arduino projects with lcd screen quotation

Many projects that collect data of some kind can be made more user-friendly if a display is added directly to the device rather than using a serial or HDMI monitor. This can also act as an input device if a touchscreen is used. There are a variety of display options available on the market, and Arduino shields are available which provide an easy way to interface with a display for Arduino projects. Let’s take a look at what you can add to your next Arduino project.

These are the most common type of displays used in simpler projects. They are simple to operate, consume a small amount of power, and are very cheap. They usually include an array of characters, with some displays having a backlighting option for ease of reading in low light. It is possible to attach them directly to an Arduino, but they use many pins on the board. An I2C adapter can be used to control the display with only 4 pins.

These screens more desirable than a 7-segment display as they can display a large variety of characters. There is aLiquidCrystal librarythat you can use to control the LCD, although you will need a different adapter if you are using I2C.Hereis a video tutorial on how to set up and use this type of display.

These are simple displays with 8 LEDs (7 lines and 1 dot) that work pretty much like any LED, where a forward bias will light up the diode. Different numbers or characters can be formed by selectively lighting the segments. They are available in either common anode or common cathode configuration. A good tutorial for using these simpler displays can be foundhere, where you’ll learn how to interface this display with an Arduino board. These displays come in a variety of sizes ranging from single digits to an array of characters. If you just need to display numbers or a small number of letters (for example, with a door keypad or a timer), then you can give your project a cool retro feel with 7-segment displays.

These displays were used in old cell phones, where the background was grey and the font was simply a darker shade of grey. These are monochrome LCD displays with 84×48 pixel screen size. These cheaper modules can display text (even multiple lines, depending on the library being used) and images. Although the refresh rate is slow for animations, they work well for simple text display. This display usually comes with a backlight. It has a CMOS LCD controller and these displays only run at about 0.5 mA when on without backlighting. They also have a sleep mode, making them convenient for battery-operated devices.

If you are looking for something more than a 5110 LCD display, an OLED display can be a good option. At first glance, they look like the 5110 display, but they are significantly better. While the standard screen is 0.96” in monochrome with 128×64 pixels, they are available in a variety of sizes and colors, offering a versatile display for Arduino projects. Their refresh rate is also higher than many other displays. They can communicate with Arduino using I2C, so they do not use a lot of pins. These displays are usually thinner and lighter than an LCD, and they provide higher contrast than an LCD because no backlight is required. The price for these displays is slightly higher than a typical LCD.

Thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCDs are a step up in quality when your project requires a sophisticated display. They are available with or without touchscreen capabilities. They provide high resolution and can display thousands of unique colors. Often they have an SPI interface that integrates naturally into Arduino boards. They consume more power than other displays, but the display quality is better and they come in a similar price range. They usually come with a shield for easy integration. Touchscreens can be especially useful for cases where projects need user feedback and input.

The TFT LCD shown above connects to a standard header with pins, but more advanced TFTs canconnect to an Arduino or other boardwith a flex cable. These boards can’t connect directly to a standard Arduino, but they can connect to a standard or custom shield board. Make sure to check how your display connects to yourArduino projectas you may need to purchase or design a specific shield.

As the name suggests, an E-paper display (commonly found in E-readers) is intended to have the same look as natural paper. They differ from LCD and OLED displays in that they do not emit light, but rather reflect it, making the display very comfortable to read. Another great aspect of these displays is that they can store data for a long period of time without consuming power. This means they can display text or images after they are turned off, making them perfect for low power mobile Arduino projects.Here is a tutorialfor using them with Arduino.

Any of these displays can be a great addition to a new Arduino project. The choice of the best display depends mostly on the display quality you desire and your intended budget. They usually have a shield or can be interfaced directly to the Arduino header pins. Many projects may require multiple components, rather than just a display. It may be better to design a custom shield that can be used to interface with more than one component.

If you’re interested in designing a custom display shield for your Arduino board,Upverter® provides an easy, browser-based platform fordesigning new PCBs from start to finish. You can easily pick an existing template from a vast range ofopen-source hardware projects, or you canimport Arduino shield templates from Eagle libraries, available from Sparkfun or Adafruit. You can then proceed to lay out the design and make your own shield.

In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to set up an LCD on an Arduino and show you all the different ways you can program it. I’ll show you how to print text, scroll text, make custom characters, blink text, and position text. They’re great for any project that outputs data, and they can make your project a lot more interesting and interactive.

The display I’m using is a 16×2 LCD display that I bought for about $5. You may be wondering why it’s called a 16×2 LCD. The part 16×2 means that the LCD has 2 lines, and can display 16 characters per line. Therefore, a 16×2 LCD screen can display up to 32 characters at once. It is possible to display more than 32 characters with scrolling though.

