Stuff To Learn

I knew the different Arduino boards are all a little different, but I didn't realize the Arduino Mega 256 was really different. My other Arduino Mega is only a 128. The Mega 128 and most of the other Arduino boards use the FTDI USB interface. The Mega 256 uses a ATMega8U2 chip, like the UNO. The boards sure look the same

Now I am using Linux to do development, so the serial port ends up being called /dev/ttyACM0 instead of some /dev/ttyUSB0. No big deal really, it is just I was surprised there were more differences than I expected. The Arduino on Linux page has many helps to get things working.

I took the basic sketch, blink and modified the loop to be sure I knew it was my code running on it.

// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(100);               // wait for a tenth of a second
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(100);               // wait for a tenth of a second
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(100);               // wait for a tenth of a second
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(100);               // wait for a tenth of a second
  
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);               // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);               // wait for a second
}

Now I want to get things working with the display. I bought a LCD touch screen for this. The screen looks familiar, almost identical to the Sharp Zaurus screen. (we can talk all we want about iPhone/Android but the reality was there were smart devices running a *nix flavor waiting for a phone a long time before either were invented! Zaurus was the first one I had, the Nokia 770 was the second, wifi enabled internet connected personal mobile devices).

There is a thread on the Arduino forums about this device, including locations of the libraries. I am going to build a minimal graphics library so I can build a display of the basics before I start using the bluetooth connection to the Android.