cool things to do with lcd displays quotation

Unused electronics are the bane of the modern life. Perfectly functional gadgets sit quietly in a corner of the store room, doing nothing. If you"re wondering what to do with old computer monitors, here are a few easy ideas to repurpose unused screens.

In this guide, it doesn"t matter if your old monitor is still working or not. Even if it isn"t, you can use its parts to make a great new gadget. From turning it into a super-tiny computer or dashboard to refashioning into a smart mirror, here are some of the most productive ways to repurpose a computer monitor.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is an incredible device. While it has a wide range of uses, at its core, it is a tiny, low-cost, full-fledged computer. And that means your old monitor can be turned into a PC for less than $60.

Perhaps the best thing to do with an old flat-screen monitor is a DIY DAKboard. The DAKboard is a LCD wall display that shows the current time, weather forecast, calendar events, stock quotes, fitness data, and news headlines. It"s all displayed on a soothing photo. You could buy an official DAKboard, but the makers themselves have shown how to build your own wall display with a Raspberry Pi. when you can build one for far less money and a little geeky fun, the choice is obvious.

Attach your old monitor to a Pi and it can be put in your kitchen as a recipe and video source. Make a Pi-based retro video game console as a treat for your kid (or the kid in you).

Sometimes, you"re working on something private in an open office, or browsing certain *cough* sites *cough* at home. You can"t have your colleagues or kids see what"s on the screen. To keep snooping eyes at bay, make a "your-eyes-only" monitor from an old one.

To anyone else, it is going to look like a blank white monitor with nothing on it. But wearing a special pair of spectacles, you"ll be able to see things on it like a regular monitor. It"s magic! It"s a tough process, but dimovi"s guide at Instructables is thorough and precise.

Basically, you will be cutting out the polarizing film of the old LCD monitor. This film will then be put on a simple pair of glasses. Now your screen appears white, but the glasses can "see" the content. It"s one of the best ways to keep prying eyes out of your PC.

The reason you should use an old computer monitor is that things can go wrong. You will be disassembling and then reassembling the monitor, along with cutting out the anti-glare and polarizing films. You"ll also need to separate the polarizing film from the anti-glare one.

If you have a broken old LCD monitor, it can be re-purposed into a usable mirror; but if you have a working old LCD monitor, adding a Raspberry Pi can turn it into a smart magic mirror!

You can choose from different Raspberry Pi smart magic mirror projects, but for our money, go with the MagicMirror². It"s the original, most popular, and perhaps now the easiest way to build a smart mirror. It comes with a clock, calendar, weather forecast, and news feed.

If you"re on a tight budget for a first-time DIY project, consider the $100 smart mirror. It"s not the best version of turning an LCD monitor into a smart mirror, but you"ll get the basic features and not spend a bomb.

If you have the space available, the best thing you can do with an extra monitor is to boost your productivity with a dual-monitor setup. A second monitor has many potential purposes, such as extended screen space, a dashboard for your social media or news updates, or a dedicated video conferencing screen.

All desktop operating systems support the ability to use dual monitors. It"s pretty easy to setup dual monitors on Windows, and you can then customize how you use the two spaces. To connect two monitors, you will likely need a graphics card with multiple HDMI ports, or use an HDMI and a VGA port on desktops.

Make it a dedicated screen for Nintendo Wii:The Nintendo Wii can connect to a VGA monitor, so if you don"t have a Wii, buy one. In fact, buy a used one, they"re pretty cheap on Craigslist.

Like any gadget, monitors have a limited shelf life. If you"re looking to upgrade, you now have a few ideas of what to do with your old monitor. And that age should influence which project you chose. For example, given the effort involved in building a smart mirror, don"t go with a screen that"s already shown signs of trouble. The Raspberry Pi-based projects are usually the easiest to keep changing.

In fact, if you have an old monitor and old PC parts, you can repurpose the whole PC. You can turn it into a home security system, a home server or media center, or try other unique creative projects.

About: I"ve been a president at two colleges and currently provide consulting services for small businesses, non-profits, and educational organizations. In a previous life, I was a human factors engineer and human pe…

If you like collecting quotations like I do, then this instructable is for you. This instructable will show you how to put together a way to display your quotes for all to see, using things you probably already have around the house.

Any kind of quote will do, but because the picture frame scrolls through the images that will contain the quotes it works best if you keep the quotes short. Longer quotes, although interesting, may not remain on screen long enough to be read. If you have a number of longer quotations, see "Some Final Notes" at the end of this instructable for tips that you can consider for longer display times.

Look at the sample images stored on your LCD picture frame. For my frame, all of the sample images were 856x480 pixels. To determine this, right click on the image file, and select Properties. You should see a number of tabs, one of which should be called “Details.” Click on the details tab; under Image you should see a width and height. Write this down or keep the window open, because we will use it to set up PowerPoint.

Take the smaller of the two numbers (usually the height), and divide that by the larger number. In my case, 480/856=0.5607. Checking the table below (which shows common screen image ratios), I can see that the native images on my LCD picture frame are just about in 16:9 format.

Open PowerPoint, and start a new presentation. On the ribbon, click Design, Page Setup. In the setup dialog box, select the image format that matches the native format of your LCD picture frame. We do this because it helps prevent the software driving the frame from cropping or stretching the images unnecessarily. Click Home on the ribbon.

