I am a young newcomer into Arduino world. I want to realize a thermostat (when possible) by using a touch screen display (I do not want hardware pushbuttons) of suitable size (not less than 7 x 5 cm to so that temperatures can be read from a distance) to connect to an Arduino board. So far I have only read about Arduino Board, but I have experience of electronic hardware and I have been coding with Visual Basic and Flash.
I have no experience with displays, so that I decided to post to this forum to receive suggestion which would help me either to renounce to the project 
, or to shorten the project time 
. My present questions, mainly connected to the display operation, are the following ones:
-Does exist a display allowing writing characters of different size?
-Is it possible on the display to place in various locations some special icons, like arrows, symbols etc, that is, little images?
-Will such images react to the touching according to program?
-Will it be possible to load different pages?
-Does Arduino provide time and days of the week?
Thanks for the attention
nodar10
nodar10:
but I have experience of electronic hardware and I have been coding with Visual Basic and Flash.
Not sure if you can code real projects because Visual Basic and ActionScripts are very different from The Arduino languge. Its more like the C languge. Im afraid you might have to learn a bit more if you are a TOTAL Newbie.
nodar10:
-Does exist a display allowing writing characters of different size?
-Is it possible on the display to place in various locations some special icons, like arrows, symbols etc, that is, little images?
-Will such images react to the touching according to program?
-Will it be possible to load different pages?
Yes, Yes , and Yes just choose the right libaries and you should be good.
nodar10:
-Does Arduino provide time and days of the week?
Not Really, If you gonna do it for long times you should use a Real Time Clock module/IC. Google it.
Hope i answered it pretty good.
My way of making "characters of different sizes" is to draw them as graphics.
As for time and day of the week: it is not hard to program the Arduino to handle that; however, the Arduino is really not a very accurate timekeeper, and if there is a power outage it will "forget" the time and you will have to reset it. To deal with that, I use a DS3231 chip to keep track of the time. The DS3231 also contains a temperature sensor, which might be useful to you as you are making a thermostat, but its temperature measurements might not be accurate. It is probably better to get a separate temperature sensor.
Thanks for the attention.
All of you have focused on specific items, but my main question is "which display could I use?". I have seen the programming language of Arduino and frankly I will have no problem in coding with it. Does it exist a display with the features I require and available at a low price, less than 20 $?
I need also low cost temperature sensors, because I intend to sense the temperature in several differet places.
regards,
nodar10
You could use an android device for the display.
That would also give lots of other potential capabilities.
Communication is typically either bluetooth or through a USB to serial adapter.
If you google around you can find lot of projects that do this.
--- bill
bperrybap:
You could use an android device for the display.
For a thermostat?
What would it look like with one of those hanging on the wall?
odometer:
For a thermostat?What would it look like with one of those hanging on the wall?
An android device is great for a smart display and i/o device.
There are many open source projects to enable this.
Here are some links to one for using it as a thermostat:
There are other open source projects that use the Android device as a smart display or input device to the Arduino.
The Arduino and its environment is simply too wimpy to be able to do theses type of applications.
Yeah, it is possible to cobble up some impressive things like this using only an Arduino and a bunch of parts, but it is a total pain, particularly on the AVR, and often can cost more than using something with more/better resources to begin with.
--- bill
Another way to go is to use MQTT and then use the Android device as an interface/display device:
For this kind of stuff, I'd definitely want to integrate into openHAB, IFTTT, & MQTT for true home automation. i.e. the thermostat is just another IoT device that can be controlled or provide sensor information to control other things.
That will even get you to the point of having thermostat control through Amazon echo/Alexa, which is pretty cool.
In other words, if I were going down a path of thermostat automation, I want to build something that can eventually integrate into these type of systems rather than build something that is just a standalone system with a fancy display.
If you google around there is tons of information on stuff like this - the key is making sure that it can integrate into the automation systems mentioned above, in particular MQTT as the others can be layers on top of that.
--- bill
nodar10:
- Does exist a display allowing writing characters of different size?
- Is it possible on the display to place in various locations some special icons, like arrows, symbols etc, that is, little images?
- Will such images react to the touching according to program?
- Will it be possible to load different pages?
- Does Arduino provide time and days of the week?
- yes
- yes
- yes
- yes
- no, not 'natively'; this requires an RTC or other "clock"
Fully-utilizing all of this display's features can eat up a of program memory (flash) --
https://www.amazon.com/Touch-Screen-Socket-Arduino-Module/dp/B00UAA2XIC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1468174523&sr=8-2&keywords=arduino+%2B+TFT
Thanks to all for the interesting suggestions. Now I have enough material to analyze and digest.
As soon as I obtain some good result I will post again.
Thamks again and good bye.