Tony is a Geek

Right, I've done enough of the MicroPython stuff now.... let's get back into my comfort zone.... let's go back to the 1990s and write some C code 🤓  Okay, C code isn't specific to the 1990s, but it is when I was first introduced to it....(actually it may have been 1989, but who's nit-picking) and I've been using it on the Arduino for a few decades now.  So it makes sense to now remove the training wheels with the PICO and get back to the lower-level.  As I'm wanting to do stuff with the VGA screen output, it makes sense to go down a layer (I'm keeping above the ASM waterline for now!) The image above actually comes from THIS webpage, however, I didn't follow those instructions, I did however learn something new...scrolling down the article, the nice chap let's us know that GPIO Pin 30 is a RUN pin and if you flip it then it does a hard-reset - this saves you having to unplug the USB cable and plug it back in every time you want to reset - that...

Well, maybe not quite Aloe-RoboCop-Vera: But, it certainly has now moved into the 21st century. A short while ago (End of Nov 2022), so maybe 4 weeks ago? I was very proud of myself for determining that I shall get a little LCD screen (round) and I shall connect it up to a Raspberry Pi PICO a nd to some soil moisture sensors.... I posted about having "fun" getting the LCd screen to work with the PICO and that it was only a matter of formality to get it hooked up and measuring the soil etc..etc... I made a statement at the end of that article post that I will see this through and it will not go by the way-side, like so many other projects have in the past. Now, after many distractions (and mainly a postal strike or two in the middle), I can admit, I have now done it - albeit with a slight cheat.... but this cheat has / will allow me to do even more! MUWAHAHAHAAAAA! I stripped down one of the capacitive moisture sensors and tried to figure out how it worked: https://shop.pimor...

Well, that was a mouthful, wasn't it.  I have been on a little bit of a mission to get a further / deeper understanding of how to use TFT / LCD screens (of all sizes) from a Raspberry Pi, more specifically from a PICO and currently just using MicroPython.  I shall dip into the world of C at a later stage once it makes a bit more sense. The good news is, I had a few existing LCD screens knocking around, from what looks like back in 2013 - the bad news is after wasting about 30hours of my life, they are either just dead or they are proprietary and must have been made before standards were adopted. Whilst I had purchased a waveshare 2.8" Pico-ResTouch-LCD-2.8 (320x240) that allowed you to connect a PICO directly to the back and it had an SD-Card reader onboard, again, it was a little bit locked down - basically I couldn't find any schematics and although I could make a guess at what PINs were doing what, it didn't seem to work for me - that could be down to a lot of facto...