foreward to a technician…

After that I surfed through the web again. At the end I found a comment at Amazon, where someone proposed to change a file inside the UTFT library. I did and it worked!!!

In addition I modified the sketch. When tapping on the screen when a welcome screen is shown, the next screen will be shown immedeately. Also I discovered a small mistake on the „Congratulations screen“ after taking the movie. This one I just corrected.

I’ll copy the modified library to your DropBox folder and now the cache is ready to receive a nice housing from you. (Because we can’t shield the touch TFT, I propose an ammo can…) 

Here’s a video of it:


As ever: clicking to YouTube you can watch in 1080p


Wednesday, 11/23/2016 - Sketch published

I have just published the sketch here. The ZIP file is containing the complete sketch (and the pictures used) and the libraries UTFT and URTOUCH as well. As stated above, I was able to bring a new 3.2 touch TFT from Sainsmart to life by changing the file initlcd.h inside this library. Please see below:

screen-capture-1


If you’ll use a different TFT also named „SSD1289“ and you’ll discover problems, you should rename the file initlcd.h_old back to initlcd.h.


Tuesday, 07/31/2018 - Building the cache

Nearly one and a half years passed bye since my last post. But since some weeks I’m working on that cache. It will be located inside an ammo can and everything will be printed with my 3D printer:

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You can’t see the ammo can, but a lot of things being printed. There’re some more, I’ll show later.

I hope, I’ll be able to publish this cache within some weeks...


Stay tuned! 

Blog will be continued… 


©  Olaf Goette 2008 - 2022