Tutorial: Arduino and the MSGEQ7 Spectrum Analyzer

This is a tutorial on using the MSGEQ7 Spectrum Analyser with Arduino, and chapter forty-eight of a series originally titled “Getting Started/Moving Forward with Arduino!” by John Boxall – A tutorial on the Arduino universe. The first chapter is here, the complete series is detailed here.

Updated 30/01/2013

In this article we’re going to explain how to make simple spectrum analysers with an Arduino-style board. (Analyser? Analyzer? Take your pick).

First of all, what is a spectrum analyser? Good question. Do you remember what  this is?

It’s a mixed graphic equaliser/spectrum analyser deck for a hi-fi system. The display in the middle is the spectrum analyser, and roughly-speaking it shows the strength of  different frequencies in the music being listened to – and looked pretty awesome doing it. We can recreate displays similar to this for entertainment and also as a base for creative lighting effects. By working through this tutorial you’ll have the base knowledge to recreate these yourself.

We’ll be using the MSGEQ7 “seven band graphic equaliser IC” from Mixed Signal Integration. Here’s the MSGEQ7 data sheet (.pdf).  This little IC can accept a single audio source, analyse seven frequency bands of the audio, and output a DC representation of each frequency band. This isn’t super-accurate or calibrated in any way, but it works. You can get the IC separately, for example:

and then build your own circuit around it… or like most things in the Arduino world – get a shield. In this case, a derivative of the original Bliptronics shield by Sparkfun. It’s designed to pass through stereo audio via 3.5mm audio sockets and contains two MSGEQ7s, so we can do a stereo analyser:

As usual Sparkfun have saved a few cents by not including the stackable header sockets, so you’ll need to buy and solder those in yourself. There is also space for three header pins for direct audio input (left, right and common), which are useful – so if you can add those as well.

So now you have a shield that’s ready for use. Before moving forward let’s examine how the MSGEQ7 works for us. As mentioned earlier, it analyses seven frequency bands. These are illustrated in the following graph from the data sheet:

It will return the strengths of the audio at seven points – 63 Hz, 160 Hz, 400 Hz, 1 kHz, 2.5 kHz, 6.25 kHz and 16 kHz – and as you can see there is some overlap between the bands. The strength is returned as a DC voltage – which we can then simply measure with the Arduino’s analogue input and create a display of some sort. At this point audio purists, Sheldonites and RF people might get a little cranky, so once again – this is more for visual indication than any sort of calibration device.

However as an 8-pin IC a different approach is required to get the different levels. The IC will sequentially give out the levels for each band on pin 3- e.g. 63 Hz then 160 Hz then 400 Hz then 1 kHz then 2.5 kHz then 6.25 kHz  then 16 kHz then back to 63 Hz and so on. To start this sequence we first reset the IC by pulsing the RESET pin HIGH then low. This tells the IC to start at the first band. Next, we set the STROBE pin to LOW, take the DC reading from pin 3 with analogue input, store the value in a variable (an array), then set the STROBE pin HIGH. We repeat the strobe-measure sequence six more times to get the rest of the data, then RESET the IC and start all over again. For the visual learners consider the diagram below from the data sheet:

To demonstrate this process, consider the function

readMSGEQ7()

in the following example sketch (download):

// Example 48.1 - tronixstuff.com/tutorials > chapter 48 - 30 Jan 2013 
// MSGEQ7 spectrum analyser shield - basic demonstration

int strobe = 4; // strobe pins on digital 4
int res = 5; // reset pins on digital 5

int left[7]; // store band values in these arrays
int right[7];

int band;

void setup()
{
 Serial.begin(115200);
 pinMode(res, OUTPUT); // reset
 pinMode(strobe, OUTPUT); // strobe
 digitalWrite(res,LOW); // reset low
 digitalWrite(strobe,HIGH); //pin 5 is RESET on the shield
}

void readMSGEQ7()
// Function to read 7 band equalizers
{
 digitalWrite(res, HIGH);
 digitalWrite(res, LOW);
 for(band=0; band <7; band++)
 {
 digitalWrite(strobe,LOW); // strobe pin on the shield - kicks the IC up to the next band 
 delayMicroseconds(30); // 
 left[band] = analogRead(0); // store left band reading
 right[band] = analogRead(1); // ... and the right
 digitalWrite(strobe,HIGH); 
 }
}

void loop()
{
 readMSGEQ7();
 // display values of left channel on serial monitor
 for (band = 0; band < 7; band++)
 {
 Serial.print(left[band]);
 Serial.print(" ");
 }
 Serial.println();

