Connecting All the Things

I’ve made some progress getting familiar with setting up smaller, individual components like a GPS module and an LCD. But over the weekend, I decided I wanted to take another leap and try to connect several of these things together.

I got a larger breadboard to work with, and was able to place my components together in what seemed like a coherent setup. The LCD wiring was always a little crazytown, but add to that four more jumper wires for the GPS module… and this thing looks like a miniature bomb.

Despite how fancy this all looks, I’m still mostly copying what I’m seeing from online tutorials.

I was able to get some text working, but had to noodle around a lot to actually get the GPS data to display on the LCD. Ignore the folded post-it note, as that’s just because the pins are loose on the GPS module (I haven’t tried my hand at soldering yet).

After a lot of debugging, some success! Still figuring out how to best utilize the loop structure when coding, but got some data to show up at least!

An interesting discovery: there are things called LCD backpacks, that reduce the number of pins needed to connect an LCD to the Arduino from 12 down to 4.

That seems like yet another thing to learn (and requires soldering), but would greatly reduce the nest of snakes that I’ve got going on, currently. And would also free up some pins that I need to handle a servo motor and a push button as well.

The more I do and learn, the more I discover that I need to do and learn. I guess that’s how it goes.

Related:
Reaching out to the Satellites
The Liquid Crystal Shortcut

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