I've never done programming or anything like that before.
I'm a ham radio operator in Ontario, Canada and I want to use one of these little boards with a nice LCD screen to be able to listen with a microphone and decode Morse code from my radio as my hearing isn't what it used to be.
I have two boards:
ATmega328 UNO
ATmega2560 MEGA
And my LCD screen is a Velleman 2.8 inch touch screen, part number VMA412.
I bought these at a surplus place so I don't know how current they are or anything.
Can I make a Morse code decoder using these components?
if so, which is the most suitable board to use?
And where can I download some program which is already in some library for use? I wouldn't know how to program if I walked into a program on the street.
Ok thanks for the link about the LCD display. I downloaded the ZIP file and it opens to show a lot of directories.
What do I do with it? I didn't see any installer, no .EXE file, how do I make use of it?
For a Morse code decoder, yes there are a plethora of projects on the internet but it's a crap-shoot trying to pick one which genuinely works. One can burn and churn through days, weeks in trying to figure out something which does or doesn't work.
I'm hoping there might be better quality choices here.
The hardest part, at this point, seems to be the Morse decoder part. I think that if you edit your thread title to reflect that you need help finding a Morse decoder you will get help with that faster. There are several hams on this forum.
Here is a tutorial on installing libraries. The libraries in that folder may not be the latest. It might be better to get those libraries through the IDE library manager. The MCUFRIEND_kbv library is available from the library manager. I don't know about the touchscreen.
Well right now I have the ATmega328 UNO board connected to the PC with a USB cable. The LCD screen is mounted on the board and the backlight is on. Nothing is being displayed on the screen.
Apparently something in Arduino Create does find the board on COM3.
The lights are on but I can't even test anything to see if the LCD and the board work together. I'd like to verify that the basics are working before I even try to find a Morse code decoder program to load into it.
What is an IDE library manager? I don't see it or any other resource which could make things work. Is it called something else?
Like I said, I'm completely new to this stuff, I've never even programmed before, never seen this stuff before so it's quite alien.
From within the Arduino program I found (V1.8.12) and installed, I went to "Sketch", then "Include Library" and thern to "Add .ZIP library..."
I tried to get it to accept the .ZIP file from Velleman of library for this display, as a result I got some error message saying "The library 'VMA412 code and library update' cannot be used. Library names must contain only basic letters and numbers (ASCII only and no spaces, and it cannot start with a number).
The letter V in VMA412 is a basic letter, I don't get what it is complaining about. Weird.
I tried the link you offered and it ended up taking me right back to the same download page where I found that installer which put Creator on my computer.
I uninstalled that, I tried the next installer link referring to a ZIP file. The end result was exactly the same as my first attempt except that downloaded as a zipped .EXE file which didn't require any installer.
So third attempt was to try the Windows App. Since I don't have and don't want any Microsoft login, when the link led me to the Microsoft store there was a bit of an argument with the computer to make things download but eventually it did.
The program looks exactly the same as Creator. The version number associated with it is V 1.8.33.0 in the Help menu "About Arduino".
I ran this program and did the library thing you mentioned. That helped a little. But I found that I was still getting an error message about Adafruit_GFX.h.
So I went back into the library manager and I searched for Adafruit_GFX.h and let the library manager install it's Voodoo. After that was done I quit the program and restarted it.
I clicked the Verify button, it complained about low memory. Then I just clicked for it up upload.
Now the LCD screen is running all kinds of colourful text messages and colour patterns, so at least I can verify that the hardware combination does come to life and does work.
Thank you for helping. It's an extremely confusing thing for an older guy with no programming experience to try to latch onto just to solve an issue with deciphering Morse code.
Now I have to try to figure out where are Morse code programs here.
Now that I verified that the ATmega328 is working with the LCD, how can I do the same thing with the ATmega2560?
Is there some automatic detection tool in the Arduino program which will detect the different board when I connect it to the computer's USB wire or do I have to download and install something?
But when I went to download and install it, apparently (from the previous comments) it was a Creator download from that link.
It took using the Microsoft store to actually get what I needed. Not the link.