// display values of right channel on serial monitor
 for (band = 0; band < 7; band++)
 {
 Serial.print(right[band]);
 Serial.print(" ");
 }
 Serial.println();
}

If you follow through the sketch, you can see that it reads both left- and right-channel values from the two MSGEQ7s on the shield, then stores each value in the arrays left[] and right[]. These values are then sent to the serial monitor for display – for example:

If you have a function generator, connect the output to one of the channels and GND – then adjust the frequency and amplitude to see how the values change. The following video clip is a short demonstration of this – we set the generator to 1 kHz and adjust the amplitude of the signal. To make things easier to read we only measure and display the left channel:

Keep an eye on the fourth column of data – this is the analogRead() value returned by the Arduino when reading the 1khz frequency band. You can also see the affect on the other bands around 1 kHz as we increase and decrease the frequency. However that wasn’t really visually appealing – so now we’ll create a small and large graphical version.

First we’ll use an inexpensive LCD, the I2C model from akafugu reviewed previously. To save repeating myself, also review how to create custom LCD characters from here.

With the LCD with have two rows of sixteen characters. The plan is to use the top row for the levels, the left-channel’s on … the left, and the right on the right. Each character will be a little bar graph for the level. The bottom row can be for a label. We don’t have too many pixels to work with, but it’s a compact example:

We have eight rows for each character, and the results from an analogueRead() fall between 0 and 1023. So that’s 1024 possible values spread over eight sections. Thus each row of pixels in each character will represent 128 “units of analogue read” or around 0.63 V if the Arduino is running from true 5 V (remember your AREF notes?). The sketch will again read the values from the MSGEQ7, feed them into two arrays – then display the required character in each band space  on the LCD.

Here’s the resulting sketch (download):

// Example 48.2 - tronixstuff.com/tutorials > chapter 48 - 30 Jan 2013 
// MSGEQ7 spectrum analyser shield and I2C LCD from akafugu

// for akafugu I2C LCD
#include 
#include "TWILiquidCrystal.h"
LiquidCrystal lcd(50);

// create custom characters for LCD
byte level0[8] = { 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b11111};
byte level1[8] = { 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b11111, 0b11111};
byte level2[8] = { 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111};
byte level3[8] = { 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111};
byte level4[8] = { 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111};
byte level5[8] = { 0b00000, 0b00000, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111};
byte level6[8] = { 0b00000, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111};
byte level7[8] = { 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111, 0b11111};

int strobe = 4; // strobe pins on digital 4
int res = 5; // reset pins on digital 5

int left[7]; // store band values in these arrays
int right[7];

int band;

void setup()
{
 Serial.begin(9600);
 // setup LCD and custom characters
 lcd.begin(16, 2);
 lcd.setContrast(24);
 lcd.clear();

lcd.createChar(0,level0);
 lcd.createChar(1,level1);
 lcd.createChar(2,level2);
 lcd.createChar(3,level3);
 lcd.createChar(4,level4);
 lcd.createChar(5,level5);
 lcd.createChar(6,level6);
 lcd.createChar(7,level7);

 lcd.setCursor(0,1);
 lcd.print("Left");
 lcd.setCursor(11,1);
 lcd.print("Right");

 pinMode(res, OUTPUT); // reset
 pinMode(strobe, OUTPUT); // strobe
 digitalWrite(res,LOW); // reset low
 digitalWrite(strobe,HIGH); //pin 5 is RESET on the shield
}

void readMSGEQ7()
// Function to read 7 band equalizers
{
 digitalWrite(res, HIGH);
 digitalWrite(res, LOW);
 for( band = 0; band < 7; band++ )
 {
 digitalWrite(strobe,LOW); // strobe pin on the shield - kicks the IC up to the next band 
 delayMicroseconds(30); // 
 left[band] = analogRead(0); // store left band reading
 right[band] = analogRead(1); // ... and the right
 digitalWrite(strobe,HIGH); 
 }
}

void loop()
{
 readMSGEQ7();

