I"m in a project of a gameboy advance with a Orange pi inside. I found a 3d file of a case on web and I"m editing it, but I was stuck with the screen. I need a 2.8 to 3.2 inches screen, but those available at aliexpress and eBay wouldn"t fit because of the breakout board width. I found some bare lcds but was in doubt if it was a good idea using it, plugging it somehow with the Opi. I saw some FFC FPC connectors and I"m wondering if it"s work. Can I use them to do the same as you did or it doesn"t work for that? Any tips for the number of pins the screen and the connectors must have? I found a nice screen but it"s 18 pins, and the closest I could find was a 20 pins connector. Will it work the same or it has to have exactly the same number of pins?
Also: is there any other kind of screen I could use like that plugging on the gpio, but something quite like a plug and play stuff, I mean, something that doesn"t need any coding? Sorry for the many questions, I"m still a learner so there are still a lot of doubts lol btw, thanks by now, mate
Whenever you come across a LCD that looks like it has 16 connectors it is most likely using a HD44780 controller. These devices provide the same pinouts making them relatively easy to work with. The LCD uses a parallel interface meaning that we will need many pins from our raspberry pi4 to control it. In this tutorial we will use 4 data pins (4-bit mode) and two control pins.
The data pins are straightforward. They are sending data to the display (toggled high/low). We will only be using write mode and not reading any data.
The register select pin has two uses. When pulled low it can send commands to the LCD (like position to move to, or clear the screen). This is referred to as writing to the instruction or command register. When toggled the other way (1) the register select pin goes into a data mode and will be used to send data to the screen.
Clock (Enable). Falling edge triggered Bit 0 (Not used in 4-bit operation) Bit 1 (Not used in 4-bit operation) Bit 2 (Not used in 4-bit operation) Bit 3 (Not used in 4-bit operation) Bit 4 Bit 5 Bit 6 Bit 7 Backlight LED Anode (+) Backlight LED Cathode (-)Before wiring, check that your LCD has an LED backlight, not an EL backlight. LED backlights use 10-40mA of power, EL backlights use 200+ma! EL backlights are often cheap to get but are not usable, make sure you don"t use one or you will overload the Pi. Some cheap LCDs that have LED backlights do not include a resistor on the LCD module for the backlight, if you"re not sure, connect a 1Kohm resistor between pin 15 and 5V instead of connecting directly. All Adafruit LCDs have LED backlights with built in resistors so you do not need an extra resistor!Wiring Diagram How to connect 16x2 LCD with Raspberry pi4
First, connect the Cobbler power pins to the breadboard power rail. +5.0V from the cobbler goes to the red striped rail (red wire) and GND from the cobbler goes to the blue striped rail (black wire)
In order to send data to the LCD, we are going to wire it up as follows Pin #1 of the LCD goes to ground Pin #2 of the LCD goes to +5V Pin #3 (Vo) connects to the middle of the potentiometer Pin #4 (RS) connects to the Cobbler #21 Pin #5 (RW) goes to ground Pin #6 (EN) connects to Cobbler #20 Skip LCD Pins #7, #8, #9 and #10 Pin #11 (D4) connects to cobbler #16 Pin #12 (D5) connects to Cobbler #12 Pin #13 (D6) connects to Cobber #1 Pin #14 (D7) connects to Cobber #25 Pin #15 (LED +) goes to +5V (red wire) Pin #16 (LED -) goes to ground (black wire)
In this example, I am going to install and use the library from Adafruit. It’s designed for Adafruit LCD boards but will also work with other brands as well. If your display board uses an HD44780 controller, then it should work with no issues at all.
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If your display is equipped with an IC2 module, it’s not that difficult to connect an LCD display to a Raspberry Pi. Learn with this tutorial how to connect and to program an 1602 LCD with a Raspberry Pi.
There are many types of LCD displays. In this tutorial we are using the popular and affordable 1602 LCD. The LCD has an IC2 module soldered on it (see the pictures below). If your LCD is of the same type, but has a different size, it won’t be a problem to continue with this tutorial. You’ll just have to correct some parameters in the Python script. But if it is from a different type or it has no I2C module, you better look for another tutorial.Prepare the hardware
– First, you need to have a Raspberry Pi running on the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS. This version includes “Thonny”. We’ll use this user-friendly IDE to write our Python code. If you’re not familiar with Python or with Thonny or GPIO-pins, I suggest to have a look at our tutorials “How to write your first Python program on the Raspberry Pi” and/or “How to use the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins” to have a quick introduction.
In this tutorial we are using the popular and quite basic 16×2 or 1602 LCD. It can display 16 characters per line on 2 lines. Each character is made from a matrix with 5×7 dots. It is equipped with a backlight for easy reading. Besides sending text, thanks to specific commands, we can give instructions to the display, as to switch on/off the backlight for example.
The display we use in this tutorial is equipped with a I2C-module (black part on the picture below). I2C is a communication protocol which allows an easier connection between the display and the Raspberry Pi. Indeed, instead of having to wire all the pins on the top of the screen, we only have to connect the display with 4 wires to our Raspberry Pi.