Now, look for the New Slide button. In the lower-right corner of the button, there should be a small arrow. Click on the arrow, which should bring up a bunch of options for slide layouts. Select the Blank Slide.

At this point, your presentation should have two slides: The initial default title slide, and your newly inserted blank slide. Click on the first slide (the title slide), click your right mouse button, and select delete. You should be left with a single blank slide in your presentation, sized to the native image size of your LCD picture frame.

In many cases, the picture won’t fill the slide because it’s in a different format than the native format for the LCD picture frame. Thus, we’ll need to resize the image to fit. At the same time, we don’t want to distort the image either. Here’s the most straightforward approach:

Move the image all the way to the right edge of the PowerPoint slide, then up until the top of the image aligns with the top of the slide. The image should “snap” to the edges of the slide.

Grab the lower-left corner of the image and drag it to the left-center edge of the slide. By grabbing the lower-left corner (or any corner, for that matter), you maintain the aspect ratio of the image and you can resize it without distortion. Again, the image should snap to the edge of the slide.

With the picture still selected, click on the “Crop” button. The circle-shaped resize handles at the image’s corners should change to crop handles. Grab the bottom-center crop handle with your mouse, and push up until it snaps onto the bottom of the slide.

A word about cropping the images: When you crop images, you may lose parts of the image that make it a pleasing composition. Feel free to drag any of the crop handles and move the photo around until you get the image looking the way you want. Just make sure when you’re finished, the image is aligned with the edges of the PowerPoint slide.

Select the image, and click the Format button under Picture Tools on the ribbon. Select the “Compress Pictures” button. In the Compress Pictures dialog, choose “Options.” Set up the Compression Options like the image below and click OK. You’ll only have to make these settings the first time. Finally, click OK on the Compress Pictures dialog. This makes the image smaller, and removes the cropped portions of the picture, leaving a slide-filling image.

Click Insert on the ribbon, and click on the text box button. Select a font, font color, and size that make the quote readable. Move to your word processing file with your quotes, highlight and copy the quotation you want to use, and then use "Paste Special, Unformatted Text" to paste the quotation into the text box.

Resize the text box as necessary, and place it in a good location on the image. For the quote here I used 24-point Arial Black in white (I have seen the quote attributed to Will Rodgers, Fred Rogers, and Wynn Catlin; I think Will is most likely but I’m amused by the incongruity of attributing it to Mr. Rogers!).

1. PowerPoint 2007 has an option under the Insert ribbon called “Photo Album.” This will bring in many photos at once, into different slides. However, it brings in all the images in 4:3 format. I haven"t found a way to change this. If you change the slide layout of the Photo Album to something else (like 16:9) PowerPoint stretches the images to fit.

3. Once you add your first quote, select the text box and copy it. Then, move to each slide and select “Paste.” This will place a formatted text box on each slide, in the same location from which it was copied. This is a great place to start. One caveat: When pasting your quotes from your word processing program, use “Paste Special” and choose unformatted text. That preserves your text box formatting.

4. My LCD picture frame doesn’t let you change the display time for pictures, and some of the transitions happen too quickly to allow you to read the entire quote. You can do what I did, which was to make two copies of every slide. PowerPoint is creative in its naming; the slides are called Slide1.jpg, Slide2.jpg, et cetera. I named my copies Slide1a.jpg, Slide2a.jpg. The file system sorts the original and the copy together when the files are named this way, so every quote is displayed twice with an intervening transition.

5. If you don’t have a lot slides suitable for quotes, consider visiting a site like Interface Lift, which has a wide range of images in a variety of formats for desktop wallpapers. Chances are, you’ll be able to find images in a format suitable for the native format of your LCD picture frame.

6. Finally, experiment with fonts and type colors. You can even use transparent fills in the text box to make the text stand out a bit more if your slide has a complex background.

We all have our favorite quote or quotes. But what makes some turns of phrase so resonant? When things get tough, many people turn to a motivational quote for a bit of inspiration. Some of these pithy sayings have become celebrated parts of society’s lexicon. Obviously, people who tend to feel inspired by motivational quotes are going to find them more resonant than those who don’t find simple phrases and sayings to be particularly meaningful, say psychologists. There’s a little bit of implicit coaching that’s happening when you’re reading it. It’s building that self-efficacy in that kind of dialogue that you’re having with yourself…

Nothing motivates us better than a powerful quote — especially quotes about creativity. They can help us get out of bed in the morning, push us to reach our goals or, most importantly, put a smile on our face. Just imagine how many creative things you can do with quotes!

Just choose one or several favorite quotes, imagine the color palette of markers that you need for work and start creating something unique! Something that will inspire you, your friends or loved ones. You can make a gift diy quote art to your friend and remember him that after a bad day will come another day which will be more successful. Just trust in yourself. You always need to remember it.

Inspirational Quotes Can Literally Change Your Day…and Your Life! Turn your favorite quotes into inspirational art with one of these decorative DIY ideas and #Artistro markers:

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Screen-Free Week happens each year now. But I don’t want you to feel shamed if you haven’t been participating or participating as fully as you’d like. Many of us work online or have school assignments online that prevent us from participating fully. And others just don’t feel ready to give up screen time.

