More LCD Problems

[Rocketman1092]

I seem to be having LCD issues similar to those experienced by other posters in this forum. My LCD circuit properly displays the splash screens, but won't display any title and station information. The tuner potentiometer does not respond either. I've checked my wiring, and have verified that the router is sending the song information to the serial port properly.

My first thought was that there might be an issue with the external 16mhz oscillator, since the 3000ms delay between splash screens takes much longer than that (Actually, suspiciously close to 16 times 3000ms). Do I need to set some fuse bits on the Atmega168 to allow the use of the external crystal?

[OndraSter]

Yes, you do .

You should check any online FUSE generator and let it generate for you new FUSE bits and with some app (avrdude, or I prefer using eXtreme Burner) write them to the chip.

[Rocketman1092]

Thanks! I set the fuses, and the interface and LCD is now working perfectly.

[mightyohm]

I guess I should go back and fix the tutorial - thanks for figuring this out.

[lookat]

Hi guys,

could you more explain how to burn fuse bits for this project?

thanks

lookat

[anrandap]

Hello,

First - very impressive project, it takes me a lot of time and energy to approach to the end, but I'm close (I hope) - in return, I had a lot of fun. Jeff - job nicely done, really nice.

So.. in to the problem.. My LCD lights up (first line darker than second one), contrast pot is working fine, but no any letters yet. I took out uC and flashed it successfully outside the pcb (with stk500v2 programmer) - at least verification with avrdude was ok. I didn't do anything with fuse bits and thought that this might be the problem, but noticed that my Atmega168 is getting pretty hot when installed on pcb. Is it normal? After about 3minutes, uC is rather non touchable. I can install some heat sink but is it normal? I double checked pcb and wiring - it is fine according to schematics presented by Jeff. I did set fuses but that didn't help (external crystal enabled), Atmega is still getting hot. Whatsmore, putting clean, not flashed Atmega into pcb results with heating function So still got no displaying played stuff, and thinking about installing heat sink. Anyone had similar problem? Any thoughts?

Greetings from Poland

anrandap

[jeroen94704]

Hi anrandap,

No, it is not normal for the atmega to get too hot to touch, and you should not need a heatsink. It sounds like there is something wrong with your wiring after all. Did you try building the circuit on a solderless breadboard first? That's a good way to iron out any problems you may have in your wiring.

Jeroen

[anrandap]

Thank You for your quick response Jeroen.

I hadn't tried bread-board version before, I saw the schematics and thought that this is so simple that I am going to succeed without b-board try. Well - I didn't succeed After reading your post, I spent some time wiring that on solderless bboard, and the result surprised me a lot. It displays information about wifi radio project (not played stuff however), and what is also important - Atmega is not getting hot at all. You were right, there had to be something wrong with wiring - though I checked wirings with multimeter, and connections looked fine. Maybe my multimeter is lying or I missed some connections that were making short circuit.

Now I have to verify configuration step-by-step according to Jeff's tutorial to find out why is my LCD not getting updated. I'll let You know.

Thanks again for pointing me out good direction.

[anrandap]

Hello,

It seems that radio is now working fine, woo-hoo!

I have two other things to mention but saw similar problems on other thread (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=153) so I'll try there.

Thanks for the tip Jeroen