Arduino Based Focus Stacking Control Panel with Touch Screen

mjkzz · Post by **mjkzz** » Mon Mar 26, 2018 8:00 pm

Thanks to Mike's "challenge" on implementing that time delay circuit using Digispark, I dove into this Arduino thing a little more, though I have bought and used it before, I never use it extensively. So the other day, I came across this TFT touch screen for arduino and bought it.

The TFT display seems to be an older version of a TFT screen designed and sold by Adafruit, and since all graphic libraries were written by Adafruit, it should be easy to port over to new TFT screen by Adafruit.

One thing about this particular TFT screen is that you send parallel data over to it and/so it uses up ALMOST all of pins. Fortunately, it left serial port open. So to experiment with it, I used one of my controller to communicate with it and it works, though a lot of dangling wires.

Future improvement : I will design a shield that basically put all the hardware on it and it will be sandwiched between Arduino and the TFT screen. This way, it will be one single unit with all focus stacking functions.

Here is a preliminary video

elf · Post by **elf** » Mon Mar 26, 2018 9:21 pm

I used a Nextion touchscreen on another project. It uses a serial connection, so only two pins are needed.

For focus stacking I used Bluetooth to connect to an Android phone. I think this is more flexible than a touchscreen. The two technologies aren't mutually exclusive so you could have the basic functions on the touchscreen and more advanced over Bluetooth to a phone or computer.

mjkzz · Post by **mjkzz** » Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:15 am

only two pins? wow, but I would expect that it is slow. this display is rather fast, very responsive, probably due to 8 bit data bus.

yeah, I do have iOS and Android apps for my controller, but the point here is for those tinkerers who like to design their own screen layout, use their own rails with particular pitch, play with their own GUI, even automate things like when to start the stacking process, etc.

I also noticed that there is a micro SD card socket on the screen, so it can be used to store data like stacking parameters, etc. It left one pin unused, maybe I can put in a real time clock to record time, etc.

All these are possible with Arduino where you can modify code and download it to the device.

anyways, maybe I was carried away, I started playing with it and within a few hours, I got the GUI done, then spend some time to get the motor control done. I think spent about 12 hours to get where I am now. Had I not soldered a couple of wires wrong, I could have done it in much less time. I was too excited.

mawyatt · Post by **mawyatt** » Tue Mar 27, 2018 7:56 am

Peter,

Nice

Best,

mjkzz · Post by **mjkzz** » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:39 pm

thanks Mike, will try a 7 inches touch screen for the Raspberry Pi project for stack and stitch

mjkzz · Post by **mjkzz** » Thu Apr 05, 2018 6:52 am

Being OCD, I have to finish it, so I made this shield. It is pretty powerful : 8 microsteppings, full to 1/128th, 2 limit switch inputs, lighting control -- you can do "mid curtain" sync, ie fire your flash in middle of exposure to avoid vibrations caused by shutter blades, power setting from 0.125A (mostly for idle to save power when battery is used) to 1.875A.

Essentially, you put it on top of Arduino Uno, then put your user interface shield (such as the TFT shield with touch sensor) on top of it.

Will finish the software library in form of open souce (probably github) OPEN SPEC doc is available, too, as of NOW. Hopefully, this can help some tinkerer to build their own system.