This post isn’t about shaming. It simply acknowledges that most of us would like to have less screen time. It’s about giving us inspiration to find the right balance in our life and family.

“I introduced the term nature-deficit disorder—not as a medical diagnosis but as a way to describe the growing gap between children and nature. By its broadest interpretation, nature-deficit disorder is an atrophied awareness, a diminished ability to find meaning in the life that surrounds us. When we think of the nature deficit, we usually think of kids spending too much time indoors plugged into an outlet or computer screen. But after the book’s publication, I heard adults speak with heartfelt emotion, even anger, about their own sense of loss.” Richard Louv

“Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?” Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood.” Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?” Richard Louv, The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected. Remember the old days when you had eye contact during a conversation? When everyone wasn’t looking down at a device in their hands? We’ve become so focused on that tiny screen that we forget the big picture, the people right in front of us.” Regina Brett

“I have come to the feeling about television the way I do about hamburgers: I eat a lot of hamburgers and I don’t remember a single one of them.” John Barrow, 1973

“TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” Author Unknown

“If you came and you found a strange man… teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you’d kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don’t think twice about it.” Jerome Singer

“Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” C.P. Snow, New York Times, March 15, 1971

If you’re interested in kid-related content, sign up for the Living Montessori Now newsletter. I share my Bits of Positivity parenting and character-education posts in the weekly Living Montessori Now newsletter along with lots of great kids’ activities and Montessori ideas from my Living Montessori Now blog. You’ll get a monthly freebie (and previous monthly freebies) with link and password if you subscribe to the Living Montessori Now weekly newsletter!

If you’re interested in inspiration and motivation, the best place for you will probably be the Bits of Positivity Facebook page. You’ll find lots of inspiration there from the Bits of Positivity blog and from around the Internet. For word art inspiration, be sure to follow me at the Bits of Positivity Facebook page and on Pinterest! And for all my posts in a reader, check out Bloglovin‘! Thanks so much!

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Introducing Inkyshot: an inspirational e-ink display delivering a daily shot of encouragement through a quote or personalized message for you or your loved ones. Based on a Raspberry Pi Zero and e-ink display, Inkyshot is a perfect weekend project whether you’re completely new to IoT or an experienced developer.

Almost a year ago, after initially joining balena, I deployed my first code using balena with the help of my onboarding buddy. We pushed the game Snake onto a sense HAT, and once Charlie (the unicorn that shows up in the CLI) appeared, my buddy said to me, “And now, we can play snake.”

Not having ever built hack projects myself, discovering and experiencing the ability to remotely deploy containers represented a whole new way for me to connect in personal relationships, which fuels the inspiration behind Inkyshot.

My sister and I share an extremely close relationship, despite living in different countries since I left home for college. Throughout the years, we’ve sent each other countless care packages, along with handwritten letters intimating the endless chats hanging out in each other’s rooms at home.

When I first saw the e-ink displays for Raspberry Pi Zero, I fell in love with it, and came up with the initial idea of this project: I wanted to send personal, encouraging messages to my sister that were more intimate than a text message, and faster than our handwritten letters. I mentioned the idea to our Hardware Hacker, Chris, who also wanted to build one for his partner living in another country. Together, we built Inkyshot: an e-ink message display that can pull an inspirational quote of the day, or send messages of your choosing.

Running on balena, the device variables such as message and font can be updated from anywhere in the world, so long as the device is connected to WiFi somewhere. It does not need to stay plugged in - the beauty of this e-ink display is that it will continue to display the message even without being powered!

It’s the perfect way for me to stay connected with my sister, and give her a shot of inspiration and encouragement wherever I am in the world, letting her know that I’m always thinking of her. You can also build a number of these and send them to anyone who needs some daily encouragement (scaling is easy with balena, and free for up to 10 devices)!

The links above are to vendors in the UK; if you’re in the US, Adafruit provides the InkypHAT and Raspberry Pi Zero WH, and here is a link to a Female Micro USB to DIP Adapter

The hardware set-up is pretty straightforward-- you will need a Raspberry Pi Zero WH (with WiFi and the pre-soldered header, unless you’d like to solder a header on yourself), on top of that, the InkypHAT e-ink display, and a Micro-USB power supply to power the Pi Zero. You’ll also need a solid SD card: I recommend the SanDisk ExtremePro, at least 8GB.

The 3D-printed case is optional. If you don’t have a 3D printer, you can consider ordering the print from Shapeways - we’ve provided the STL files here.

At this point, balenaCloud is automatically copying all the software for Inkyshot from the GitHub repo to your application in the background. If you’re already familiar with balenaCloud you can also deploy the code with the CLI.

Next, add your device to the application by flashing your SD card. Within the application, select on the upper left corner ‘Add device’ being sure to select ‘Wifi + Ethernet’ to set up the wireless network. Enter your WiFi SSID and password - this injects the details into the downloaded OS so that the device will automatically link up to the WiFi when it starts up.

After the device appears online in the dashboard, it will start to download the Inkyshot application; your dashboard should then look something like this, showing the service running.

Once you have the software running properly, you will have to fit it into the case and set up the female micro USB to DIP Adapter so that you can plug it in from the back of the case.

