Tom WB6B want to expand the number of digital and analog I/O pins available to him in adding enhancements to his uBITx.
He came up with an ingenious idea, by creating a Smart LCD Backpack to replace the commonly found ones on inexpensive 2×16 and 4×20 I2C displays found on eBay and Amazon.
He has uploaded a library to GitHub that allows you to program a Arduino Nano to emulate the common I2C to parallel backpack used on an I2C display (either size). The Smart I2C Backpack, additionally, allows you to read and write the analog and digital pins on the Smart I2C Display Backpack.
The package includes a interface library that you include in your code to interface with the Extended I/O functionally. Also included are two example sketches. One is the code you program into the smart backpack. The other is a demo/test program you program into another arduino and connected via the I2C bus to the Smart Backpack Display.
The Smart Display Backpack should work with firmware using standard I2C LiquidCrystal drivers such as the KD8CEC firmware.
The code uses libraries that are installable from the Arduino library manager,. The GitHub URLs are just for reference.
- SoftTimer.h //https://github.com/prampec/arduino-softtimer
- Also requires: https://github.com/prampec/arduino-pcimanager
- LiquidCrystal_PCF8574.h
The following libraries should be part of the base Arduino software install:
- Wire
- LiquidCrystal
Tom hopes that others will enjoy this new display and I/O expander.
And the link to the code …
https://github.com/mountaintom/SmartLCDandIOexpander_I2C
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