// display values of left channel on LCD
 for( band = 0; band < 7; band++ )
 {
 lcd.setCursor(band,0);
 if (left[band]>=895) { lcd.write(7); } else
 if (left[band]>=767) { lcd.write(6); } else
 if (left[band]>=639) { lcd.write(5); } else
 if (left[band]>=511) { lcd.write(4); } else
 if (left[band]>=383) { lcd.write(3); } else
 if (left[band]>=255) { lcd.write(2); } else
 if (left[band]>=127) { lcd.write(1); } else
 if (left[band]>=0) { lcd.write(0); }
 }
 // display values of right channel on LCD
 for( band = 0; band < 7; band++ )
 {
 lcd.setCursor(band+9,0);
 if (right[band]>=895) { lcd.write(7); } else
 if (right[band]>=767) { lcd.write(6); } else
 if (right[band]>=639) { lcd.write(5); } else
 if (right[band]>=511) { lcd.write(4); } else
 if (right[band]>=383) { lcd.write(3); } else
 if (right[band]>=255) { lcd.write(2); } else
 if (right[band]>=127) { lcd.write(1); } else
 if (right[band]>=0) { lcd.write(0); }
 }
}

If you’ve been reading through my tutorials there isn’t anything new to worry about. And now for the demo, with sound -

That would look great on the side of a Walkman, however it’s a bit small. Let’s scale it up by using a Freetronics Dot Matrix Display - you may recall these from Clock One. For some background knowledge check the review here.  Don’t forget to use a suitable power supply for the DMD – 5 V at 4 A will do nicely. The DMD contains 16 rows of 32 LEDs. This gives us twice the “resolution” to display each band level if desired. The display style is subjective, so for this example we’ll use a single column of LEDs for each frequency band, with a blank column between each one.

We use a lot of line-drawing statements to display the levels, and clear the DMD after each display. With this and the previous sketches, there could be room for efficiency – however I write these with the beginner in mind. Here’s the sketch (download):

// Example 48.3 - tronixstuff.com/tutorials > chapter 48 - 30 Jan 2013 
// MSGEQ7 spectrum analyser shield with a Freetronics DMD

// for DMD
#include  // for DMD
#include  // SPI.h must be included as DMD is written by SPI (the IDE complains otherwise)
#include  
#include "SystemFont5x7.h" // keep next two lines if you want to add some text
#include "Arial_black_16.h"
DMD dmd(1, 1); // creates instance of DMD to refer to in sketch

void ScanDMD() // necessary interrupt handler for refresh scanning of DMD
{ 
 dmd.scanDisplayBySPI();
}

int strobe = 4; // strobe pins on digital 4
int res = 5; // reset pins on digital 5

int left[7]; // store band values in these arrays
int right[7];

int band;

void setup()
{
 // for DMD
 //initialize TimerOne's interrupt/CPU usage used to scan and refresh the display
 Timer1.initialize( 5000 ); //period in microseconds to call ScanDMD. Anything longer than 5000 (5ms) and you can see flicker.
 Timer1.attachInterrupt( ScanDMD ); //attach the Timer1 interrupt to ScanDMD which goes to dmd.scanDisplayBySPI() 
 dmd.clearScreen( true ); //true is normal (all pixels off), false is negative (all pixels on)

 // for MSGEQ7
 pinMode(res, OUTPUT); // reset
 pinMode(strobe, OUTPUT); // strobe
 digitalWrite(res,LOW); // reset low
 digitalWrite(strobe,HIGH); //pin 5 is RESET on the shield
}

void readMSGEQ7()
// Function to read 7 band equalizers
{
 digitalWrite(res, HIGH);
 digitalWrite(res, LOW);
 for( band = 0; band < 7; band++ )
 {
 digitalWrite(strobe,LOW); // strobe pin on the shield - kicks the IC up to the next band 
 delayMicroseconds(30); // 
 left[band] = analogRead(0); // store left band reading
 right[band] = analogRead(1); // ... and the right
 digitalWrite(strobe,HIGH); 
 }
}

void loop()
{
 int xpos;
 readMSGEQ7();
 dmd.clearScreen( true ); 
 // display values of left channel on DMD
 for( band = 0; band < 7; band++ )
 {
 xpos = (band*2)+1;
 if (left[band]>=895) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 1, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=767) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 3, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=639) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 5, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=511) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 7, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=383) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 9, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=255) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 11, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=127) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 13, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (left[band]>=0) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 15, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); }
 }

 // display values of right channel on DMD
 for( band = 0; band < 7; band++ )
 {
 xpos = (band*2)+18;
 if (right[band]>=895) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 1, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=767) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 3, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=639) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 5, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=511) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 7, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=383) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 9, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=255) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 11, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=127) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 13, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); } else
 if (right[band]>=0) { dmd.drawLine( xpos, 15, xpos, 15, GRAPHICS_NORMAL ); }
 }
}

… and here it is in action:

Conclusion

At this point you have the knowledge to use the MSGEQ7 ICs to create some interesting spectrum analysers for entertainment and visual appeal – now you just choose the type of display enjoy the results.