The code in this article is written for LCD’s that use the standard Hitachi HD44780 driver. If your LCD has 16 pins, then it probably has the Hitachi HD44780 driver. These displays can be wired in either 4 bit mode or 8 bit mode. Wiring the LCD in 4 bit mode is usually preferred since it uses four less wires than 8 bit mode. In practice, there isn’t a noticeable difference in performance between the two modes. In this tutorial, I’ll connect the LCD in 4 bit mode.

Here’s a diagram of the pins on the LCD I’m using. The connections from each pin to the Arduino will be the same, but your pins might be arranged differently on the LCD. Be sure to check the datasheet or look for labels on your particular LCD:

Also, you might need to solder a 16 pin header to your LCD before connecting it to a breadboard. Follow the diagram below to wire the LCD to your Arduino:

All of the code below uses the LiquidCrystal library that comes pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. A library is a set of functions that can be easily added to a program in an abbreviated format.

In order to use a library, it needs be included in the program. Line 1 in the code below does this with the command #include . When you include a library in a program, all of the code in the library gets uploaded to the Arduino along with the code for your program.

Now we’re ready to get into the programming! I’ll go over more interesting things you can do in a moment, but for now lets just run a simple test program. This program will print “hello, world!” to the screen. Enter this code into the Arduino IDE and upload it to the board:

There are 19 different functions in the LiquidCrystal library available for us to use. These functions do things like change the position of the text, move text across the screen, or make the display turn on or off. What follows is a short description of each function, and how to use it in a program.

TheLiquidCrystal() function sets the pins the Arduino uses to connect to the LCD. You can use any of the Arduino’s digital pins to control the LCD. Just put the Arduino pin numbers inside the parentheses in this order:

This function sets the dimensions of the LCD. It needs to be placed before any other LiquidCrystal function in the void setup() section of the program. The number of rows and columns are specified as lcd.begin(columns, rows). For a 16×2 LCD, you would use lcd.begin(16, 2), and for a 20×4 LCD you would use lcd.begin(20, 4).

This function clears any text or data already displayed on the LCD. If you use lcd.clear() with lcd.print() and the delay() function in the void loop() section, you can make a simple blinking text program:

This function places the cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen, and prints any subsequent text from that position. For example, this code replaces the first three letters of “hello world!” with X’s:

Similar, but more useful than lcd.home() is lcd.setCursor(). This function places the cursor (and any printed text) at any position on the screen. It can be used in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.

The cursor position is defined with lcd.setCursor(column, row). The column and row coordinates start from zero (0-15 and 0-1 respectively). For example, using lcd.setCursor(2, 1) in the void setup() section of the “hello, world!” program above prints “hello, world!” to the lower line and shifts it to the right two spaces:

You can use this function to write different types of data to the LCD, for example the reading from a temperature sensor, or the coordinates from a GPS module. You can also use it to print custom characters that you create yourself (more on this below). Use lcd.write() in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.

The function lcd.noCursor() turns the cursor off. lcd.cursor() and lcd.noCursor() can be used together in the void loop() section to make a blinking cursor similar to what you see in many text input fields:

Cursors can be placed anywhere on the screen with the lcd.setCursor() function. This code places a blinking cursor directly below the exclamation point in “hello, world!”:

This function creates a block style cursor that blinks on and off at approximately 500 milliseconds per cycle. Use it in the void loop() section. The function lcd.noBlink() disables the blinking block cursor.

This function turns on any text or cursors that have been printed to the LCD screen. The function lcd.noDisplay() turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD, without clearing it from the LCD’s memory.

This function takes anything printed to the LCD and moves it to the left. It should be used in the void loop() section with a delay command following it. The function will move the text 40 spaces to the left before it loops back to the first character. This code moves the “hello, world!” text to the left, at a rate of one second per character:

This function takes a string of text and scrolls it from right to left in increments of the character count of the string. For example, if you have a string of text that is 3 characters long, it will shift the text 3 spaces to the left with each step:

Like the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, the text can be up to 40 characters in length before repeating. At first glance, this function seems less useful than the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, but it can be very useful for creating animations with custom characters.

lcd.noAutoscroll() turns the lcd.autoscroll() function off. Use this function before or after lcd.autoscroll() in the void loop() section to create sequences of scrolling text or animations.

This function sets the direction that text is printed to the screen. The default mode is from left to right using the command lcd.leftToRight(), but you may find some cases where it’s useful to output text in the reverse direction:

This code prints the “hello, world!” text as “!dlrow ,olleh”. Unless you specify the placement of the cursor with lcd.setCursor(), the text will print from the (0, 1) position and only the first character of the string will be visible.

