If you want a good display and interface device for an embedded project, it’s hard to look past an old smartphone. After all, you’ve got an excellent quality screen and capacitive touch interface all in the same package! [Doctor Volt] explains how to easily set up your old smartphone to work as a touchscreen for your Arduino.
[Doctor Volt] demonstrates the idea with a 2018 Samsung Galaxy A8, though a wide variety of Android phones can be put to use in this way. The phone is connected to the Arduino via a USB-to-serial converter and an OTG cable. Using a USB-C phone with Power Delivery is ideal here, as it allows the phone to be powered while also communicating with the Arduino over USB.
The RemoteXY app is built specifically for this purpose. It can be installed on an Android phone to allow it to communicate effectively with Arduino devices, which run the RemoteXY library in turn. Configuring the app is relatively straightforward, with a point-and-click wizard helping you designate what hardware you’re using and how you’ve got it hooked up. [Doctor Volt] does a great job of explaining how to hook everything up, and how to build some simple graphical interfaces.
There are a ton of display and interface options in the embedded space these days, many of which can be had cheaply off the shelf. Still, few compete with the resolution and quality of even older smartphones. It’s a neat project that could come in very handy for your next embedded build! Video after the break.
Whats the USB-Serial for?
The Nano has that builtin.
Check out around the 1:25 mark: “The adapter port is used for communication with the phone, while the USB connector on the Arduino remains available for debugging and uploading programs.”
clones using atmega328p don’t have USB and there’s a CH340 on the back.
Power?
Oof. Free demo version has 20 second timeout and is limited to 5 entities. And the editor is cloud-based. Darn. It looked nifty. I was going to try it out.
20 seconds limit is activated when you use more than 5 elements.
Still terrible. Hard Pass.
Why would anyone do this yet alone pay for it when there are so many easier and better ways to make a UI to control the Arduino?!
You could look at dumb display as an alternate. It seems to fill the same requirements
https://github.com/trevorwslee/Arduino-DumbDisplay
Another really neat application for Android is called “PHONK”. https://github.com/victordiaz/PHONK
Man it would be cool if the UI layout was pushed by the microcontroller. Then you just plug in and open the app and you’re off to the races. There’s a standard OTA mechanism and the controls are implemented in the app. But config and logic is on the Arduino.
Perhaps you could do this through running a website on the device with websockets, the browser on the smartphones can be opened full-screen, so i could see this work.
Somewhere in the parts bin I got an “1sheeld” that lets your phone’s sensors to be available for the Arduino.
I’d thought Processing for Android was the way to go for controlling and communicating with the Arduino from Android.
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Exactly. What a waste of time.
Hi there.
RemoteXY is a nice and useful library. For me I miss there a solution how show older data. Because I used it by bluetooth. I wanted to see data for 3day in chart when I connected. And it is not possible.
Six years ago, I made VectorDisplay which did something like that. It also emulated a bunch of the Adafruit GFX library, so you could use it to prototype a project that would eventually get a screen of its own. https://github.com/arpruss/vectordisplayarduino . I ended up never using this in a project, though.
Where is the editorial oversight here? This is hardly in the spirit of a “hack” if you have to pay for it … and it’s a subscription model no less! Not to mention that the price is subvertly hidden until you actually install the app.
I’m still looking for a nice desktop app to visualize serial data output without resorting to specialized libraries, with a parser that can pick out the relevant data and display it in a customizable widget. There are some, but they only work so-so with very limited display functionality.
RFO-Basic is the way to go !
http://mougino.free.fr/rfo-basic/
Load that on the android and create your interface. communicate with your micro via Bluetooth or wifi.
Fantastic piece of software !
Smartphones are typically the way to go. I once built a wirelessly controlled guitar pedal using an ESP32 and some digital potentiometers. I used MIT’s App Inventor to create an app that would enable me to connect the ESP’s Bluetooth to an Android. The only two downsides was that App Inventor only works with Androids, and the digipots (X9C series) were a bit glitchy for my taste. But even without App Inventor, a Bluetooth serial app and text commands would work just fine for that