Tim Mikkelsen's Arduino Projects

2016/05 Arduino Nokia LCD / GPS Clock

Description:

In playing around with my grandson's clock, I thought it would be interesting to try building a clock using more of the GPS receiver - including latitude and longitude.  I did a version very similar to the original clock but with a 4 line display.  This was okay, but I had some Nokia 5110 cell phone displays and thought I'd try one of those and it turned out well.

I adapted the original code but replaced the Hitachi LCD drive with the Nokia routines.  Pretty similar code structure.  

The Nokia display ends up being 12 characters across by 6 lines.  This is a bit more restrictive for line length.  I set it up to display:

     Name or Message

     Date

     Time

     Latitude

     Longitude

     Altitude (in feet)

Again, in the code, there are tests that check the date and put up different messages on the top line of the display (family birthdays, holidays, etc.)  These are only for fixed dates.    

Hardware:

  - Sparkfun DEV-11114  - an Arduino Pro Mini 8Mhz/3.3V   (or a regular Arduino Sparkfun DEV-12757)

  - Sparkfun DEV-09873  - FTDI Basic Breakout (to program the Pro Mini if used)

  - Sparkfun LCD-10168  - a Nokia 5110 84x48 graphic LCD display

  - Sparkfun GPS-13470  - a GPS Receiver - GP-20U7

  - Sparkfun COM-09806 - one 10k trimpot

  - 6v 200ma wall power supply

Total parts cost: Approximately $50

   A few comments:

1. Again, the GPS receiver wires were very fragile.

2. I used a trimpot for adjusting timezone.  It is possible to adjust it based on longitude.  However, because of the weird nature of time zones, you'd still need to have a +/-1 adjustment and I didn't think it was worth the effort