cool things to do with lcd displays free sample

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.

Adding a display to your Arduino can serve many purposes. Since a common use for microcontrollers is reading data from sensors, a display allows you to see this data in real-time without needing to use the serial monitor within the Arduino IDE. It also allows you to give your projects a personal touch with text, images, or even interactivity through a touch screen.

Transparent Organic Light Emitting Diode (TOLED) is a type of LED that, as you can guess, has a transparent screen. It builds on the now common OLED screens found in smartphones and TVs, but with a transparent display, offers up some new possibilities for Arduino screens.

Take for example this brilliant project that makes use of TOLED displays. By stacking 10 transparent OLED screens in parallel, creator Sean Hodgins has converted a handful of 2D screens into a solid-state volumetric display. This kind of display creates an image that has 3-dimensional depth, taking us one step closer to the neon, holographic screens we imagine in the future.

Crystalfontz has a tiny monochrome (light blue) 1.51" TOLED that has 128x56 pixels. As the technology is more recent than the following displays in this list, the cost is higher too. One of these screens can be purchased for around $26, but for certain applications, it might just be worth it.

The liquid crystal display (LCD) is the most common display to find in DIY projects and home appliances alike. This is no surprise as they are simple to operate, low-powered, and incredibly cheap.

This type of display can vary in design. Some are larger, with more character spaces and rows; some come with a backlight. Most attach directly to the board through 8 or 12 connections to the Arduino pins, making them incompatible with boards with fewer pins available. In this instance, buy a screen with an I2C adapter, allowing control using only four pins.

Available for only a few dollars (or as little as a couple of dollars on AliExpress with included I2C adapter), these simple displays can be used to give real-time feedback to any project.

The screens are capable of a large variety of preset characters which cover most use cases in a variety of languages. You can control your LCD using the Liquid Crystal Library provided by Arduino. The display() and noDisplay() methods write to the LCD, as shown in the official tutorial on the Arduino website.

Are you looking for something simple to display numbers and a few basic characters? Maybe you are looking for something with that old-school arcade feel? A seven-segment display might suit your needs.

These simple boards are made up of 7 LEDs (8 if you include the dot), and work much like normal LEDs with a common Anode or Cathode connection. This allows them to take one connection to V+ (or GND for common cathode) and be controlled from the pins of your Arduino. By combining these pins in code, you can create numbers and several letters, along with more abstract designs—anything you can dream up using the segments available!

Next on our list is the 5110 display, also affectionately known as the Nokia display due to its wide use in the beloved and nigh indestructible Nokia 3310.

These tiny LCD screens are monochrome and have a screen size of 84 x 48 pixels, but don"t let that fool you. Coming in at around $2 on AliExpress, these displays are incredibly cheap and usually come with a backlight as standard.

Depending on which library you use, the screen can display multiple lines of text in various fonts. It"s also capable of displaying images, and there is free software designed to help get your creations on screen. While the refresh rate is too slow for detailed animations, these screens are hardy enough to be included in long-term, always-on projects.

For a step up in resolution and functionality, an OLED display might be what you are looking for. At first glance, these screens look similar to the 5110 screens, but they are a significant upgrade. The standard 0.96" screens are 128 x 64 monochrome, and come with a backlight as standard.

They connect to your Arduino using I2C, meaning that alongside the V+ and GND pins, only two further pins are required to communicate with the screen. With various sizes and full color options available, these displays are incredibly versatile.

For a project to get you started with OLED displays, our Electronic D20 build will teach you everything you need to know -- and you"ll end up with the ultimate geeky digital dice for your gaming sessions!

These displays can be used in the same way as the others we have mentioned so far, but their refresh rate allows for much more ambitious projects. The basic monochrome screen is available on Amazon.

Thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT LCDs) are in many ways another step up in quality when it comes to options for adding a screen to your Arduino. Available with or without touchscreen functionality, they also add the ability to load bitmap files from an on-board microSD card slot.

Arduino have an official guide for setting up their non-touchscreen TFT LCD screen. For a video tutorial teaching you the basics of setting up the touchscreen version, YouTuber educ8s.tv has you covered:

With the touchscreen editions of these screens costing less than $10 on AliExpress, these displays are another great choice for when you need a nice-looking display for your project.

Looking for something a little different? An E-paper (or E-ink depending on who you ask) display might be right for you. These screens differ from the others giving a much more natural reading experience, it is no surprise that this technology is the cornerstone of almost every e-reader available.

