How do I get the variable, volts, to display floating point numbers on a LCD?
The LCD only displays floating point values with a lot of decimal places with E at the end. I only need 2 decimal places, so how do I display it?
int main (void){
adcinit();
lcd_init();//initializes LCD
lcd_clear();//clear screen
lcd_home();
uint16_t value;
float volts;
while(1){
ADCSRA |= (1<<ADSC);//start ADC conversion
delay_ms(54);//delay 54 millisecond
value = ADCW;//assign ADC conversion to value
volts=(value*5)/1023;
lcd_goto_xy(0,0);// coordinates of the cursor on LCD Display
lcd_printf("ADC Value: %d ",value);//display on LCD
lcd_goto_xy(0,1);// coordinates of the cursor on LCD Display
lcd_printf("Volts: %f ",volts);//display on LCD
}
}
If the function lcd_printf() is based to the same library than the function sprintf() for Arduino, the format specifier '%f' is not well managed even when used as '%.2f'.
Step 1: Before proposing alternate solutions, it is necessary to get a well-computed float value from the numerical value read from the Analog-To-Digital Converter.
If the ADC is a 10-bits, the range should be 1024 (instead of 1023).
value = ADCW;//assign ADC conversion to value
volts=((float)value*5.0f)/(1024.0f);
Step2.1: A first and quick solution to display a 2-decimals fixed float value is to convert it in 2 integers.
lcd_printf("Volts: %d.%02d ",(int)volts, (int)(volts*100)%100));//display on LCD
Instead of
lcd_printf("Volts: %.2f ",volts);//display on LCD
Step 2.2: A more 'official' solution to display a 2-decimals fixed float value is to use the dtostrf() function as proposed in "Arduino sprintf float not formatting".
char str_volts[15]; // to store the float-to-string converted value
lcd_printf("Volts: %s ",dtostrf(volts, 4, 2, str_volts));//display on LCD
// 4 = minimum number of char ('X.XX'), 2 = number of decimals
Instead of
lcd_printf("Volts: %.2f ",volts);//display on LCD