It’s alive!
It took multiple days to get the screen working but its finally working!
I breadboarded the Morse Tutor at http://w8bh.net because I wanted to practice CW when not on the air or not on the computer (i.e. using my paddle). As a hobby guitarist, I see the paddles as just another instrument. Probably I was having a hard time learning CW was because I was just trying to hear and memorize the music, without playing it. Enter the Morse Tutor.
It should have been easy enough to build but I didn’t have a STM32 card so I tried to use a ESP8266, then Heltec ESP32 w/Lora and a screen. I wasn’t able to make any of them work with this 2.4 inch touch screen (not using the touch feature).
I finally bit the bullet and bought the HiLetGo ESP32 that Bruce used in his finished product.
Even after hooking up the ESP32 I couldn’t get it to work and gave up. There simply wasn’t enough info on his website to breadboard it. I looked at the images of the board that you could get made and tried to trace the missing pins to no avail. The code certainly doesn’t say which pins are for MOSI and other bare pins.
Then I watched one of his YouTube videos where he compares 2 screens. You can see in that video that he has all 8 pins of both TFT’s connected. I went back and tried to ZOOM IN AND ENHANCE! I tried to trace the wires for hours to no avail. I knew there had to be a way.
As a last ditch effort I tried to make sure that the screen wasn’t defective so I
- Used a known good ESP8266 to test it using an Arduino text library – that worked!
- Then used the ESP8266 with the Adafruit library. That worked, too!
- Then I used the ESP32 with the Adafruit library except supplying pins for the missing wires. That worked!
- Then I used the ESP32 on the breadboard, changing the code a little to define the missing pins. IT WORKED! The only thing I don’t have working right now is the SD card (which I don’t really care about at this point).
Now I’m able to happily hook my Bencher paddle to this and practice sending CW even when off-the-air!
My favorite is the mode where it sends letters and doesn’t show them to you right away and you have to send them back and then it scores how many sends you get right vs. wrong. Very fun.
After learning my mistakes, I am considering seeing if I can get it working with an ESP8266 or an STM32 module (which is what his building lessons are based off of).
73,
KV0N