This can be set up in various ways depending on the case you’re using, but in either case you’ll have to solder wire from the Pi Zero onto the PCB of the adapter. Chris created a build video demonstrating and explaining how to assemble the case here.

We’ve created the Inkyshot message to be updatable via the balenaCloud dashboard. There are default settings if they are not defined, however, if you’d like to customize and change things, you have to set up the variables.

Go into the device through Application and select the device (it will have a unique name). On the left bar you’ll see ‘D(x) Device Variables’ select it and add the following variables if you need them:

1: The test character determines where the line breaks happen based on the width of a character. If you have an ‘l’ as a test character, it’s likely not going to fit on the screen. If you have an ‘m’ as the character, the margins will likely be too large. The default test character is ‘a,’ which seems to be a good choice of an average character width for most fonts.

Put it at your office desk as a message or status for others, like, ‘Out of office! Leave message with Chris!,’ ‘In a meeting, returning at 3:30PM,’ ‘Welcome to the balena London office!!’

Among the many things I could have built for my Hack Friday project, Inkyshot inspired me the most - it’s something that could make use of technology to create a positive impact on my relationship with my sister by keeping us connected.

Seeing it go from an idea to completion has been a magical feeling that I hope is shared by everyone who builds this project. It is my intention that Inkyshot will bring the same joy to you and your loved ones, wherever in the world they might be, and that it inspires closer connections in our most cherished relationships.

If you end up building this project, please let us know on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or on our Forums. We"d love to meet other folks who find Inkyshot useful. If you get stuck anywhere along the way, or have any questions or recommendations on how to improve the project, please let us know.

The Research: Sreedhari Desai, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, ran a series of studies in which subjects believed they were part of a virtual team playing a game. The subjects were told that they’d earn more money if they got their teammates to unwittingly spread a lie. Unbeknownst to the participants, the other players were all researchers. In the signatures of their e-mails to the subjects, some included a quote about integrity, some a neutral quote, and some no quote at all. The subjects were least likely to ask the people who put the virtuous saying in their messages to do their unethical bidding.

The Challenge: Can you really insulate yourself from wrongdoing by advertising your values? Or will people just think you’re being holier than thou? Professor Desai, defend your research.

Desai: We clearly saw that if people had decided to do the unethical thing, they were far less likely to try to involve someone who displayed a quote on morals than to approach other team members. We also found that when subjects were presented with such a quote, the likelihood that they’d send a deceptive message at all was generally lower. So a virtuous quote not only shielded a teammate from being asked to do a bad thing but also seemed to regulate the subjects.

“Success without honor is worse than fraud.” It clearly takes a point of view on ethics. The neutral quote, in contrast, was “Success and luck go hand in hand.” In another study, we didn’t use e-mail messages but had team members build little digital avatars of themselves. In fact, the subjects thought that the study was about avatars. The shirts the avatars wore had brands on them. Some were “moral” brands, like YourMorals.org, while others weren’t. The outcome was similar: When subjects saw that a team member had an avatar wearing a moral brand, they didn’t try to get him or her to participate in a deception. In another study, we primed people to feel powerful before playing the game, just to see if power somehow mitigated the effect of the moral talisman. But it didn’t; we still got very similar results.

When someone is in a position to request an unethical thing, they may not consciously be thinking, “I won’t ask that person.” Instead, they may perceive a person as morally “pure” and feel that asking them to get “dirty” makes an ethical transgression even worse. Or they may be concerned that someone with moral character will just refuse the request.

In business surveys, a high percentage of employees report they’ve been asked to do unethical things. That’s how all this started. My coresearcher, Maryam Kouchaki, and I wanted to see if we could empower employees so that their supervisors wouldn’t ask in the first place. We did an analysis of employees and managers in India. We asked the bosses if they’d noticed anything religious about their subordinates, like vermilion dots on their foreheads or pictures of Hindu gods or quotes from the Koran or the Bible in their cubicles. We know from previous research that people associate these religious symbols with morality. We also asked the subordinates if they’d gotten a request to do something unethical in the past six months. Controlling for job satisfaction, performance, and the quality of work relationships, we still found that people who wore or displayed religious symbols were less likely to be asked to do something shady.

What encouraged me most was that we also controlled for religious beliefs. Even if managers were exposed to symbols for a religion different from their own, the mitigating effect was there. We often hear in the media of inter-religious tensions, but this suggests that religious symbols communicate something universally positive to us.

That’s part of why we wanted to do the workplace survey. If I see Krishna in your cubicle every day, would that priming effect fade over time? Would the managers be desensitized? It doesn’t appear that they were.

I’d love to study other types of cues. I suspect that if I showed quotes about environmental causes—about the sanctity of nature—my boss would be less likely to ask me to dump chemicals into a river. Obviously, empirical evidence is needed, but I’d predict the same effect.

Well, just to be clear, we didn’t test people’s morality. We tested how others perceived symbols of morality—and behaved in response. You could have a beautiful quote on your e-mail and also be an unethical person. But in general, I’d say the findings support displaying moral symbols as a way to signal to others that you’re a good person and reduce the chances that you’ll be asked to do bad things.

