Since nobody replied to my topic, I'll assume that nobody got it to work.
(Or that nobody has one due to it's bad arduino reviews)
Anyway, after a few days of trial and error I gave up on SPI and chose the NewSoftSerial library to do my bidding and it worked!
I even managed to get the native MicroVGA demos to work by frankenstein'ing newsoftserial together with the microvga libraries.
(but I won't be showing that here because people would probably shoot me for its uglyness)
So without further ado, here's a working example:
// MicroVGA mini-guide by Prodigity
// _______________
// |KEY VGA S-VIDEO
// |
// |
// |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_
// 1 2 3 4 5 6 ......
//
// Connect 1 to gnd
// Connect 2 to 5V
// We don't need 3, it supplies 3v3
// Connect 4 to gnd (
// Connect 5 to OutputPin (We chose pin 3 on the arduino)
// Connect 6 to InputPin (We chose pin 2 on the arduino)
// This library handles all of our output and input. (V9 should be able to handle "57.6K baud on a 16MHz processor and 31.25K baud at 8MHz")
#include <NewSoftSerial.h>
// This library allows us to store strings in the flash memory instead of the SRAM.
// This is necessary because the ascii image below is 80*25 chars big. (approx. 2 kilobyte)
// The SRAM on the Atmega168 is only 1 Kb, and trying to put more data on it than will fit
// will only cause problems. (as I've found out personally)
#include <avr/pgmspace.h>
// Customize these to your needs
#define BaudRate 38400
#define InputPin 2
#define OutputPin 3
NewSoftSerial mySerial(InputPin, OutputPin);
// Storing all the strings in flash. (25 strings each with a length of 80 characters)
// 25 by 80 is a convenient size because it's the amount of characters that will fit on one screen.
// Duck is copyright of AmyShortStuff. (http://xxheartofstonexx.deviantart.com/)
prog_char Duck_1[] PROGMEM = " ";
prog_char Duck_2[] PROGMEM = " ";
prog_char Duck_3[] PROGMEM = " ,:===~: ";
prog_char Duck_4[] PROGMEM = " ,~========: ";
prog_char Duck_5[] PROGMEM = " ,============, ";
prog_char Duck_6[] PROGMEM = " ,=====~,:=====~ :~: ";
prog_char Duck_7[] PROGMEM = " :====: =====, ,~=====, ";
prog_char Duck_8[] PROGMEM = " ::, ~====, ~===== ,~=========: ";
prog_char Duck_9[] PROGMEM = " ~====~=============, :~============~ ";
prog_char Duck_10[] PROGMEM = " ~===================================, ";
prog_char Duck_11[] PROGMEM = " :========================~::=======~ ";
prog_char Duck_12[] PROGMEM = " ,:~======================, :====== ";
prog_char Duck_13[] PROGMEM = " ,==================~ ====== ";
prog_char Duck_14[] PROGMEM = " :=================~ ~===== ";
prog_char Duck_15[] PROGMEM = " :==================~ ~====~ ";
prog_char Duck_16[] PROGMEM = " ,=====~============== =====: ";
prog_char Duck_17[] PROGMEM = " ,====~=============== ,===== ";
prog_char Duck_18[] PROGMEM = " ,=====~=============~ ~====: ";
prog_char Duck_19[] PROGMEM = " :=====~:~====~,,::, ~====~ ";
prog_char Duck_20[] PROGMEM = " :======:, ,~=====, ";
prog_char Duck_21[] PROGMEM = " ,~=======~:::::~=======, ";
prog_char Duck_22[] PROGMEM = " ,==================: ";
prog_char Duck_23[] PROGMEM = " :=============: ";
prog_char Duck_24[] PROGMEM = " ,:~~~~~:, ";
prog_char Duck_25[] PROGMEM = " ";
// Define a array of pointers to our strings for easy access.
PROGMEM const char *string_table[] =
{
Duck_1,
Duck_2,
Duck_3,
Duck_4,
Duck_5,
Duck_6,
Duck_7,
Duck_8,
Duck_9,
Duck_10,
Duck_11,
Duck_12,
Duck_13,
Duck_14,
Duck_15,
Duck_16,
Duck_17,
Duck_18,
Duck_19,
Duck_20,
Duck_21,
Duck_22,
Duck_23,
Duck_24,
Duck_25,
};
// This needs to equal the biggest string you've stored in the flash memory. (They're all 80 atm)
char buffer[80];
void setup() {
mySerial.begin(BaudRate);
delay(1000); // Give the microVGA the chance to 'warm up'.
for (int i = 0; i < 25; i++) // Load every string from flash
{
for (int j = 0; j < 80; j++) // Print the characters one by one and skips the NULL character
{
strcpy_P(buffer, (char*)pgm_read_word(&(string_table[i]))); // Copy a string from flash into our buffer in sram
mySerial.print( buffer[j] ); // Print a character!
}
}
}
void loop() {
char b;
if (mySerial.available()) // Has the microVGA sent a character?
{
b = mySerial.read(); // Read the character
mySerial.print(b); // Send it back (to be printed on the screen)
}
}