Each I2C device has its own I2C address. Often this address is hard-wired in the device and will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. If you don’t know the address of your I2C device, connect the device to your Raspberry Pi (see the next step). Then, open a terminal window and enter following command :
The output should be a map with the addresses of all connected devices. If for example there is a ’27’ that appears, it means that the hexadecimal address of your device is ‘0x27’.
If you bought one of our kits, the hexadecimal address of the LCD is ‘0x27’. We will need the I2C address from the display to insert it in our Python code.
Be careful ! Before starting to connect wires on the GPIO pins of your Raspberry Pi, make sure you properly shut down the Pi and removed the power cable from the board!
To avoid extensive and complicated code writing, libraries are often used. For our LCD, we will also be using a library. We found the most appropriate library at GitHub from Dave Hylands . As these files from this quite specific library don’t come automatically with Python, we have to install them ourselves.
So, before writing the code, we’ll have to upload the files to our Raspberry Pi. You can download a ZIP-folder containing the 2 files to be installed here.
Download and unzip the files. If you did this operation on your computer, upload the files to your Raspberry Pi. And if you don’t know how to do that, have a look at our tutorial ‘How to transfer files between Raspberry Pi and PC‘. Make sure you upload them in the same folder as the new file we will create for our main code. And don’t change the filenames of the library of course.
And before running the script, it’s important to adjust the contrast of your LCD. If the contrast isn’t adjusted well, it’s possible you don’t see appearing anything. You can adjust it by turning with a small screwdriver at the blue potentiometer at the back of your LCD (see the pictures here above). Make sure the backlight of the display is on to see the result. If the LCD’s contrast is adjusted right, you can just see the darker rectangles for the characters appear.
Besides the commands we used in the last lines of our script, there are more possibilities to communicate with the LCD. If you want to learn more about, have a look at this Github webpage.
Have you wondered what it takes to integrate a Crystalfontz LCD with a Raspberry Pi? The answer may surprise you — it is quicker and easier than you might think.
One of the Crystalfontz USB Display Modules. Applicable modules include: CFA631, CFA632, CFA633, CFA634, CFA635, CFA735, CFA835 series of displays. Click here for a comprehensive list of Crystalfontz USB LCDs.
Visit our tech forum for written step-by-step instructions, or watch the video below to learn how to integrate a Crystalfontz LCD with the Raspberry Pi.
For any questions about connecting a Crystalfontz LCD or what LCD is the best choice for your application, please contact our knowledgeable and friendly support staff via email, phone, or chat.
The following links demonstrate possible difficulties using a serial connection. We recommend using a USB host, USB cable, and USB module for the quickest and easiest connection.
For any questions about Crystalfontz LCD product lines, what LCD is the best choice for your application, or any other questions (technical or availability), please contact our knowledgeable and friendly support staff via email, phone, or chat.
I needed a display for a new project that I am working on and saw that the 3.5 RPI Display Board was on sale and decided to pick one up. I"ve previously used mini OLED displays before, but they"re pretty limited by its size and the colors that it can display. This is a 480x320 resolution device that is designed to affix right onto the Raspberry Pi (RPi) GPIO pins. The installation is simple as you"d imagine:
For the project I had in mind, I do not need a fancy GUI nor the use of the touch controller. The display will be used to show console statistics and accessing the device using SSH.
I am using a vanilla Raspbian lite and no additional drivers were required to get this working. All we need to do is configure some boot scripts and introduce some new configuration files. It"s possible to do this manually, but thankfully LCD-Show automates the process for us.
It would have been nice if I could have mirrored the HDMI output and the LCD panel at the same time, but I could not figure out how to do this or if it was possible at all.
Replace the autologin parameter value with the user you would like to login. In my scenario there is no possibility to physically access and compromise the device, even then I would recommend to use an account with the least amount of privileged to accomplish your tasks.
I initially attempted to configure it using this approach, but quickly realised that it would not work for my requirement as there is no user logged into the console. If there"s no one logged in then there"s shown on screen.
My solution is to use terminal multiplexer like Tmux. Among its many useful features, there are a couple of that I am interested in. The first being the fact that a SSH session initiated via Tmux does not terminate upon user disconnection and all your processes continue to run in the background.
Secondly, it allows a remote user to connect to an existing SSH session. If I were to kick off a Tmux session on user log on, I am be able to connect to the same session from a remote computer. This means that I should connect to the session that is being shown on the physical display and interact with it as if I was seated in front of it.
I updated the~/.bashrc of the appsvcuser in order to launch Tmux on logon. I also used the technique described on this post to make sure that only one instance of Tmux always running at a given time.
The LCD is compatible with both the Raspberry PI Zero and its big brother variants so these same instructions can be applied to get them both running.
Connecting an LCD to your Raspberry Pi will spice up almost any project, but what if your pins are tied up with connections to other modules? No problem, just connect your LCD with I2C, it only uses two pins (well, four if you count the ground and power).
