The Sunday Blog
Make your project complete with Nextion accessories
The universal workhorse on your bench and in jour project
First, it’s the solution for whatever power problem, accepting input voltages from 8 to 26V DC and delivering rock stable +5V 2A which is sufficient to power even the biggest 7″ and 10.1″ Nextion HMI. Be it on your workbench, where you might already have encountered stability problems trying to power a bigger Nextion HMI from a USB port which was limited to 500mA, or be it in your car, truck, camper or boat where you might have “around” 12V or 24V available, probably with ignition spikes und not very stable – this little board eats all and delivers the required stabilized power to your project. The power socket is a standard 5.5×2.1 which allows the use of a wide range of universal power supplies or a screw terminal adapter, i.e. for hard wiring it in your vehicle.
Second, it comes with an onboard Serial-TTL to USB converter based on a CP2102 chip which works on all current major operating systems without the need for installing drivers. Bring you notebook to your boat, truck, car, camper, bike, connect the included high quality shielded USB cable, and install your newest .tft file version within seconds.
You guess it, I’m writing about the FOCA MAX- USB TO TTL CONVERTER AND POWER SUPPLY BOARD. Using it on your workbench has the advantage that you even don’t need forcibly to have a 8-26V power source at hands. When connecting a smaller Nextion HMI for which 500mA are sufficient, use the automatic passthrough mode which powers the HMI from the USB port.
In the box
Everything needed is in included: The board itself, then a XH2.54 4P cable to connect the Nextion HMI, and a shielded USB-B to USB-B cable to connect a PC. And all that at a hobby budget friendly price of $8.90.
You need one, too? Order the Foca Max adapter here!
A GPIO breakout for Enhanced and Intelligent Nextion HMI
Your project uses an Intelligent or Enhanced display and makes use of GPIO to have your Nextion interact with external devices? Then, the NEXTION HMI Display IO Adapter is your friend! Connected to your display, it makes +5V and GND, and all 8 IO pins available on a 10pin 2.54mm (0.1″) header (already soldered) which allows for example the comfortable use of Dupont wires. The pin order of the socket for the included flat ribbon cable is reversed, compared to the Nextion HMI, so that this adapter board can easily be mounted back to back with the Nextion HMI inside your project’s housing.
In the box
The adapter itself and a 10 wire flat ribbon cable which fits in the corresponding socket of your Nextion HMI.
Order the Nextion IO Adapter here!
Need more whistles and bells?
Then, I might have something for you. Some projects might require physical buttons since buttons on a touch screen are not always an optimal solution. Think of damp, wet, or dusty environments… In that case, the Nextion IO Expansion board can be of great help. It comes with 6 push buttons, 4 or them in a crossbar layout (i.e. for up, down, left, right) and 2 aligned at the bottom (i.e. for cancel and ok). All push buttons are buffered with a small capacitor to prevent contact chatter. A LED and a piezo buzzer have been added to make full use of the 8 IO pins.
And the best is, if you don’t need all 8 components on this board, there are holes on which you can solder a 10pin header, so that you have at the same time full access to all IO lines as with the IO adapter board above. It comes with a reversed flat ribbon cable which allows mounting it side-by-side with your Nextion HMI.
In the box
The board itself and a 10 wire flat ribbon cable which fits in the corresponding socket of your Nextion HMI.
Order the Nextion IO Expansion board here!
Last, but not least, after the whistles and bells, the trombone!
If you have ever realized a project with the Nextion Intelligent series HMI, using the version which comes ready in an enclosure, you have most probably already played with the nice audio functions. Remember the mid-eighties? When you wanted to buy a home computer, you had to decide between a DOS based PC (Windows wasn’t yet out) which made an ugly “beeeeeep” (or a series of up to ten long and short beeps if there was a hardware problem, preventing it from booting) at startup, or an Apple computer which greeted you with a nice chime…
The boxed Intelligent series Nextion HMIs have in fact an integrated speaker to provide acoustical interaction at a much higher level than with a simple piezo buzzer. But there are project scenarios which don’t allow using the fully boxed version (with enclosure) and you have to use the bare HMI, be it for space or weight considerations, be it simply because your project requires a 10.1″ screen which is not available with enclosure. But without enclosure – ain’t no speaker? Wrong! The speaker is available as an accessory.
In the box
The speaker itself, built in an enclosure to protect it, and to give it a defined resonance volume. A 25cm (10″) long cable is readily attached and has the required female connector on its other end. This allows to plug it directly into the J5 plug on the backside of every Nextion Intelligent HMI without enclosure.
This speaker for the Nextion Intelligent series HMI can be ordered here.
With all that, you have everything at your hands to create professional projects around a Nextion HMI. And this (as you can expect) at a reasonable cost!
Happy Nextioning!
