There's been a lull in my Arduino programming as of late. Seems the last time I had some passion around building something with that platform was about 3-4 months ago when I purchased a number of parts to build a dual-axle controlled track system using the
Adafruit motor shield. While this is still on my workbench I got frustrated with Tamiya dual transmission kit - mine seems to have a problem where one axle spins more freely than the other. This, if you have guessed, will cause the track system to "pull" in one direction, much like when your car is out of alignment. Since I wasn't using a stepper motor I couldn't correct the problem with micro adjustments to align the tracks in the direction I wanted to go. I am not even convinced I could do this without a compass censor and a stepper motor. I will take a look at this in a few weeks and see what can be done about it. In the mean time I managed to find something more interesting to do - something I found at this weekend's
Maker Faire.
Yes I am aware TFT displays aren't something new. But this one looked interesting. It pushes off the processing of the display from the main CPU and provides a SPI interface. This prevents burning up a number of pins on the Arduino - which for some projects can be a nice feature. I was able to get this one from Seeed Studios for a reasonable
price and it seems to be well supported by the vendor. In fact the reps from Seeed Studios brought with them a working GPRS cell phone built on the Arduino platform that used this screen for the key pad. What was even more wild was they built an enclosure for this project using a 3D printer (yea, a 100% contract free, open hardware, open source, cell phone). I haven't yet decided what to do with this screen - maybe an easy game like Simon or Tic-Tac-Toe?
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