In this tutorial we will learn how to interface 1.3″ colour round LCD with ARIES v2 boards. In this experiment we will use an RTC module and display the analog and digital watch face in Round LCD module.

1.3″ Round LCD

The 1.3inch SPI Color Round LCD (240×240) Breakout features a high-resolution and vibrant IPS display, offering excellent viewing angles. This round display is ideally shaped for things like watch faces, speedometers and displaying data in interesting circular ways like pie charts and polar area graphs. You could also use it to add animated eyes to cosplay masks, build a moon phase tracker or just for displaying all the best round GIFs of pizzas, hypnotic spirals and chonky animals.

DS3231 RTC

The DS3231 RTC module is low cost and communicates over I2C interface having a supply voltage range from 2.3V to 5.5V . It has an in built crystal oscillator and temperature sensor which makes the IC more compact. A secondary EEPROM IC of 32 KB size is also provided with this module. To provide uninterrupted power supply, there is a provision to provide battery also.

Prerequisites

• Windows 10 or above/Linux (64 bit)
• Arduino IDE
• VEGA ARIES Board support package

Components Required

• ARIES v2.0 Board
• Micro USB type B to USB type A cable
• DS3231 RTC
• 1.3″ Round LCD
• Jumper Wires

Note: All of the following boards can be used for this project

• ARIES v2.0
• ARIES v3.0
• ARIES Micro
• ARIES DOT
• ARIES IoT

Connection Diagram

Connections:

Procedure

Open and set up the Arduino IDE as described in Getting Started with ARIES v2.0.

• Make sure you have selected ARIES v2 Board from Tools -> Board -> VEGA Processor: ARIES Boards -> ARIES v2
• Select Programmer as VEGA XMODEM from Tools -> Programmer -> VEGA XMODEM
• Also select appropriate port from Tools -> Port -> COM* (ARIES Board)

Now, Open Files -> Examples -> Under Examples for ARIES v2 -> SPI-> Round_LCD

Libraries Required

Arduino libraries are an extension of the standard Arduino API and consists of thousands of libraries, both official and contributed by the community. Libraries simplifies the use of complex codes. Every version of Arduino IDE has a library manager for installing Arduino software libraries. The libraries required for this projects are

• Adafruit_GFX Library
• DS1307RTC
• Time
• VEGA_ST7735_and_ST7789_Library

To install the libraries required for this project.

Go to Tools -> Manage Libraries -> and search with the library name

If prompted to install with dependencies then Click on Install all

Once you have downloaded the required libraries you can upload the code to ARIES board.

Output

This demo is used to display clock using Round LCD and RTC. Use the inbuilt DIP switch (GPIO-16) in ARIES v2 board to change the clock display from Analog to digital.

Demonstration