We tested some for that. In another study, we found that displaying moral symbols did not affect whether bosses would lay you off. And in another, we tested whether they affected other people’s perceptions of your leadership and competence, and found that they did not. By the way, we asked those people if they remembered the moral quotes from the leaders they were evaluating. Oddly, people couldn’t always identify the quote they’d just read, but they still were left with a favorable impression of the leaders’ morality. It could be a subconscious effect.

There could be cultural boundaries. In fact, we’re studying how people react to moral symbols in Australia. Our preliminary study showed that people there were skeptical of moral displays. They seemed to think the bloke with the quote was being “holier than thou” and probably had something to hide. They were more fond of and likely to spare someone with fun-loving and silly quotes. I have to explore what makes Australians different.

What I love about it is that it doesn’t at all concern behaviors that are publicly known. It measures what people do when they’re aware that no one else will know they’re being dishonest. And to me, the heartening thing is that overall, the incidence of unethical behavior dropped because of moral displays. Not just in what people asked others to do, but what people did themselves. It tells me we can do better. The glass is half full for me.

You messed up, though. If you had started this conversation with a pithy saying about integrity, I’d be less likely to misquote you and make your research look foolish.

I don’t think it’s too late. “Let thy secret unseen acts be such as if the men thou prizest most were witness around thee.” Now I’m counting on you to do the right thing.

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.

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.

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:

The resistor in the diagram above sets the backlight brightness. A typical value is 220 Ohms, but other values will work too. Smaller resistors will make the backlight brighter.

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.

These two functions can be used together in the void loop() section to create a blinking text effect. This code will make the “hello, world!” text blink on and off:

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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Glass substrate with ITO electrodes. The shapes of these electrodes will determine the shapes that will appear when the LCD is switched ON. Vertical ridges etched on the surface are smooth.

A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directlybacklight or reflector to produce images in color or monochrome.seven-segment displays, as in a digital clock, are all good examples of devices with these displays. They use the same basic technology, except that arbitrary images are made from a matrix of small pixels, while other displays have larger elements. LCDs can either be normally on (positive) or off (negative), depending on the polarizer arrangement. For example, a character positive LCD with a backlight will have black lettering on a background that is the color of the backlight, and a character negative LCD will have a black background with the letters being of the same color as the backlight. Optical filters are added to white on blue LCDs to give them their characteristic appearance.

LCDs are used in a wide range of applications, including LCD televisions, computer monitors, instrument panels, aircraft cockpit displays, and indoor and outdoor signage. Small LCD screens are common in LCD projectors and portable consumer devices such as digital cameras, watches, calculators, and mobile telephones, including smartphones. LCD screens have replaced heavy, bulky and less energy-efficient cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays in nearly all applications. The phosphors used in CRTs make them vulnerable to image burn-in when a static image is displayed on a screen for a long time, e.g., the table frame for an airline flight schedule on an indoor sign. LCDs do not have this weakness, but are still susceptible to image persistence.

Each pixel of an LCD typically consists of a layer of molecules aligned between two transparent electrodes, often made of Indium-Tin oxide (ITO) and two polarizing filters (parallel and perpendicular polarizers), the axes of transmission of which are (in most of the cases) perpendicular to each other. Without the liquid crystal between the polarizing filters, light passing through the first filter would be blocked by the second (crossed) polarizer. Before an electric field is applied, the orientation of the liquid-crystal molecules is determined by the alignment at the surfaces of electrodes. In a twisted nematic (TN) device, the surface alignment directions at the two electrodes are perpendicular to each other, and so the molecules arrange themselves in a helical structure, or twist. This induces the rotation of the polarization of the incident light, and the device appears gray. If the applied voltage is large enough, the liquid crystal molecules in the center of the layer are almost completely untwisted and the polarization of the incident light is not rotated as it passes through the liquid crystal layer. This light will then be mainly polarized perpendicular to the second filter, and thus be blocked and the pixel will appear black. By controlling the voltage applied across the liquid crystal layer in each pixel, light can be allowed to pass through in varying amounts thus constituting different levels of gray.

The chemical formula of the liquid crystals used in LCDs may vary. Formulas may be patented.Sharp Corporation. The patent that covered that specific mixture expired.

Most color LCD systems use the same technique, with color filters used to generate red, green, and blue subpixels. The LCD color filters are made with a photolithography process on large glass sheets that are later glued with other glass sheets containing a TFT array, spacers and liquid crystal, creating several color LCDs that are then cut from one another and laminated with polarizer sheets. Red, green, blue and black photoresists (resists) are used. All resists contain a finely ground powdered pigment, with particles being just 40 nanometers across. The black resist is the first to be applied; this will create a black grid (known in the industry as a black matrix) that will separate red, green and blue subpixels from one another, increasing contrast ratios and preventing light from leaking from one subpixel onto other surrounding subpixels.Super-twisted nematic LCD, where the variable twist between tighter-spaced plates causes a varying double refraction birefringence, thus changing the hue.

LCD in a Texas Instruments calculator with top polarizer removed from device and placed on top, such that the top and bottom polarizers are perpendicular. As a result, the colors are inverted.

