Tag: Arduino

Often you need to draw a line at certain angle, and you find it hard to recall the math you learned in school to do this calculation. Same was the case with me recently when I was working on DashPanel-Arduino project.

First, I searched for ready to use snippet someone posted online, but I was out of luck. As the last resort, I looked up actual equation and converted it into a simple function which can be easily pasted in any Arduino source file.

#define DEG2RAD 0.0174532925

void drawAngularLine(int x, int y, int length, int rotation)
{
  float angleRadians = DEG2RAD * (rotation - 90);
  float x1 = x + cos(angleRadians) * length;
  float y1 = y + sin(angleRadians) * length;

  // SSD1306Wire I2C display object
  display1.drawLine(x, y, x1, y1);
}

While working on same project, I wanted to rotate a bitmap at runtime and draw on attached I2C OLED display. I stumbled upon this post on Arduino forum, and tweaked it a bit for my needs.

#define DEG2RAD 0.0174532925

void drawRotatedBitmap(SSD1306Wire *display, 
                       int16_t x, int16_t y, 
                       uint8_t w, uint8_t h, 
                       const uint8_t *bitmap, uint16_t angle)
{
  int16_t newx, newy;
  uint8_t data = 0;

  float cosa = cos(angle * DEG2RAD), sina = sin(angle * DEG2RAD);

  x = x - ((w * cosa / 2) - (h * sina / 2));
  y = y - ((h * cosa / 2) + (w * sina / 2));

  for (int16_t j = 0; j < h; j++)
  {
    for (int16_t i = 0; i < w; i++)
    {
      if ((j * w + i) & 7)
        data <<= 1;
      else
        data = pgm_read_byte(bitmap++);

      newx = 0.5 + x + ((i * cosa) - (j * sina));
      newy = 0.5 + y + ((j * cosa) + (i * sina));

      if (data & 0x80)
      {
        display->setPixel(newx, newy);
        //display.drawPixel(newx, newy, 1);
      }
      //else
      //  display.drawPixel(newx, newy, 0);
    }
  }
}

There’s a trick with this one. You need to make the bitmap size in multiples of 8, like 16×16 icon, 48×48 etc. Once you make 1bit bitmap (.bmp) using Photoshop or MS Paint, you will need to convert it to byte array using Image2Bitmap utility to use in your Arduino code.

For example, an arrow icon converted to byte array would look like this:

const static uint8_t PROGMEM icon_nav_arrow_16x[] {
	0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x80, 0x01, 0x80, 0x03, 0xc0, 0x03, 0xc0, 0x07, 0xe0, 0x07, 0xe0,
	0x0f, 0xf0, 0x0f, 0xf0, 0x1f, 0xf8, 0x1f, 0xf8, 0x3e, 0x7c, 0x3c, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
};

I hope these code snippets will help you save some time. Happy coding!

Starting a new open source project DashPanel-Arduino. The aim is to develop a low-cost, easy to make gadget to show usable info for trip. It uses Arduino framework on ESP8266 WiFi enabled microcontroller.

The list of components is quite short at the moment,

• 1x ESP8266 ModeMCU compatible DevKit
• 1x GPS module – blox NEO M6
• 2x OLED 0.96″ displays – I2C interface
• 2x DS1820 temperature sensors

The initial version features following data on two OLED displays:

• Current course with compass view with numeric value
• Current speed
• Latitude and longitude
• Number of satellites locked
• Clock with date and weekday
• Altitude
• Cabin & ambient temperatures

Project Setup and Repo

DashPanel-Arduio is developed using VS Code editor with PlatformIO extension for ease of environment setup, programming and deployment.

• VS Code
• PlatformIO Extension

Before you clone the repo, just install VS Code, add PlatformIO extension to it and you’re all ready to build.

Start VS Code, go into Source Control section and click Clone Repository, paste the link to DashPanel-Arduio repo: https://github.com/chall3ng3r/DashPanel-Arduino

Once clone process is completed, from VS Code’s command palette select “PlatformIO Build” option or use the shortcut keys Ctrl + Alt + B. The first build will take a bit of time as it will download required SDKs and libraries. Give it few minutes. If there are no errors, everything is okay and you are ready to upload build to dev board.

You can setup the components on breadboard like I’ve done, connect NodeMCU with USB of your PC and chose PlatformIO Upload option from command palette or use shortcut keys Ctrl + Alt + U.

NodeMCU GPIO Connections:

• Software Serial for GPS module: 13, 15
• I2C for OLED displays: 4, 5
• OneWire DS1820 Sensors: 2

The project is still work-in-progress, and not yet in final form. The plan is to make a 3D printable enclosure.

Future Plans

The reason for using ESP8266 for this project is to enable WiFi AP on it and have a webserver to serve mobile and PC optimized settings page.

Some of ideas include:

• Setting time zone offset. Currently hard-coded.
• Set destination coordinates and then it will show how far and which direction is the destination.
• Maybe different screen layouts to choose from. Like one for off road trip, another for city trip, etc.
• Feature to record the GPS coordinates in standard GPX format, then upload to cloud service when reaching in range of saved WiFi after a trip.

Why I needed to make this project? Back story is shared on PakWheels forum.

Do share your ideas to improve it further or you can join on GitHub to contribute.