Have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe  for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column, or join our Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other –  and we can all learn something.

Tutorial: Arduino and a Thermal Printer

Use inexpensive thermal printers with Arduino in chapter thirty-eight of a series originally titled “Getting Started/Moving Forward with Arduino!” by John Boxall – a series of articles on the Arduino universe. The first chapter is here, the complete series is detailed here.

Updated 05/02/2013

In this article we introduce the inexpensive thermal printer that has recently become widely available from Sparkfun and their resellers. The goal of the article is to be as simple as possible so you can get started without any problems or confusion. In the past getting data from our Arduino to a paper form would either have meant logging it to an SD card then using a PC to finish the job, or perhaps viewing said data on an LCD then writing it down. Not any more – with the use of this cheap and simple serial printer. Before we get started, here is a short demonstration video of it in action:

Not bad at all considering the price. Let’s have a look in more detail. Here is the printer and two matching rolls of thermal paper:

… and the inside of the unit:

Loading paper is quite simple, just drop the roll in with the end of the paper facing away from you, pull it out further than the top of the front lip, then close the lid. The paper rolls required need to be 57mm wide and have a diameter of no more than 39mm. For example. There is a piece of white cardboard stuck to the front – this is an economical cover that hides some of the internals. Nothing of interest for us in there. The button next to the LED on the left is for paper advance, and the LED can blink out the printer status.

From a hardware perspective wiring is also very simple. Looking at the base of the printer:

… there are two connections. On the left is DC power, and data on the right. Thankfully the leads are included with the printer and have the plugs already fitted – a great time saver. You may also want to fit your own rubber feet to stop the printer rocking about.

Please note – you need an external power supply with a voltage of between 5 and 9 volts DC that can deliver up to 1.5 amps of current. When idling the printer draws less than 10 milliamps, but when printing it peaks at around 1.47 A. So don’t try and run it from your Arduino board. However the data lines are easy, as the printer has a serial interface we only need to connect printer RX to Arduino digital 3, and printer TX to Arduino digital 2, and GND to … GND! We will use a virtual serial port on pins 2 and 3 as 0 and 1 will be taken for use with the serial monitor window for debugging and possible control purposes.

If you want to quickly test your printer – connect it to the power, drop in some paper, hold down the feed button and turn on the power. It will quickly produce a test print.

Next we need to understand how to control the printer in our sketches. Consider this very simple sketch (download):

/*
 Example 38.1 - Sparkfun Thermal Printer Test (COM-10438)
 http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/tutorials > chapter 38
 Based on code by Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics 2011
*/

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial Thermal(2, 3);

int heatTime = 80;
int heatInterval = 255;
char printDensity = 15; 
char printBreakTime = 15;

void setup() 
{
 Serial.begin(57600); // for debug info to serial monitor
 Thermal.begin(19200); // to write to our new printer
 initPrinter();
}

void initPrinter()
{
 //Modify the print speed and heat
 Thermal.write(27);
 Thermal.write(55);
 Thermal.write(7); //Default 64 dots = 8*('7'+1)
 Thermal.write(heatTime); //Default 80 or 800us
 Thermal.write(heatInterval); //Default 2 or 20us
 //Modify the print density and timeout
 Thermal.write(18);
 Thermal.write(35);
 int printSetting = (printDensity<<4) | printBreakTime;
 Thermal.write(printSetting); //Combination of printDensity and printBreakTime
 Serial.println();
 Serial.println("Printer ready"); 
}

void loop()
{
 Thermal.println(" Visit http://tronixstuff.com ");
 Thermal.write(10); //Sends the LF to the printer, advances the paper
 Thermal.print(" Millis = ");
 Thermal.println(millis()); 
 Thermal.write(10);
 Thermal.write(10); 
 do { } while (1>0);
}

After ensuring your printer is connected as described earlier, and has the appropriate power supply and paper – uploading the sketch will result in the following:

Now that the initial burst of printing excitement has passed, let’s look at the sketch and see how it all works. The first part:

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial Thermal(2, 3); // printer RX to digital 2, printer TX to digital 3

configures the virtual serial port and creates an instance for us to refer to when writing to the printer. Next, four variables are defined. These hold parameters used for configuring the printer. As the printer works with these settings there is no need to alter them, however if you are feeling experimental nothing is stopping you. Next we have the function initPrinter(). This sets a lot of parameters for the printer to ready itself for work. We call initPrinter() only once – in void setup(); For now we can be satisfied that it ‘just works’.