The reason these displays look so good is down to the way they function. Each "pixel" contains charged particles between two electrodes. By switching the charge of each electrode, you can influence the negatively charged black particles to swap places with the positively charged white particles.

This is what gives e-paper such a natural feel. As a bonus, once the ink is moved to its location, it uses no power to keep it there. This makes these displays naturally low-power to operate.

This article has covered most options available for Arduino displays, though there are definitely more weird and wonderful ways to add feedback to your DIY devices.

Now that you have an idea of what is out there, why not incorporate a screen into your DIY smart home setup? If retro gaming is more your thing, why not create some retro games on Arduino?

At the heart of every great digital signage display is this: content. Make it look good and people will stop to look at it. Make it look bad or outdated, and chances are they won’t be looking at your screen again.

But with the flexibility of scheduling and real-time editing in ScreenCloud, all you’ve got to worry about is what you want to show. So here are 30 good examples of digital signage content to inspire.

The most obvious is social media. If you invest your efforts in social media, why not use this to bring your digital screens to life too? You can also utilize user-generated content.

Showing social media feeds on your digital signs can help pair your online reputation with your offline one, building credibility and helping customers buy into your brand.

Walls.io offers a unique feature to showcase sponsored ads from brands you partner with. This feature is called Sponsored Posts, and they are special posts on your social wall that aren’t filled with regular social content from your sources. Instead, you can upload specific images (or videos or just text) that you want to display there and have it show up on your wall in regular intervals.

The main function of Sponsored Posts is to make money by offering ad placements to sponsors. Tomorrowland, for example, made sure that their sponsors received a prominent advertisement space on the festival’s official social feed.

However, these posts are a versatile tool that can be used in various other ways as well. Make sure to check out their guide How to Use Sponsored Posts on a Social Wall.

You can show your website (or any URL in fact) on a screen by simply adding it into the Links section on ScreenCloud Studio. This can then be added into a Playlist.

Customers are 10 times more likely to observe dynamic digital signage content than static messages, which makes video the perfect content form; it’s also usually screen-ready in 16:9 format. Video to share on digital signage could be your showreel, a new demo video, or a customer caught on screen talking about how great you are. Add to your screen playlist either by direct upload or through an app such as YouTube or Vimeo.

ScreenCloud supports pretty much any image formats, including JPEG, PNG and GIF, so you can upload images from company workshops, events, product showcases - anything you like really. Create your own image showreel within a Playlist simply by uploading the images, setting the duration of each one and then leaving them to play.

If you need to create a quick notice, perhaps detailing a room change or a meeting time, there are a wealth of apps to make that happen. Like Noticeboard - an app that can be found in the ScreenCloud App Store. It allows you to create a quick and easy display in seconds, and also allows for real-time edits.

Most of us have a preferred news site or newspaper we turn to when we want to find out what’s going on in the world. That’s why we’ve created apps that cover many of the most popular news sites including Aljazeera news, CNN news and ESPN.

Add a news app to your digital signage playlist and you’ll always be up to date with the latest headlines. Your customers will sip their coffee longer, your guests will loiter in your reception hall.

As well as general news you can make your digital signage even more specific. RSS feeds are the gateway to unlocking any content you like, from Buzzfeed to your company blog to specialized news from your niche.

We’ve found these three apps to be among our most popular as they appeal to almost all audiences - we even have one of our schools using them to help students brush up on their economics.

This type of content works well as ‘filler’ content in between video, ads and social media displays to stop your viewers from getting digital-overload.

Food is such a big part of our lives, it’s natural that we’re drawn to images, descriptions and menu boards showing it. Enter the digital menu board digital signage display.

This is one of the most important content displays you’ll create if you work in a restaurant, fast food chain or bar. It also works in an office cafeteria, an event setup or even as a fun noticeboard where you can swap menu items out for things you’re working on or fun descriptions of your team members. If you’re a franchise, this works especially well as you can change the price of an item across all screens and locations from one ScreenCloud login.

Add your reviews from sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp on your screen and share them with other customers. This is great for enhancing sales, and also customer engagement.

Data-driven companies are more likely to succeed – because they can easily see the areas that need attention. But most of the time this business-critical data is siloed and not seen by the teams that can make an immediate impact. Historically this data hasn’t been shown on screens due to security fears, which is why ScreenCloud developed Dashboards.

If you have a product, gaining visibility over feature development, customer number or what the future holds is kind of central to your work. That’s why pulling project management insights from Jira, Trello or your favorite project management tool and sharing them through digital signage in your office helps everyone to stay on the product pulse.

