Serial Display, trying to display | / - \

Using Arduino Programming Questions
1

Hi,

I've been playing with my Arduio Nano now for a few day,
and i'm trying to have my serial display, display these characters ( | / - \ ) as
an indication that something is running,
but for some reason when it gets to \ it does not work.. I believe its a special character
I even tried using the decimal value of the ASCII character

my test code,

#include <Wire.h> 
#include <LiquidCrystal_I2C.h>

LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x27, 2, 1, 0, 4, 5, 6, 7, 3, POSITIVE);  // Set the LCD I2C address
char Show[] = {"|/-\0"};
//char Show[]{'|', '/', '-','\0'};
//int Show[4] = {124,47,45,92};             //             | / - \

int displaycount = 0;

void setup()
{
  lcd.begin(16,2);   // initialize the lcd for 16 chars 2 lines, turn on backlight  
  lcd.backlight();    // finish with backlight on  
}

void loop()
{
    displaycount = displaycount + 1;
    if (displaycount > 3){
      displaycount = 0;
    }
    lcd.setCursor(15,1);
    lcd.print(Show[displaycount]); 
//    lcd.print(char(Show[displaycount])); 
    delay (1000); 
}

thank's for any help

Nigel

2

when it gets to \ it does not work.

Use

Serial.print("\\");

The \ is a special "escape" character used in things like tab ("\t") so it needs to be escaped itself.

3

Has the LCD backslash in character set? If not, you have to define it in CGRAM.

4

Budvar10:
Has the LCD backslash in character set? If not, you have to define it in CGRAM.

from googling, it appears \ is not in it's ascii table.

I'll have to define my own... more googling.. :slight_smile:

Thanks..

5

Use LCD.createChar() function.

{ 0x00, 0x10, 0x08, 0x04, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00 },	// BACKSLASH

NOTE: Character 0-7 can be user defined.

6

It took a little while to figure it out,
I had a issue when using "createChar", it was not a function in the library
so some more googling, and its working now,

thanks..

#include <Wire.h>
#include <LiquidCrystal_I2C.h>

LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x27, 2, 1, 0, 4, 5, 6, 7, 3, POSITIVE);  // Set the LCD I2C address

char Show[5] = {" |/-"};
uint8_t SpecialChar [8]= { 0x00, 0x10, 0x08, 0x04, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00 };

int displaycount = 1;

void setup()
{
  lcd.begin(16,2);   // initialize the lcd for 16 chars 2 lines, turn on backlight  
  lcd.backlight(); // finish with backlight on  
  lcd.createChar(0, SpecialChar);
}

void loop()
{
    lcd.setCursor(0,0);
    lcd.print(displaycount);  
    
    lcd.setCursor(15,1);
    if (displaycount > 3){
      lcd.print(char(0));
      displaycount = 0;
    }
    else{
    lcd.print(Show[displaycount]);       
    }
    displaycount = displaycount + 1;
    delay (1000); 

}