Now time for action – void loop(). Writing text to the printer is as simple as:

Thermal.print("text");

You can also use .println to advance along to the next line. Generally this is the same as writing to the serial monitor with Serial.println() etc. So nothing new there. Each line of text can be up to thirty-two characters in length.

The next thing to concern ourselves with is sending commands to the printer. You may have noticed the line

     Thermal.write(10);

This sends the command to advance to the next line (in the old days we would say ‘carriage return and line feed’). There are many commands available to do various things.  At this point you will need to refer to the somewhat amusing user manual.pdf. Open it up and have a look at section 5.2.1 on page ten. Notice how each command has an ASCII, decimal and hexadecimal equivalent? We will use the decimal command values. So to send them, just use:

Thermal.write(value);

Easy. If the command has two or more values (for example, to turn the printer offline [page 11] ) – just send each value in a separate statement. For example:

Thermal.write(27);

Thermal.write(61);

int zero=0;
Thermal.write(zero);

… will put the printer into offline mode. Notice how we used the variable “zero” for 0 – you can’t send a zero by itself. So we assign it to the variable and send that instead. Odd.

For out next example, let’s try out a few more commands:

• Underlined text (the printer seemed to have issues with thick underlining, however your experience may vary)
• Bold text
• Double height and width

Here is the sketch (download):

/*
 Example 38.2 - Sparkfun Thermal Printer Test II (COM-10438)
 http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/tutorials > chapter 38
 Based on code by Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics 2011
 */

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial Thermal(2, 3);

int zero=0;

int heatTime = 80;
int heatInterval = 255;
char printDensity = 15; 
char printBreakTime = 15;

void setup() 
{
 Serial.begin(57600); // for debug info to serial monitor
 Thermal.begin(19200); // to write to our new printer
 initPrinter();
}

void initPrinter()
{
 //Modify the print speed and heat
 Thermal.write(27);
 Thermal.write(55);
 Thermal.write(7); //Default 64 dots = 8*('7'+1)
 Thermal.write(heatTime); //Default 80 or 800us
 Thermal.write(heatInterval); //Default 2 or 20us
 //Modify the print density and timeout
 Thermal.write(18);
 Thermal.write(35);
 int printSetting = (printDensity<<4) | printBreakTime;
 Thermal.write(printSetting); //Combination of printDensity and printBreakTime
 Serial.println();
 Serial.println("Printer ready"); 
}

void loop()
{
 // underline - one pixel
 Thermal.write(27);
 Thermal.write(45); 
 Thermal.write(1);
 Thermal.println("Underline - thin");
 Thermal.println("01234567890123456789012345678901"); 
 Thermal.write(10);

// underline - two pixels
 Thermal.write(27); 
 Thermal.write(45);
 Thermal.write(2); 
 Thermal.println("Underline - thick");
 Thermal.println("01234567890123456789012345678901"); 
 Thermal.write(10);

// turn off underline
 Thermal.write(27); 
 Thermal.write(45);
 Thermal.write(zero);
 delay(3000);
 Thermal.write(10);

// bold text on
 Thermal.write(27); 
 Thermal.write(32);
 Thermal.write(1);
 Thermal.println(" #### Bold text #### ");
 Thermal.println("01234567890123456789012345678901"); 
 delay(3000);

// bold text off
 Thermal.write(27); 
 Thermal.write(32);
 Thermal.write(zero);
 Thermal.write(10); //Sends the LF to the printer, advances the paper
 delay(3000);

// height/width enlarge
 Thermal.write(29); 
 Thermal.write(33);
 Thermal.write(255);
 Thermal.println("ABCDEF");
 Thermal.println("012345"); 
 delay(3000);

// back to normal
 Thermal.write(29); 
 Thermal.write(33);
 Thermal.write(zero);
 delay(3000);

Thermal.write(10);
 Thermal.println("Back to normal...");
 Thermal.write(10);
 Thermal.write(10); 
 do { } while (1>0); // do nothing
}

And the results:

Frankly bold doesn’t look that bold, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. However the oversized characters could be very useful, and still print relatively quickly.

