Hi,
I am new to this forum and to Arduino. I turn to you for advise on a TFT for my project. But let me first introduce myself and my project.
I am in my 50s and I know how to program. Some 20+ years ago I used C and C++ professionally. Although I forgot about the oddities since then. More recently I did Java for Lego Mindstorms, I was part of the team that developed Lejos.
Now I set myself to making an electronic switch board for my sailing yacht. On sailing yachts electric power is a scare commodity, therefore it is custom to be able to switch off individual pieces of equipment. As a result my yacht has 20 power switches. I want to replace this with a single touch screen to handle the switches.
This far I bought an Arduino Mega, a cheap touch screen and shield from itead and 3 relay banks that have 8 10A relays each and that communicate over I2C. I have written a program that displays a graphical menu with 24 toggles that each represent a switch. Pressing a toggle on the screen toggles the status of a relay and thus switches on or off a piece of hardware. You can also scroll through the screen. I am rather pleased with the program.
However, I am not pleased with the TFT screen. It is too small, the touch screen is unreliable (often it does not work at all), its shield occupies all the pins on the Arduino, and it is not suited to use in a harsh environment as the shield and board cannot be properly fixed or easily boxed.
So now I am looking for a better alternative. My demands:
- reliable hardware
- 4.3 of 5 inch display
- resistive touch
- preferably no shield needed, direct interface to Arduino. Plugging in the Arduino directly is ok. An SPI wire connection is preferred.
- mounting options for the display
- an Arduino library available
- It may utilise its own 12v power
- ability to easily protect the exposed hardware.
- proportionaliteit fonts would be nice
The display will be in the boats interior, but it will get some beating from the waves and a moist and salty environment. It might be used with wet fingers.
What are your suggestions regarding the display?