I've got a really interesting project in mind, but I don't know where to start so I figured I'd ask for some feasibility advice on it.
During this whole Covid quarantine, my poor grandmother has advanced into dementia pretty heavily. I'm trying to figure out a way to help her out with one of her bigger issues: she's lost her internal clock.
Like a lot of dementia patients, their internal clock goes awry and they can no longer tell the difference between night and day. So I've thought up of an interesting solution, and that is to have a big LCD display that just displays the words "Dawn", "Morning", "Noon", "Afternoon", "Evening", "Night", "Midnight"all of which would correlate to the current time of day (ex: 12->1pm is noon, 1->3pm afternoon, 3->8pm evening, etc). I've looked up a bunch of clock examples, and most of them use either tiny LCD displays or a LED matrix, which is an issue since they aren't big enough for this project. The LED Matrices also have a pretty rough font, which would be tough on her eyes. Readability is totally an issue here, so if I could just connect something like a used laptop display to an Arduino and then output text to it that would be the best of both worlds.
So here's my question:
How do I upscale a clock tutorial that I can find online to both output to a LCD display (6"x8" or so?)?
And how can I print text in a specific font/color to a LCD display using an arduino?
I'm pretty open on what parts to use, as I haven't bought anything yet since the biggest hurdle for me is figuring out how to connect a larger LCD display to an Arduino. I do know I'll probably need a clock module for the Arduino to use (since that's what many of the clock tutorials use), and I also know I'll need a larger LCD, but what kind of LCD display can connect to an Arduino, and what Arduino would be best suited for this kind of project?
So if anyone has any ideas/experience outputting text to a large LCD display from an Arduino, I would love to hear your thoughts!!
Thank you!
The 5" and 7" displays from Adafruit won't work with AVR based Arduinos (Uno, Nano, Mega etc.) because they require a special driver module with lots of memory. Not a beginner project.
For a starting point, you should investigate the minimum size display that your grandmother can easily read.
You might be able to use a digital photo frame of some sort, and display "photos" of words or symbols representing the relevant times of day. Or just program and use an old laptop instead.
jremington:
The 5" and 7" displays from Adafruit won't work with AVR based Arduinos (Uno, Nano, Mega etc.) because they require a special driver module with lots of memory. Not a beginner project.
For a starting point, you should investigate the minimum size display that your grandmother can easily read.
You might be able to use a digital photo frame of some sort, and display "photos" of words or symbols representing the relevant times of day. Or just program and use an old laptop instead.
Hmm that's a good point, I could just use a photo frame. It's be a bit trickier since I'd have to have it transition at certain times of the day (which I'm not sure photo frames do), but that's probably a more cost effective method than a Arduino and a screen
You might look for an Android tablet (or similar). I've never written an Android app and it's probably more difficult than an Arduino sketch, but you wouldn't have to build any hardware.
...A while ago I studied/practiced some Windows programming and it was complicated by having to support re-sizeable windows and all of the overhead involved in running in a multi-tasking environment. On the other hand, once you've got all of that overhead covered, making a "big text" display or finding the time-of-day is pretty easy.
And, it should be pretty easy to show "afternoon" and the actual time simultaneously.
jremington:
The 5" and 7" displays from Adafruit won't work with AVR based Arduinos (Uno, Nano, Mega etc.) because they require a special driver module with lots of memory. Not a beginner project.
It looks like Adafruit has an adapter board for their 4, 5 or 7 inch screens
I'd go for a word clock. Laser cut the words out of a sheet of cardboard or plywood, like a stencil. Then backlight them with LEDs, preferably different colours depending on the time of day. Alternatively have a servo rotate a mask to reveal the words. Either way, make sure she can only see the appropriate word and none of the others or she's likely to get confused.
Sad to say that whatever you do will probably be a short term fix as she's likely to start forgetting what it means pretty soon.
studentdan:
So I've thought up of an interesting solution, and that is to have a big LCD display that just displays the words "Dawn", "Morning", "Noon", "Afternoon", "Evening", "Night", "Midnight"all of which would correlate to the current time of day (ex: 12->1pm is noon, 1->3pm afternoon, 3->8pm evening, etc). I've looked up a bunch of clock examples, and most of them use either tiny LCD displays...