The optical effect of a TN device in the voltage-on state is far less dependent on variations in the device thickness than that in the voltage-off state. Because of this, TN displays with low information content and no backlighting are usually operated between crossed polarizers such that they appear bright with no voltage (the eye is much more sensitive to variations in the dark state than the bright state). As most of 2010-era LCDs are used in television sets, monitors and smartphones, they have high-resolution matrix arrays of pixels to display arbitrary images using backlighting with a dark background. When no image is displayed, different arrangements are used. For this purpose, TN LCDs are operated between parallel polarizers, whereas IPS LCDs feature crossed polarizers. In many applications IPS LCDs have replaced TN LCDs, particularly in smartphones. Both the liquid crystal material and the alignment layer material contain ionic compounds. If an electric field of one particular polarity is applied for a long period of time, this ionic material is attracted to the surfaces and degrades the device performance. This is avoided either by applying an alternating current or by reversing the polarity of the electric field as the device is addressed (the response of the liquid crystal layer is identical, regardless of the polarity of the applied field).

Displays for a small number of individual digits or fixed symbols (as in digital watches and pocket calculators) can be implemented with independent electrodes for each segment.alphanumeric or variable graphics displays are usually implemented with pixels arranged as a matrix consisting of electrically connected rows on one side of the LC layer and columns on the other side, which makes it possible to address each pixel at the intersections. The general method of matrix addressing consists of sequentially addressing one side of the matrix, for example by selecting the rows one-by-one and applying the picture information on the other side at the columns row-by-row. For details on the various matrix addressing schemes see passive-matrix and active-matrix addressed LCDs.

LCDs are manufactured in cleanrooms borrowing techniques from semiconductor manufacturing and using large sheets of glass whose size has increased over time. Several displays are manufactured at the same time, and then cut from the sheet of glass, also known as the mother glass or LCD glass substrate. The increase in size allows more displays or larger displays to be made, just like with increasing wafer sizes in semiconductor manufacturing. The glass sizes are as follows:

Until Gen 8, manufacturers would not agree on a single mother glass size and as a result, different manufacturers would use slightly different glass sizes for the same generation. Some manufacturers have adopted Gen 8.6 mother glass sheets which are only slightly larger than Gen 8.5, allowing for more 50 and 58 inch LCDs to be made per mother glass, specially 58 inch LCDs, in which case 6 can be produced on a Gen 8.6 mother glass vs only 3 on a Gen 8.5 mother glass, significantly reducing waste.AGC Inc., Corning Inc., and Nippon Electric Glass.

The origins and the complex history of liquid-crystal displays from the perspective of an insider during the early days were described by Joseph A. Castellano in Liquid Gold: The Story of Liquid Crystal Displays and the Creation of an Industry.IEEE History Center.Peter J. Wild, can be found at the Engineering and Technology History Wiki.

In 1888,Friedrich Reinitzer (1858–1927) discovered the liquid crystalline nature of cholesterol extracted from carrots (that is, two melting points and generation of colors) and published his findings at a meeting of the Vienna Chemical Society on May 3, 1888 (F. Reinitzer: Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Cholesterins, Monatshefte für Chemie (Wien) 9, 421–441 (1888)).Otto Lehmann published his work "Flüssige Kristalle" (Liquid Crystals). In 1911, Charles Mauguin first experimented with liquid crystals confined between plates in thin layers.

In 1922, Georges Friedel described the structure and properties of liquid crystals and classified them in three types (nematics, smectics and cholesterics). In 1927, Vsevolod Frederiks devised the electrically switched light valve, called the Fréedericksz transition, the essential effect of all LCD technology. In 1936, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph company patented the first practical application of the technology, "The Liquid Crystal Light Valve". In 1962, the first major English language publication Molecular Structure and Properties of Liquid Crystals was published by Dr. George W. Gray.RCA found that liquid crystals had some interesting electro-optic characteristics and he realized an electro-optical effect by generating stripe-patterns in a thin layer of liquid crystal material by the application of a voltage. This effect is based on an electro-hydrodynamic instability forming what are now called "Williams domains" inside the liquid crystal.

In 1964, George H. Heilmeier, then working at the RCA laboratories on the effect discovered by Williams achieved the switching of colors by field-induced realignment of dichroic dyes in a homeotropically oriented liquid crystal. Practical problems with this new electro-optical effect made Heilmeier continue to work on scattering effects in liquid crystals and finally the achievement of the first operational liquid-crystal display based on what he called the George H. Heilmeier was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of FameIEEE Milestone.

In the late 1960s, pioneering work on liquid crystals was undertaken by the UK"s Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern, England. The team at RRE supported ongoing work by George William Gray and his team at the University of Hull who ultimately discovered the cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals, which had correct stability and temperature properties for application in LCDs.

The idea of a TFT-based liquid-crystal display (LCD) was conceived by Bernard Lechner of RCA Laboratories in 1968.dynamic scattering mode (DSM) LCD that used standard discrete MOSFETs.

