No Anchor Alarms required. 16x2 display help is though

Hi All,

Long time, no posts. Nice to see the old faithful team of hippy, Dippy, westaus55 et al still on board.

The good ship Meridian was sold nearly three years ago and we are now residing in Bathurst NSW, home of the famous race track.
After a quiet period, now getting back into various electronic projects, including Ham radio and Arduino for the grandson. I now have a test beacon on 2m with an 08 controller sending Morse Ident.

As part of the Arduino kit, we got a 16x2 LCD, RTC module plus other bits and pieces. So, being a Picaxe fan since 2004, I was wondering how to get them working together. I have a couple of 14Ms, 20Ms, lots of 08 and 08Ms. It been a while since I bought any... I assume it is easier to use I2C for all of this.

Regards

paulr (meridian)

Oh, and the 18B20 too.

meridian said:

As part of the Arduino kit, we got a 16x2 LCD, RTC module plus other bits and pieces. So, being a Picaxe fan since 2004, I was wondering how to get them working together. I have a couple of 14Ms, 20Ms, lots of 08 and 08Ms. It been a while since I bought any... I assume it is easier to use I2C for all of this.

Click to expand...

Welcome back Paul. I remember your anchor and pirate issues of a few years ago. I guess Bathurst has stopped rocking by now.

i2c is not always the easiest to get working with an LCD; however, not impossible. Could you post some details about the LCD module Eg model (Rev Ed?) or a photo, so that members can see your starting point?

Peter

Welcome back. You probably would need to use I2C for the RTC module as most are designed to use that. If it's a raw 16x2 LCD then 4-bit parallel would probably be required which uses 6 I/O lines.

The biggest issue may be what you want to do with what you have. The older pre-M2, pre-X2 parts have quite limited memory which will constrain what you can do. You could possibly use multiple PICAXE parts - say the 08M to interface between RTC and the other PICAXE - but it might be better to simply use an M2 or X2. If you want to be able to adjust the RTC time that can require a fair deal of code.

Point taken about the memory limitations. What is a good modern Picaxe to use these days?
The RTC is a DS1307. Assuming it still holds the time, how do I read and display it? The LCD is a generic 16x2 out of China, with 16 pins D0-D7 with power , RS, RW, E, A, K, Vss, Vdd.