Beaglebone Black with 128x64 OLED

I compiled my I2C OLED library on my beaglebone black and with little effort, I was able to get it working. My BBB is running Ubuntu instead of Angstrom (instructions to get that flashed are in a previous post). This code was the same one running on the raspberry pi in my prior posts.

Steps taken were:

1. Download code from github
2. run make
3. run the compiled executable

The I2C class was defaulted to use the address of the OLED so I didn't need to change anything. :)

Here are some images of displaying a BMP on the OLED.

Simple Xbee Tutorial

I also got a few XBee modules with USB XBee Adapters and I started to mess around with them. The reason I got the adapters is primarily two fold. First, the XBee pins are 2mm and not the standard 0.1" so they do not fit on the standard breadboard. Secondly, the USB adapter makes programming the XBee very simple. I am using X-CTU to do the programming, but you can also do it over command line using the terminal, but it's a little more complicated.

Overview
My first simple project was having  1 XBee (the coordinator in API mode) talking serial to an arduino. The second XBee (the router in AT mode) would be reading a state of a pin and reporting its value every second. It would send that information to the coordinator and the coordinator would send it to the arduino where it can be seen via the serial monitor. A contrived setup and test of the XBee, but yet it made me have to learn a few more things and research on how it works.

XBee #1 - the controller in API mode

XBee #2 - the router in AT mode

The XBee #2 (router) is hooked up to an arduino solely for power and is not using any other features on the arduino. The XBee's I/O pin has been configured (via X-CTU) to read the state of the pin every second. To change the state, I have a momentary push button and a LED wired in. Pushing the button will cause the pin to read HIGH and the LED to go on. Releasing the button will cause the pin to read LOW and the LED to go off. Here are a few more pictures to illustrate.

Understanding the data
I have the arduino (XBee #1 controller) programmed to write out the frame that the XBee #2 (router) sent to it. By analyzing the frame (of hex values) we can see the digital pin being toggled as well. The highlighted lines second to the last byte (0x10) shows that digital pin 4 read high. Why 0x10 you ask? That is because bytes 19 and 20 represent the digital pin data. byte 20 represents 8 digital pins with bit 0 corresponding to digital pin 0 and bit 7 to digital pin 7. So, 0x10 (16 decimal) is 10000 in binary which tells us that digital pin 4 is reading high.

State of digital pin changed

TFT Display

Wow, I'm so far behind with this blog! I recently got a 2.2" 18-bit color TFT Display and hooked it up to my arduino to see what the demo looks like. Quite impressive! Especially coming from a monochrome 128x64 display! To get it working using the arduino was very straight forward and simple. I want to use this with my Raspberry Pi so the next step would be to make my own C++ driver to talk to the ILI9340 chip on the TFT. Granted, not all the functionality that the arduino library will be supported, as I just to display text and a few graphics (PNG or BMP). The TFT board also has a mini sd card slot so you could store pictures or data on there that is to be displayed. Check out the link about for all the specifications for the board.

Here are a few pictures from the arduino demo.