In this tutorial, I’ll show you everything you need to set up an LCD using I2C, but if you want to learn more about I2C and the details of how it works, check out our article Basics of the I2C Communication Protocol.
BONUS: I made a quick start guide for this tutorial that you can download and go back to later if you can’t set this up right now. It covers all of the steps, diagrams, and code you need to get started.
There are a couple ways to use I2C to connect an LCD to the Raspberry Pi. The simplest is to get an LCD with an I2C backpack. But the hardcore DIY way is to use a standard HD44780 LCD and connect it to the Pi via a chip called the PCF8574.
The PCF8574 converts the I2C signal sent from the Pi into a parallel signal that can be used by the LCD. Most I2C LCDs use the PCF8574 anyway. I’ll explain how to connect it both ways in a minute.
I’ll also show you how to program the LCD using Python, and provide examples for how to print and position the text, clear the screen, scroll text, print data from a sensor, print the date and time, and print the IP address of your Pi.
I2C (inter-integrated circuit) is also known as the two-wire interface since it only uses two wires to send and receive data. Actually it takes four if you count the Vcc and ground wires, but the power could always come from another source.
Connecting an LCD with an I2C backpack is pretty self-explanatory. Connect the SDA pin on the Pi to the SDA pin on the LCD, and the SCL pin on the Pi to the SCL pin on the LCD. The ground and Vcc pins will also need to be connected. Most LCDs can operate with 3.3V, but they’re meant to be run on 5V, so connect it to the 5V pin of the Pi if possible.
If you have an LCD without I2C and have a PCF8574 chip lying around, you can use it to connect your LCD with a little extra wiring. The PCF8574 is an 8 bit I/O expander which converts a parallel signal into I2C and vice-versa. The Raspberry Pi sends data to the PCF8574 via I2C. The PCF8574 then converts the I2C signal into a 4 bit parallel signal, which is relayed to the LCD.
Before we get into the programming, we need to make sure the I2C module is enabled on the Pi and install a couple tools that will make it easier to use I2C.
Now we need to install a program called I2C-tools, which will tell us the I2C address of the LCD when it’s connected to the Pi. So at the command prompt, enter sudo apt-get install i2c-tools.
Next we need to install SMBUS, which gives the Python library we’re going to use access to the I2C bus on the Pi. At the command prompt, enter sudo apt-get install python-smbus.
Now reboot the Pi and log in again. With your LCD connected, enter i2cdetect -y 1 at the command prompt. This will show you a table of addresses for each I2C device connected to your Pi:
We’ll be using Python to program the LCD, so if this is your first time writing/running a Python program, you may want to check out How to Write and Run a Python Program on the Raspberry Pi before proceeding.
There are a couple things you may need to change in the code above, depending on your set up. On line 19 there is a function that defines the port for the I2C bus (I2CBUS = 0). Older Raspberry Pi’s used port 0, but newer models use port 1. So depending on which RPi model you have, you might need to change this from 0 to 1.
The function mylcd.lcd_display_string() prints text to the screen and also lets you chose where to position it. The function is used as mylcd.lcd_display_string("TEXT TO PRINT", ROW, COLUMN). For example, the following code prints “Hello World!” to row 2, column 3:
On a 16×2 LCD, the rows are numbered 1 – 2, while the columns are numbered 0 – 15. So to print “Hello World!” at the first column of the top row, you would use mylcd.lcd_display_string("Hello World!", 1, 0).
You can use the time.sleep() function on line 7 to change the time (in seconds) the text stays on. The time the text stays off can be changed in the time.sleep() function on line 9. To end the program, press Ctrl-C.
You can create any pattern you want and print it to the display as a custom character. Each character is an array of 5 x 8 pixels. Up to 8 custom characters can be defined and stored in the LCD’s memory. This custom character generator will help you create the bit array needed to define the characters in the LCD memory.
The code below will display data from a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor. Follow this tutorial for instructions on how to set up the DHT11 on the Raspberry Pi. The DHT11 signal pin is connected to BCM pin 4 (physical pin 7 of the RPi).
By inserting the variable from your sensor into the mylcd.lcd_display_string() function (line 22 in the code above) you can print the sensor data just like any other text string.
These programs are just basic examples of ways you can control text on your LCD. Try changing things around and combining the code to get some interesting effects. For example, you can make some fun animations by scrolling with custom characters. Don’t have enough screen space to output all of your sensor data? Just print and clear each reading for a couple seconds in a loop.
Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or trouble setting this up. Also leave a comment if you have any other ideas on how to get some cool effects, or just to share your project!
raspi-config is the Raspberry Pi configuration tool originally written by Alex Bradbury. To open the configuration tool, type the following on the command line:
If you are using the Raspberry Pi desktop then you can use the graphical Raspberry Pi Configuration application from the Preferences menu to configure your Raspberry Pi.
Use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlighted selection between the options available. Pressing the right arrow key will jump out of the Options menu and take you to the
