(This is a continuation of Part 1 and Part 2…)
Wow, it’s been over 7 years since I built my first NMEA2000 Boat Gauge and it’s been working flawlessly ever since. I recently got into the ESP32 platform (I know very late to the game) and I was interested to see what types of advancements there have been in round LCD screens. The biggest challenge I had with the 4d systems screen module was it’s not a perfect circle and thus it did not fit within the envelope of the 2″ gauge casing. That caused all sorts of complications. This is where the 1.28″ screen by Waveshare comes in (available @Amazon).
The screen comes in both touch screen and non-touch screen versions. I have both working, but since my screen will be mounting inside a matching gauge with a lens over it. I will be installing the non-touch screen version and adding the capacitance touch to the metal bezel. That worked great in my current installed version.
For the interface, I used Squareline.io. It was fairly straight forward but I quickly realized that total 4mb filesystem space isn’t much to work with when dealing with graphics. So I had to break things up into smaller images instead. Currently, with 5 screens and all the logic, the space used is at 96%. I can probably optimize this further as I might want to add a few more screens.
I’ve sent off the new PCB to Oshpark and have a couple blank gauges coming so I can use as donors to graft onto my gauge. Once those come in, I’ll create a new video of everything working.
Below are some of the new work in progress photos and a video of the prototype on the breadboard.
The ESP32 will be mounted to it.