On December 4, 1970, the twisted nematic field effect (TN) in liquid crystals was filed for patent by Hoffmann-LaRoche in Switzerland, (Swiss patent No. 532 261) with Wolfgang Helfrich and Martin Schadt (then working for the Central Research Laboratories) listed as inventors.Brown, Boveri & Cie, its joint venture partner at that time, which produced TN displays for wristwatches and other applications during the 1970s for the international markets including the Japanese electronics industry, which soon produced the first digital quartz wristwatches with TN-LCDs and numerous other products. James Fergason, while working with Sardari Arora and Alfred Saupe at Kent State University Liquid Crystal Institute, filed an identical patent in the United States on April 22, 1971.ILIXCO (now LXD Incorporated), produced LCDs based on the TN-effect, which soon superseded the poor-quality DSM types due to improvements of lower operating voltages and lower power consumption. Tetsuro Hama and Izuhiko Nishimura of Seiko received a US patent dated February 1971, for an electronic wristwatch incorporating a TN-LCD.

In 1972, the concept of the active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid-crystal display panel was prototyped in the United States by T. Peter Brody"s team at Westinghouse, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Westinghouse Research Laboratories demonstrated the first thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD).high-resolution and high-quality electronic visual display devices use TFT-based active matrix displays.active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) in 1974, and then Brody coined the term "active matrix" in 1975.

In 1972 North American Rockwell Microelectronics Corp introduced the use of DSM LCDs for calculators for marketing by Lloyds Electronics Inc, though these required an internal light source for illumination.Sharp Corporation followed with DSM LCDs for pocket-sized calculators in 1973Seiko and its first 6-digit TN-LCD quartz wristwatch, and Casio"s "Casiotron". Color LCDs based on Guest-Host interaction were invented by a team at RCA in 1968.TFT LCDs similar to the prototypes developed by a Westinghouse team in 1972 were patented in 1976 by a team at Sharp consisting of Fumiaki Funada, Masataka Matsuura, and Tomio Wada,

In 1983, researchers at Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) Research Center, Switzerland, invented the passive matrix-addressed LCDs. H. Amstutz et al. were listed as inventors in the corresponding patent applications filed in Switzerland on July 7, 1983, and October 28, 1983. Patents were granted in Switzerland CH 665491, Europe EP 0131216,

The first color LCD televisions were developed as handheld televisions in Japan. In 1980, Hattori Seiko"s R&D group began development on color LCD pocket televisions.Seiko Epson released the first LCD television, the Epson TV Watch, a wristwatch equipped with a small active-matrix LCD television.dot matrix TN-LCD in 1983.Citizen Watch,TFT LCD.computer monitors and LCD televisions.3LCD projection technology in the 1980s, and licensed it for use in projectors in 1988.compact, full-color LCD projector.

In 1990, under different titles, inventors conceived electro optical effects as alternatives to twisted nematic field effect LCDs (TN- and STN- LCDs). One approach was to use interdigital electrodes on one glass substrate only to produce an electric field essentially parallel to the glass substrates.Germany by Guenter Baur et al. and patented in various countries.Hitachi work out various practical details of the IPS technology to interconnect the thin-film transistor array as a matrix and to avoid undesirable stray fields in between pixels.

Hitachi also improved the viewing angle dependence further by optimizing the shape of the electrodes (Super IPS). NEC and Hitachi become early manufacturers of active-matrix addressed LCDs based on the IPS technology. This is a milestone for implementing large-screen LCDs having acceptable visual performance for flat-panel computer monitors and television screens. In 1996, Samsung developed the optical patterning technique that enables multi-domain LCD. Multi-domain and In Plane Switching subsequently remain the dominant LCD designs through 2006.South Korea and Taiwan,

In 2007 the image quality of LCD televisions surpassed the image quality of cathode-ray-tube-based (CRT) TVs.LCD TVs were projected to account 50% of the 200 million TVs to be shipped globally in 2006, according to Displaybank.Toshiba announced 2560 × 1600 pixels on a 6.1-inch (155 mm) LCD panel, suitable for use in a tablet computer,

In 2016, Panasonic developed IPS LCDs with a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, rivaling OLEDs. This technology was later put into mass production as dual layer, dual panel or LMCL (Light Modulating Cell Layer) LCDs. The technology uses 2 liquid crystal layers instead of one, and may be used along with a mini-LED backlight and quantum dot sheets.

Since LCDs produce no light of their own, they require external light to produce a visible image.backlight. Active-matrix LCDs are almost always backlit.Transflective LCDs combine the features of a backlit transmissive display and a reflective display.

CCFL: The LCD panel is lit either by two cold cathode fluorescent lamps placed at opposite edges of the display or an array of parallel CCFLs behind larger displays. A diffuser (made of PMMA acrylic plastic, also known as a wave or light guide/guiding plateinverter to convert whatever DC voltage the device uses (usually 5 or 12 V) to ≈1000 V needed to light a CCFL.

EL-WLED: The LCD panel is lit by a row of white LEDs placed at one or more edges of the screen. A light diffuser (light guide plate, LGP) is then used to spread the light evenly across the whole display, similarly to edge-lit CCFL LCD backlights. The diffuser is made out of either PMMA plastic or special glass, PMMA is used in most cases because it is rugged, while special glass is used when the thickness of the LCD is of primary concern, because it doesn"t expand as much when heated or exposed to moisture, which allows LCDs to be just 5mm thick. Quantum dots may be placed on top of the diffuser as a quantum dot enhancement film (QDEF, in which case they need a layer to be protected from heat and humidity) or on the color filter of the LCD, replacing the resists that are normally used.

