MP-1: Adding a small display… and a rotary encoder

A display is necessary to be able to really augment the functionalities of the MP-1. A couple of LEDs blinking is fine for Power-ON and Battery status, but a small display adds much more flexibility.

Since one version of the test setup is using a Jeenode, I will be using a Jeelab display with the Jeelab library. The other test setup will use a standard display with the Arduino LCD library.

A bunch of available displays!

First, the easy one: using a display from Jeejab is about as simple as it gets. Plug it in an available port on the Jeenode and add a piece of code. The Jeelab display is using I2C for communications, so it uses a Jeenode Port. Of course, powering this with the one-battery board is now out of the question! The Jeenode needs to be connected to real power supply (or usb).

For the second setup, I will use the display in the bottom right of the picture. It’s a leftover from a PU-2 Beta that never left home. This one happens to have a rotary encoder attached. So why not include the rotary encoder code in the project? I have all the code from the PU-2 to handle the rotary encoder.

MP-1 using a Jeenode

MP-1 using a Jeenode, display and rotary encoder

Since I want to use the same code for different MP platforms, I made the code portable by using #ifdef platform statements when necessary.

MP_1_V0_4

If you look at the code and have been following the projects from PracticalUsage.com, you should have realized that most of the code is from the PU-2 Beta project. In fact, the MP-1 code is now also integrated into the PU-2, making the PU-2 a wireless pedal board! The PU-2 uses an Arduino Mega 2560 for more program memory and many more digital/analog pins. The PU-2 was already using SPI for the SD card reader and I had already reserved an extra pin for the RFM12B SEL connection. I even reserved room on top of the SD card reader for the RFM12B! So the RFM12B board can be integrated into the PU-2 as a retrofit.

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