Arduino Compatible IIC / I2C Serial 2.5″ LCD 1602 Display Module

This is a quick description of how to hook up the LCD module to an Arduino. FastTech currently offers the unit for $5.83 (free shipping).

LCD1602Display_I2C-Front LCD1602Display_I2C-Back

In order to have some ‘meaningful’ values to show on the LCD display the setup includes a potentiometer (any value between 5k and 50k should work) to create analog input values:

LCD-Display-with-Potentiometer_bb

#include <Wire.h>
#include <LCD.h>
#include <LiquidCrystal_I2C.h>
/*
For details about the LCD display with I2C support see
http://www.fasttech.com/reviews/1380909/22072
and
http://dx.com/p/funduino-iic-i2c-1602-lcd-adapter-board-w-2-5-lcd-screen-black-green-red-173588
The reviewer comments by docpayce and particularly JackWP associated with the two product pages above have been very useful.

Connect the LCD: VCC -> 5V, GND -> GND, SDA -> A4 (PortC4, ADC4), SCL -> A5 (PortC5, SDA)

The LiquidCrystal_I2C library needs to be downloaded and installed from here: https://bitbucket.org/fmalpartida/new-liquidcrystal/wiki/Home
*/

#define I2C_ADDR 0x27
#define BACKLIGHT_PIN 3
#define En_pin 2
#define Rw_pin 1
#define Rs_pin 0
#define D4_pin 4
#define D5_pin 5
#define D6_pin 6
#define D7_pin 7

LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(I2C_ADDR,En_pin,Rw_pin,Rs_pin,D4_pin,D5_pin,D6_pin,D7_pin,BACKLIGHT_PIN,POSITIVE);
LCD *myLCD = &lcd;

int SENSOR_PIN = 0; // center pin of the potentiometer

void setup()
{
  lcd.begin(16,2);               // initialize the lcd
  lcd.home ();                   // go home
  lcd.print("Hello, ARDUINO ");
  delay(1000);
}

void loop()
{
  int sensorValue = analogRead(SENSOR_PIN);
  // set cursor to second row, first column
  lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
  lcd.print(sensorValue);
  lcd.print("      ");
  delay (100);
}

Kudos to docpayce and particularly JackWP for pointing to, and figuring out the constructor parameters (see URL references at the top of the Arduino sketch).

Online Involute Spur Gear Builder

For the impatient: Just head over to the Online Involute Spur Gear Builder page.

UPDATE: This post refers to an old version. For information about version 2 see this post.

Still here and interested in some background? Perfect! Involute gears are by far the most commonly used gears today. An involute curve is fairly easy to calculate and quite a number of freely available tools and scripts exist that use this fact to create involute gear profiles (see e.g., Gear template generator, Parametric Involute Bevel and Spur Gears, OpenJsCad’s gear demo, and many more). However, I have not found a freely available tool that correctly caters for undercuts that occur for smaller tooth counts (around 10 or less):

UnderCutExample

If the undercuts are ignored the resulting gears will jam if machined and assembled precisely. For an elegant description of the issue including a recipe for how to graphically create correct spur gears see Michal Zalewski’s corresponding section in part six of his excellent Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting series.

The code behind the online involute spur gear builder determines the tooth profile by simulating how a gear with infinite radius (aka rack) would cut into a smaller gear as discussed by Michal Zalewki. The advantage of the infinite gear is that it has a very simple trapezoidal tooth form solely defined by the addendum height and the pressure angle. In the figure below the rack is shown at the top. When the rack is moved to the right the gear needs to rotate clockwise so that a point on the pitch circle of the gear moves with the same speed as the rack. The code simulates this movement in steps and then for each step subtracts the shape of the rack from the gear.

InfiniteGearCutter

For illustration purposes the figure below has been calculated based on very coarse steps and only shows two teeth of the rack.

AnnotatedCutoutSteps

In reality the code simulates only one rack tooth and calculates the tooth profile of half a tooth of the matching gear. The complete gear is then assembled by mirroring and rotating the half tooth. All of this is accomplished by leveraging the ‘Constructive Area Construction’ capabilities of the csg.js library which is part of OpenJsCad. Each rack tooth location is calculated and created as a polygon. These polygons are joined together with the union operator to form one complex 2d shape that is then subtracted from a slice of the outer circle of the target gear to form half a tooth. Finally, the complete gear is assembled from rotated and mirrored half teeth:

CAG_AssemblySteps

The graphic above shows rough steps in the final output. This can be somewhat alleviated by using finer steps in the simulation but to really get rid of the steps additional smoothing is required. The step profile occurs in the undercut regions where the backside of the rotated rack tooth profile sticks out as a corner. The smoothing logic is explained in this diagram:

CutoutSmooting

The final result has smooth tooth profiles. As an example below is an image of a calculated gear set (pressure angle 14.5°) consisting of a 30 tooth gear meshing with an 8 tooth gear. Small values for clearance and backlash were used. Head over to the involute spur gear builder page to try it out yourself.

SpurGearExample

UPDATES: