Hi all,
I've tried making my first arduino shield and I'm tearing my hair out!
I'm using a 16 pin LCD which worked on a breadboard, but once transferred to stripboard all I get is a block of squares. I've checked and rechecked all the connections...
I'm using the demo sketch from the LCDCrystal library, pin 2,3,4,5,11,12. When I plug the shield into the arduino, led on pin 13 comes on, is this significant?
There are some pics below, maybe someone could point me in the right direction?
Your strip board reads LiquidCrystal lcd(12,11,5,4,3,2); not the other way around. Did you use (2,3,4,5,11,12) or (12,11,5,4,3,2)?
Are EN and RW both grounded? It's hard to tell.
Hi,
Thanks for the quick reply.
I'm using, LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2);
R/W (pin 5) is tied to ground and
EN (pin 6) is tied to arduino pin 11.
RS is tied to arduino pin 12.
Just checked my soldering again, and nothing obvious pops up.
That's a good question. I was just checking the connections but yes, where are the pins that plug in to arduino pins 11,12,5,4,3,2? Since he bent them to do a cheap connection to LCD, they're clearly not straight and can't plug into the arduino headers any more. Silly?! ]
I was wondering if bending the pins down to make the connections was a stupid thing to do! DOH! Just realised what the previous two posts were about! I feel like a complete and utter muppet! I've not got any connections to the arduino.. Damn bloody fool that I am!
Thanks for your input guys, I'm strapping my dunces hat on and standing in the corner for the rest of the day! :~
Think I may have to start this shield again...
Don't feel so bad. You won't be making the same mistake otherwise you will truly feel bad.
I had my first shield and it didn't have a current-limiting resistor for the back light, I just jammed it in another spot. Maybe you can start doing printed circuit boards or etch your own board.
This is what comes out of my experience (many not-to-be-shown prototypes later )
I felt like a right idiot once I realised what I'd done, but a lesson learned!
I've never etched a board although I've read a few tutorials, I think etching is the way forward. I don't have a laser printer, only inkjet, so I'm guessing I'd need to photocopy the deisgn onto glossy photo paper? Draw it onto the copper board with a magic marker?
Wow - really impressed with your blog liudr, you've done some impressive stuff. I'm just trying to learn all I can at the moment, which make the Arduino.cc forums absolutely amazing.
@brucethehoon, I'd love to have a look at your design and see if I can make any sense of it.
Thanks again everyone, I'll be resoldering those pins tomorrow!
It works like a charm and is just great. The only thing to note is that for MANY LCD units, it's backwards - meaning you'd have to mount the LCD to where it would cover the side of your arduino that has your analog pins on it.
There are MANY LCDs out there that don't have this problem, but all but 1 of mine do.
A good alternative at an honestly good price (lcd wise) is here:
This one lets you decide where you want your pins soldered.
First time someone thanked me and a bunch other guys with an lcd message and I'm reading it on my lcd monitor. =(
BTW, maybe you forgot a current-limiting resistor for the back light. It's glowing too bright. I'd put a 150ohm resistor between 5V and anode of the back light.
Thanks where thanks are due!
There was nothing in the guides I was following regarding a resistor although it makes sense, it is too bright. Something I will add in the next revision.
You wouldn't happen to know of good Eagle/PCB etching guides would you? Ive been scouring the interwebs but Eagle seems very complex. I can just bare follow a schematic!
I have not done any etching yet. My workshop is just my entire desk top plus a cabinet. I don't like chemicals either. If you have eagle PCB questions, I can help. I've done over a dozen boards with eagle and they all work
I'll try and dive into Eagle this weekend, one thing I found making that shield was that there is o decent stripboard layout software.
Do you send your Eagle files off to be professionally made? How do you know that they'll work? Can Eagle simulate the curcuit?
Sorry for all the questions!
I check and recheck and let my wife press the submit button
I don't think eagle can simulate the circuit but I get help from the forum when I have problem or want someone help me check again. sparkfun has quite a few eagle tutorials and I started from there. To order boards, you can go to batchpcb.com or dorkbot pdx. It takes 3-3.5 weeks for me but it's worth the waiting.
I've had a little go at Eagle, and it is intuitive although a steep learning curve!
Heres the schematic for the lcd shield, it looks very messy to me - any suggestions?
I live in the UK so not too sure what BatchPCBs shipping policy is. Don't want to get stung with customs charges on top of shipping.
I don't see any provisions for a current limiting resistor for the LCD backlight. You might also want to consider provisions for software control of the backlight, either simple on/off or possibly PWM.
Keep in mind that you do not have to use any specific Arduino pins for your LCD. You might want to investigate which pins are required for any other devices that you may wish to use with your LCD (TWI, PWM, External Interrupts, etc.) and choose different pins for your LCD. If none of this is a consideration then you may wish to choose pins that make the pc board layout simpler.
By the way this is not really a schematic diagram, it more closely resembles a wiring diagram. A true schematic diagram is designed to clearly show the signal flow, usually left to right, without regard to the actual physical pin locations on the individual devices. A wiring diagram is designed with a physical pin arrangement similar to that of the actual devices and is more appropriate for pc board design (which is why Eagle uses this setup).
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