Well, I was super-excited to be part of the ThinkHaus great global hackerspace challenge, and right as it was kicking off my father ended up in ICU @ the hospital. I have been spending most of my free time there with my family, but have found a few hrs. to work on the GGHSC. Our project is basically a homebrew PLC that any dummy can program. Think snap-circuits meets legos. Pre-build modules can be snapped together and programmed through a touchscreen HMI with very basic logic (ie: digital output 1 [wired to heater] turns on when analog input 1 is less than 70 deg. C). Of course things won’t be named “digital output 1” but instead would be “heater ON output” and analog input 1 would be named “room temperature,” or whatever the user deems appropriate as a name. Since it’s to benefit education we’re also comming up with an entire curriculum for the project as well as documentation/etc.

My part in this is obviously VERY limited due to my current situation, but I was to be responsible for coding the base unit as well as the touchscreen HMI. Since I had already ordered the 4dsystems uLCD-32PT(GFX) module from sparkfun I decided to play with it and load sample code and start working on the HMI whenever I have time. I got sample code loaded and everything was cool until I tried to use the SD card. As soon as I tried to use it I was getting “Disk not mounted” and “unable to mount” or “Card OUT” depending on which sample program I ran. My card was 4gb, but was formatted for fat16 anyway and should have worked. As I pulled the card in and out while running the USDTEST sample program I noticed that the text on the screen quickly flickered to “Card IN” and back. I found that if I held the card @ just the right spot it would stay @ card IN. The problem was that I cheaped out and bought the least expensive piece of trash uSD card I could possibly find. It seems that the pads on it did not line up properly with the pins in the display module. As soon as I took a SanDisk uSD card it worked like a charm. I just wanted to post this b/c there seem to be several ppl. on the forums complaining that their SD cards don’t work despite being properly formatted. I tried to post to the 4dsystems forum but they require not only email validation, but subsequent manual approval of the account. I’m not exactly what you’d call a patient person, so hopefully when somebody searches for solutions ot this problem they’ll stumble upon this. That’s all for now, but I’ll be sure to post updates when I get cool touchscreen stuffs working 😀

Cheers!