iic/i2c interface 2004 lcd module display brands

If you’ve ever tried to connect an LCD display to an Arduino, you might have noticed that it consumes a lot of pins on the Arduino. Even in 4-bit mode, the Arduino still requires a total of seven connections – which is half of the Arduino’s available digital I/O pins.

The solution is to use an I2C LCD display. It consumes only two I/O pins that are not even part of the set of digital I/O pins and can be shared with other I2C devices as well.

True to their name, these LCDs are ideal for displaying only text/characters. A 16×2 character LCD, for example, has an LED backlight and can display 32 ASCII characters in two rows of 16 characters each.

If you look closely you can see tiny rectangles for each character on the display and the pixels that make up a character. Each of these rectangles is a grid of 5×8 pixels.

At the heart of the adapter is an 8-bit I/O expander chip – PCF8574. This chip converts the I2C data from an Arduino into the parallel data required for an LCD display.

If you are using multiple devices on the same I2C bus, you may need to set a different I2C address for the LCD adapter so that it does not conflict with another I2C device.

An important point here is that several companies manufacture the same PCF8574 chip, Texas Instruments and NXP Semiconductors, to name a few. And the I2C address of your LCD depends on the chip manufacturer.

So your LCD probably has a default I2C address 0x27Hex or 0x3FHex. However it is recommended that you find out the actual I2C address of the LCD before using it.

Connecting an I2C LCD is much easier than connecting a standard LCD. You only need to connect 4 pins instead of 12. Start by connecting the VCC pin to the 5V output on the Arduino and GND to ground.

After wiring up the LCD you’ll need to adjust the contrast of the display. On the I2C module you will find a potentiometer that you can rotate with a small screwdriver.

Plug in the Arduino’s USB connector to power the LCD. You will see the backlight lit up. Now as you turn the knob on the potentiometer, you will start to see the first row of rectangles. If that happens, Congratulations! Your LCD is working fine.

To drive an I2C LCD you must first install a library called LiquidCrystal_I2C. This library is an enhanced version of the LiquidCrystal library that comes with your Arduino IDE.

The I2C address of your LCD depends on the manufacturer, as mentioned earlier. If your LCD has a Texas Instruments’ PCF8574 chip, its default I2C address is 0x27Hex. If your LCD has NXP Semiconductors’ PCF8574 chip, its default I2C address is 0x3FHex.

So your LCD probably has I2C address 0x27Hex or 0x3FHex. However it is recommended that you find out the actual I2C address of the LCD before using it. Luckily there’s an easy way to do this, thanks to the Nick Gammon.

But, before you proceed to upload the sketch, you need to make a small change to make it work for you. You must pass the I2C address of your LCD and the dimensions of the display to the constructor of the LiquidCrystal_I2C class. If you are using a 16×2 character LCD, pass the 16 and 2; If you’re using a 20×4 LCD, pass 20 and 4. You got the point!

First of all an object of LiquidCrystal_I2C class is created. This object takes three parameters LiquidCrystal_I2C(address, columns, rows). This is where you need to enter the address you found earlier, and the dimensions of the display.

In ‘setup’ we call three functions. The first function is init(). It initializes the LCD object. The second function is clear(). This clears the LCD screen and moves the cursor to the top left corner. And third, the backlight() function turns on the LCD backlight.

After that we set the cursor position to the third column of the first row by calling the function lcd.setCursor(2, 0). The cursor position specifies the location where you want the new text to be displayed on the LCD. The upper left corner is assumed to be col=0, row=0.

There are some useful functions you can use with LiquidCrystal_I2C objects. Some of them are listed below:lcd.home() function is used to position the cursor in the upper-left of the LCD without clearing the display.

lcd.scrollDisplayRight() function scrolls the contents of the display one space to the right. If you want the text to scroll continuously, you have to use this function inside a for loop.

lcd.scrollDisplayLeft() function scrolls the contents of the display one space to the left. Similar to above function, use this inside a for loop for continuous scrolling.

If you find the characters on the display dull and boring, you can create your own custom characters (glyphs) and symbols for your LCD. They are extremely useful when you want to display a character that is not part of the standard ASCII character set.

CGROM is used to store all permanent fonts that are displayed using their ASCII codes. For example, if we send 0x41 to the LCD, the letter ‘A’ will be printed on the display.

CGRAM is another memory used to store user defined characters. This RAM is limited to 64 bytes. For a 5×8 pixel based LCD, only 8 user-defined characters can be stored in CGRAM. And for 5×10 pixel based LCD only 4 user-defined characters can be stored.

After the library is included and the LCD object is created, custom character arrays are defined. The array consists of 8 bytes, each byte representing a row of a 5×8 LED matrix. In this sketch, eight custom characters have been created.

The IIC 1602 is another great blue backlight LCD display. As the pin resources of Arduino controller is limited, your project may be not able to use normal LCD shield after connected with a certain quantity of sensors or SD card. However, with this I2C interface LCD module, you will be able to realize data display via only 2 wires. If you already has I2C devices in your project, this LCD module actually cost no more resources at all. It is fantastic for Arduino or Raspberry Pi based project.

This module realizes a fast I2C interface with the familiar LCD displays (16x02, 16x04 and 20x04), which makes the control of these displays much easier and more economical with I / O pins.

Because this module has 8 options for the address (0X20-0X27), it is possible to control 8 of these interface modules simultaneously with only 2 connections. By means of the built-in potentiometer on this module it is possible to adjust the backlight and contrast of the LCD.

Features：IIC/I2C interface was developed to reduce the IO port usage on Arduino board.* Old 1602 screen requires 7 IO ports but this module uses only two.* Much needed control panel IO ports can be used to add some sensors, SD card and so on.* A New High-Quality 4 Line 20 Character Lcd Module.* Potentiometer can be adjusted to control the contrast.* Back light can be turned off by removing the jumper on the back panel.Specification:* Interface: I2C* I2C Address: 0x27* Pin Definition : GND、VCC、SDA、SCL* Back lit (Yellow with Black char color)* Supply voltage: 5V* Size : 60mm×99mm* Contrast Adjust : Potentiometer* Backlight Adjust : Jumper

This is a RoHS compliant I2C Serial LCD Daughter board that can be connected to a standard HD44780 compatible 16x2 or 20x4 Character Display Module that supports 4 bit mode. All Character Modules sold on our site support 4 bit mode, and nearly all commercially available 16x2 and 20x4 line character modules support it too.

This board has a PCF8574 I2C chip that converts I2C serial data to parallell data for the LCD display. There are many examples on internet for using this board with Arduino. Do a search for "Arduino LCD PCF8574". The I2C address is 0x3F by default, but this can be changed via 3 solder jumpers provided on the board. This allows up to 3 LCD displays to be controlled via a single I2C bus (giving each one it"s own address).

This is another great IIC/I2C/TWI/SPI Serial Interface. As the pin resources of Arduino controller is limited, your project may be not able to use normal LCD shield after connected with a certain quantity of sensors or SD card. However, with this I2C interface module, you will be able to realize data display via only 2 wires. If you already has I2C devices in your project, this LCD module actually cost no more resources at all. It is fantastic for Arduino based project.