This command allows you to create your own custom characters. Each character of a 16×2 LCD has a 5 pixel width and an 8 pixel height. Up to 8 different custom characters can be defined in a single program. To design your own characters, you’ll need to make a binary matrix of your custom character from an LCD character generator or map it yourself. This code creates a degree symbol (°):

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An LCD display (Liquid Crystal Display) is a flat panel display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals. Since liquid crystals do not emit light, this type of display needs a backlight, or external light to produce an image. That’s why the power consumption of these displays is relatively high for battery powered Arduino projects.

On the other hand, the price of the LCDs is very low. The Nokia 5110, the 1.8″ Color TFT display and the 3.5″ Color TFT display, are all displays that use the LCD technology.

An OLED display is a screen that uses organic light emitting diodes. It requires no backlight, so the power consumption of these display is low and depends on how many pixels are lit. Also, since the screen does not need a backlight, it can display deep black color. Another advantage of this kind of display is that they are usually thinner and lighter the LCD displays. In low light, OLED displays can achieve better contrast in comparison to LCDs.

On the other hand, OLED displays are more expensive than LCD displays. Because of this, the available OLED displays for Arduino are tiny in size, and until recently they were only monochrome. A few months ago a small Color OLED appeared at a relatively low cost.

E-Paper of Electronic paper are displays that unlike traditional LCD or OLED displays does not emit light but reflect light. It is like the ink on the paper. This characteristic makes e-paper displays very comfortable to read, and they have an excellent readability under direct sunlight. Another great thing about e-paper displays is that they can hold static text and image for months without electricity! Yes, that’s correct, the display can show text and image even if it is off! That makes e-paper displays ideal for low powered projects!

Unfortunately there some disadvantages as well. The price of e-paper display is still very high. For example, this 4.3″ E-Paper display for Arduino costs over $60. Another significant disadvantage is that e-paper displays take a lot of time to update, as much as 2-3 seconds. So, they are only helpful for static text and images and not animations.

The Nokia 5110 is a basic graphic LCD screen which was originally intended for as a cell phone screen. It uses the PCD8544 controller which is a low power CMOS LCD controller/driver. Because of this, this display has an impressive power consumption. It uses only 0.4mA when it is on, but the backlight is disabled. It uses less than 0.06mA when in sleep mode! That’s one of the reasons that make this display my favorite. The PCD8544 interfaces to microcontrollers through a serial bus interface. That makes the display very easy to use with Arduino.

This impressive library is developed by Henning Karlsen who has put an enormous amount of effort to help the Arduino community move forward with his libraries. I have prepared a detailed tutorial on how to use the Nokia 5110 LCD display with Arduino. You watch it in this video:

Furthermore, it is also straightforward to use with Arduino since there is a library for it. It is the Adafruit SSD1331 library, and you find it here.

Also, despite the fact that this display is tiny, it is one of my favorites because it is ideal for handheld projects. Its power consumption is around 10-20 mA, and it depends on how many pixels are lit.

First of all the ST7735 Color TFT display is a very inexpensive display. It costs around $5, and it has a great library support. I have used it many of my projects, and I think it is great!

Furthermore, the display offers a resolution of 160×128 pixels, and it can display 65.000 colors. It uses the SPI interface to communicate with the Arduino boards. In addition to that, it works well with all the available Arduino boards, like the Arduino Uno, the Arduino Mega, and the Arduino Due. It also works fine with ESP8266 based boards, like the Wemos D1 and the Wemos D1 mini board.

Also, the power consumption of the board is around 50mA of current which is not bad in my opinion. We can easily use this board to build battery-powered projects that don’t need to be on all the time.

In conclusion, this is one of the best Arduino displays if you need color and low cost. I have prepared a detailed tutorial about the 1.8″ ST7735 Color TFT display, you can watch it here:

This is another very nice display to use with Arduino. It is an OLED display and that means that it has a low power consumption. The power consumption of this display is around 10-20 mA and it depends on how many pixels are lit.

In addition to that, the display uses the I2C interface, so the connection with Arduino is incredibly easy. You only need to connect two wires except for Vcc and GND. If you are new to Arduino and you want an inexpensive and easy to use display to use with your project, start with display. It is the easiest way to add a display to your Arduino project.

This 3.5″ Color TFT display is the biggest display that you can use in your project if you are using an Arduino Uno or a Mega. Unfortunately, it does not support the fast Arduino Due, nor the Wemos D1 ESP8266 board.

Also, the display comes as a shield. So, you only have to connect the display with your Arduino board, and you are ready to use it. Of course, you need to install the appropriate driver for the display. Luckily I have a link to this driver here. Search for the download file, and you will find the library for the display in that .zip file.