WLED array: The LCD panel is lit by a full array of white LEDs placed behind a diffuser behind the panel. LCDs that use this implementation will usually have the ability to dim or completely turn off the LEDs in the dark areas of the image being displayed, effectively increasing the contrast ratio of the display. The precision with which this can be done will depend on the number of dimming zones of the display. The more dimming zones, the more precise the dimming, with less obvious blooming artifacts which are visible as dark grey patches surrounded by the unlit areas of the LCD. As of 2012, this design gets most of its use from upscale, larger-screen LCD televisions.

RGB-LED array: Similar to the WLED array, except the panel is lit by a full array of RGB LEDs. While displays lit with white LEDs usually have a poorer color gamut than CCFL lit displays, panels lit with RGB LEDs have very wide color gamuts. This implementation is most popular on professional graphics editing LCDs. As of 2012, LCDs in this category usually cost more than $1000. As of 2016 the cost of this category has drastically reduced and such LCD televisions obtained same price levels as the former 28" (71 cm) CRT based categories.

Monochrome LEDs: such as red, green, yellow or blue LEDs are used in the small passive monochrome LCDs typically used in clocks, watches and small appliances.

Mini-LED: Backlighting with Mini-LEDs can support over a thousand of Full-area Local Area Dimming (FLAD) zones. This allows deeper blacks and higher contrast ratio.

Today, most LCD screens are being designed with an LED backlight instead of the traditional CCFL backlight, while that backlight is dynamically controlled with the video information (dynamic backlight control). The combination with the dynamic backlight control, invented by Philips researchers Douglas Stanton, Martinus Stroomer and Adrianus de Vaan, simultaneously increases the dynamic range of the display system (also marketed as HDR, high dynamic range television or FLAD, full-area local area dimming).

The LCD backlight systems are made highly efficient by applying optical films such as prismatic structure (prism sheet) to gain the light into the desired viewer directions and reflective polarizing films that recycle the polarized light that was formerly absorbed by the first polarizer of the LCD (invented by Philips researchers Adrianus de Vaan and Paulus Schaareman),

A pink elastomeric connector mating an LCD panel to circuit board traces, shown next to a centimeter-scale ruler. The conductive and insulating layers in the black stripe are very small.

A standard television receiver screen, a modern LCD panel, has over six million pixels, and they are all individually powered by a wire network embedded in the screen. The fine wires, or pathways, form a grid with vertical wires across the whole screen on one side of the screen and horizontal wires across the whole screen on the other side of the screen. To this grid each pixel has a positive connection on one side and a negative connection on the other side. So the total amount of wires needed for a 1080p display is 3 x 1920 going vertically and 1080 going horizontally for a total of 6840 wires horizontally and vertically. That"s three for red, green and blue and 1920 columns of pixels for each color for a total of 5760 wires going vertically and 1080 rows of wires going horizontally. For a panel that is 28.8 inches (73 centimeters) wide, that means a wire density of 200 wires per inch along the horizontal edge.

The LCD panel is powered by LCD drivers that are carefully matched up with the edge of the LCD panel at the factory level. The drivers may be installed using several methods, the most common of which are COG (Chip-On-Glass) and TAB (Tape-automated bonding) These same principles apply also for smartphone screens that are much smaller than TV screens.anisotropic conductive film or, for lower densities, elastomeric connectors.

Monochrome and later color passive-matrix LCDs were standard in most early laptops (although a few used plasma displaysGame Boyactive-matrix became standard on all laptops. The commercially unsuccessful Macintosh Portable (released in 1989) was one of the first to use an active-matrix display (though still monochrome). Passive-matrix LCDs are still used in the 2010s for applications less demanding than laptop computers and TVs, such as inexpensive calculators. In particular, these are used on portable devices where less information content needs to be displayed, lowest power consumption (no backlight) and low cost are desired or readability in direct sunlight is needed.

A comparison between a blank passive-matrix display (top) and a blank active-matrix display (bottom). A passive-matrix display can be identified when the blank background is more grey in appearance than the crisper active-matrix display, fog appears on all edges of the screen, and while pictures appear to be fading on the screen.

Displays having a passive-matrix structure are employing Crosstalk between activated and non-activated pixels has to be handled properly by keeping the RMS voltage of non-activated pixels below the threshold voltage as discovered by Peter J. Wild in 1972,

STN LCDs have to be continuously refreshed by alternating pulsed voltages of one polarity during one frame and pulses of opposite polarity during the next frame. Individual pixels are addressed by the corresponding row and column circuits. This type of display is called response times and poor contrast are typical of passive-matrix addressed LCDs with too many pixels and driven according to the "Alt & Pleshko" drive scheme. Welzen and de Vaan also invented a non RMS drive scheme enabling to drive STN displays with video rates and enabling to show smooth moving video images on an STN display.

Bistable LCDs do not require continuous refreshing. Rewriting is only required for picture information changes. In 1984 HA van Sprang and AJSM de Vaan invented an STN type display that could be operated in a bistable mode, enabling extremely high resolution images up to 4000 lines or more using only low voltages.

High-resolution color displays, such as modern LCD computer monitors and televisions, use an active-matrix structure. A matrix of thin-film transistors (TFTs) is adde