1. Simulating with Wokwi
For this week, I plan to simulate controlling a LCD display with the Raspberry Pi Pico. To tie it with my final project of jamming with neuronal spiking signals, I created a module for generating random spikes and displaying the spike train on a LCD screen. The basic code to achieve this is a following, written with a little help from Wokwi demo by Urish & ChatGPT 4o mini:
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
// Initialize the LCD with the appropriate pins
LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7);
// Array to hold the characters displayed on the LCD
char displayChars[16] = {' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' '};
// Firing Probability
float frProb=1.0/2.5;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
lcd.begin(16, 2); // Set up the LCD's number of columns and rows
randomSeed(analogRead(0)); // Initialize random seed
lcd.clear(); // Clear the display at the start
lcd.setCursor(1,0);
lcd.print("Random Spikes");
//Serial.print(frProb);
//Serial.print(ceil(1/frProb));
}
void loop() {
// Shift all characters to the left
for (int i = 0; i < 15; i++) {
displayChars[i] = displayChars[i + 1];
}
// Randomly decide whether to display "|" at the rightmost position
if (random(0, ceil(1/frProb)) == 1) {
displayChars[15] = '|';
} else {
displayChars[15] = ' ';
}
// Display the updated characters on the second line
lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
lcd.print(displayChars);
// Wait for a short period before the next iteration
delay(100); // Adjust delay as needed
}
The connected LCD screen during spike generation looks like this:
Simulation Result