Next on our list are barcodes. A normal UPC barcode has 12 digits, and our little printer can generate a variety of barcode types – see page twenty-two of the user manual. For our example we will generate UPC-A type codes and an alphanumeric version. Alphanumeric barcodes need capital letters, the dollar sign, percent sign, or full stop. The data is kept in an array of characters named … barCode[]  and barCode[]2. Consider the functions printBarcode(), printBarcodeThick()  and printBarcodeAlpha() in the following example sketch (download):

/*
 Example 38.3 - Sparkfun Thermal Printer Test III (COM-10438)
 http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/tutorials > chapter 38
 Based on code by Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics 2011
 */

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial Thermal(2, 3);

int heatTime = 80;
int heatInterval = 255;
char printDensity = 15; 
char printBreakTime = 15;
char barCode[]={ '9','2','3','0','5','6','4','8','9','8','4','4'};
char barCode2[]={'A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M','N','O','P' };
int zero=0;

void setup() 
{
 Serial.begin(57600); // for debug info to serial monitor
 Thermal.begin(19200); // to write to our new printer
 initPrinter();
}

void initPrinter()
{
 //Modify the print speed and heat
 Thermal.write(27);
 Thermal.write(55);
 Thermal.write(7); //Default 64 dots = 8*('7'+1)
 Thermal.write(heatTime); //Default 80 or 800us
 Thermal.write(heatInterval); //Default 2 or 20us
 //Modify the print density and timeout
 Thermal.write(18);
 Thermal.write(35);
 int printSetting = (printDensity<<4) | printBreakTime;
 Thermal.write(printSetting); // Combination of printDensity and printBreakTime
 Serial.println();
 Serial.println("Printer ready"); 
}

void printBarcode(char zz[])
{
 Thermal.write(29); //GS
 Thermal.write(107); //k
 Thermal.write(zero); //m = 0
 for (int z=0; z<12; z++)
 {
 Thermal.write(zz[z]);
 }
 Thermal.write(zero); // bar code terminator
 delay(3000); // necessary delay
 Thermal.write(10); 
 Thermal.write(10); 
 Thermal.write(10); 
}

void printBarcodeThick(char zz[])
{
 Thermal.write(29); // specified height of barcode
 Thermal.write(104); 
 Thermal.write(200); // 200 pixels high (default is 50)

 Thermal.write(29); //GS
 Thermal.write(107); //k
 Thermal.write(zero); //m = 0
 for (int z=0; z<12; z++)
 {
 Thermal.write(zz[z]);
 }
 Thermal.print(zero); // bar code terminator
 delay(3000); // necessary delay
 Thermal.write(29); // specified height of barcode
 Thermal.write(104); 
 Thermal.write(50); // need to set back to 50 pixel height
 delay(3000);
 Thermal.write(10); 
 Thermal.write(10); 
 Thermal.write(10); 
}

void printBarcodeAlpha(char zz[])
{
 Thermal.write(29); //GS
 Thermal.write(107); //k
 Thermal.write(4); //m = 0
 for (int z=0; z<16; z++)
 {
 Thermal.write(zz[z]);
 }
 // Thermal.print(zero); // bar code terminator
 delay(3000); // necessary delay
 Thermal.write(10); 
 Thermal.write(10); 
 Thermal.write(10); 
}

void loop()
{
 printBarcode(barCode);
 printBarcodeThick(barCode);
 printBarcodeAlpha(barCode2);
 do { } while (1>0); // do nothing
}

Notice in printBarcodeThick() we make use of the ability to change the vertical size of the barcode – the height in pixels is the third parameter in the group. And here is the result:

So there you have it – another practical piece of hardware previously considered to be out of our reach – is now under our control. Now you should have an understanding of the basics and can approach the other functions in the user guide with confidence. Please keep in mind that the price of this printer really should play a large part in determining suitability for a particular task. It does have issues printing large blocks of pixels, such as the double-width underlining and inverse text. This printer is great but certainly not for commercial nor high-volume use. That is what professional POS printers from Brother, Star, Epson, etc., are for. However for low-volume, personal or hobby use this printer is certainly a deal. As always, now it is up to you and your imagination to put this to use or get up to other shenanigans.

This article would not have been possible without the example sketches provided by Nathan Seidle, the founder and CEO of Sparkfun. If you meet him, shout him a beer.  Please don’t knock off bus tickets or so on. I’m sure there are heavy penalties for doing so if caught.

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