Today some new stuff arrived.
First of all the new Arduino RP2040 Connect board, a Wifi capable board with a much smaller form factor then the Uno clone I had before.
Second came in the GPS module and the GPS antenna, which is going to be used for precision time display.
See picture to the right.
First the new board
First I switched out the boards and use the new Arduino board. That caused me some headache, because digital pin 3 (that I was using to be able to switch the backlight on and off) did not work on this one. I found the reason why it wouldn’t work, apparently it cannot be set to INPUT_PULLUP, and that’s what I relied on. Eventually, after a lot of reading and debugging to try and get it to work, I switched that function to pin 5 and removed to INPUT_PULLUP’s…
Also, the library I’m using, LiquidCrystal_I2C, caused the compiler to warn that it might not work on this new hardware architecture. So far, I didn’t notice that. It still works with the functions I’m using so far.
Back to the old board for now
Later on I found that the library that is needed for the GPS module was not immediately compatible with the architecture of the Arduino Nano RP2040. Until I find how to remedy that, I switched back to the clone Uno and got the GPS module connected. It does not yet provide very accurate data, but it’s a start… More to follow next time…
