Arduino and Nokia 5110 Display

It’s been way too long since I posted something here. Mostly due to a hefty workload and whatever spare time I’ve had has effectively been eaten by other projects. Today finally I got to sit down playing with the Arduino and a Nokia 5110 display I picked up from eBay.

The libraries needed as well as a tutorial for interacting with the display can be found over at Adafruit. Note that if you don’t use Adafruits version of the display the pin-out might differ.

This is the code for the example above:

#include <Adafruit_GFX.h>
#include <Adafruit_PCD8544.h>

// SCLK, DIN, D_C, CS, RST
Adafruit_PCD8544 display = Adafruit_PCD8544(7, 6, 5, 4, 3);

#define _W 30
#define _SIZE 4
#define _BASEX 85
#define _BASEY 5
#define _NUMOFCHARS 14
#define _SPEED 2

void setup(){
 Serial.begin(9600);
 display.begin();
 display.clearDisplay();
 display.setContrast(10);
 display.display();
}

void loop(){
 display.clearDisplay();
 display.display();
 delay(500);

 for (int i = _BASEX; i > -width(_SIZE) * _NUMOFCHARS - width(_SIZE); i = i - _SPEED){
 display.clearDisplay();
 writeAt(i);
 display.display();
 delay(10);
 }
}

void writeChar(int ch, int sz, int x, int y){
 display.drawChar(x, y, ch, 1, 0, sz);
}

int width(int sz){
 return sz * 6;
}

void writeAt(int pos){
 int sz = _SIZE;
 int y = _BASEY;

 writeChar('A', sz, 0 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('R', sz, 1 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('K', sz, 2 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('A', sz, 3 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('D', sz, 4 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('T', sz, 5 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('O', sz, 6 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('R', sz, 7 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('G', sz, 8 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('E', sz, 9 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('T', sz, 10 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('.', sz, 11 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('S', sz, 12 * width(sz) + pos, y);
 writeChar('E', sz, 13 * width(sz) + pos, y);
}

The important thing is not to forget calling display.display() for sending the commands to the display.

Have fun!