This week's assignment involved output devices. For me, the first impression I get with an output device becomes a form of digital interface, so I thought I would play around with a tft screen.
So I found this round display screen online, and decided to get it. I was curious how the display would show up and began playing around with it. Used Xiao SamD microcontroller and, soldered Samd to use on breadboard for now.
I initially used ChatGPT to extract a code to display on the screen. However, it was very difficult mainly due to the specific tft screen and was not sure how the connections worked. After finding sample code with massive help from TA Lingdong on the tft screen documentation on waveshare, things became much easier.
After updating the code and using the provided example from Waveshare's documentation! All I wanted to do now was the upload an image of my choice onto the TFT screen.
This required looking into web colors and more specifically into converting images to get the hexadecimals using an RGB565 Converter. I found this site: marlinfw.org. And it converts image input into hex RGB565!
After testing the code and once it was made sure that it worked, it was time to mill a pcb. I wanted the screen to stand on its own so the PCB would have a microcontroller and pin holes for battery pack. I first drafted a circuit on KiCad, and then made a PCB layout.
The next step was to convert the gerber files into gcode for the CNC. So I used FlatCAM as the tool to convert the gerber files into the CNC.
Then I milled the PCB.
[LEFT] engrave process using a V tool.
[RIGHT] end mill to drill holes.
[LEFT] Fully cut PCB.
[RIGHT] Laying out the PCB with Xiao SamD21 and a voltage regulator for the battery.
[LEFT] After soldering the PCB according to previous image.
[RIGHT] Filp to show the pin headers connected on the backside for the screen.
FINAL OUTCOME