We love Slack at ScreenCloud. Like many startups, it’s how we do about 90% of our communication. So when a room’s really crucial to what we do, like our #praise room, we share it on our digital signage screens. This is made really easy with the Slack app.

Digital signage is a great canvas for all of your sales, small or large. Share real-time sales messages, promote offers and encourage customers to buy when the price is right. These can be easily created in Canvas.

How much time do you think your reception staff spend directing people to the right floor or meeting room? We love using the building directory app to share details of where everything is through our digital signage screens. The best part? If a room changes, you can update the screen easily unlike your static signs. Here are some non-obvious benefits of wayfinding in retail.

As well as advertising your own content, digital signage is a great method for selling advertising space within your building or store. Simple Playlist setup means you can schedule specific advertising slots, upload sponsored content between your own notices, or have dedicated days or areas where only advertising is shown.

If travel is essential to your customers or employees, then sharing a live travel information board is a great use of your digital signage. As you can see here, this provides up to the minute travel details on buses, trains and trams for your local area.

Adding a dedicated screen to travel information in your office by the exit is also a great addition to your internal comms and employee engagement strategy.

User generated content is a goldmine of free marketing material. This could be reviews, social media feeds or customer quotes. Tools like Walls.io and Taggbox can help pull UGC from social media platforms while giving you moderation controls and the ability to only show posts with certain hashtags or mentions.

The benefit of digital signage over static signage or printed pamphlets is that it can be updated in real-time and pushed out instantly. This gives you the power to update signs with last-minute offers or promotions on items that are low in stock.

Imagine having a method of internal communication that allowed you to broadcast to your entire company, at the click of a button… That’s exactly what ScreenCloud Broadcast can do for you. This makes it easy to share company broadcasts that go out to all screens simultaneously with news, praise or health and safety announcements. Broadcast can securely live-stream meetings or announcements to screens in your office, and also onto the mobiles or desktop screens of remote or deskless workers, making sure everyone gets the news.

Digital signage can be used in retail to show-off in-store promotions and increase the number of customers who take up offers as soon they’re available. Couple posters with reviews, user-generated social media content and ads to really drive your brand home.

SOLETRADER uses digital signage to share the company’s Instagram feed, promoting more discussion and helping customers to see its shoes out in the world.

Who doesn’t love an inspirational quote? Using digital signage to share motivational quotes works in almost any scenario. In the ScreenCloud office, we even share quotes of things our Founders have said to keep the team inspired and uplifted.

In churches, sermon timetables, sermon quotes and hymns are both ways you could use digital signage to attract and retain more members to your sessions.

Everyone likes to see where they are in a leaderboard, whether that’s in sales or counting reps in the gym. Use your digital screens to show off this leaderboard and add an additional layer to your customer/employee experience. You can create it easily using Google Slides, or for something more automated, check out a tool like Bonusly, as shown below.

In the same way you might use your digital signage to share leaderboards, you could also entice employees or customers in with competitions. Promoting giveaways or asking them to submit something (like an Instagram image) for the chance to win, is a great use of your digital screens. Create a poster using Canvas and add a QR code to link through to a competition landing page.

Screens are great for all of the good stuff we like to put out into the world, but they’re also a good vehicle when you need to make an emergency notice that needs to reach a lot of people. For (planned) fire drills, you can schedule the alert to pop up on your screens, otherwise, have a template at the ready to push live should you need to display it in the moment.

Ever had a bad meeting room experience? Someone waiting awkwardly outside? Knocking before you’re finished to ask ‘how long’? Same. It’s why using small screens, iPads or tablets you have laying around is an awesome use of digital signage. We wrote more about how to set this up here.

Companies with fast growth will know the pain of getting to know employees, when there seems to be more new people arriving faster than you can say “All hands”. It’s why the Meet the Team app is a fast and easy way to upload employees, old or new, and show them off to all of your team.

If you work in an art gallery or somewhere you want to show off work, then digital signage is a great way to showcase photos, videos or actual designs of something special you’ve been working on.

Of course digital signage can always be used to create a pretty picture, but when it’s seriously useful, that’s when it makes the biggest difference. Digital signage is increasingly being used to facilitate and improve internal communication strategies. From sharing company notices, to key information and reinforcing health and safety training messages, so that they’re always seen.

Now that you have so many ideas about how to create content and how easy it is to get it up on your screen it’s time to get started. Try our 14-day free trial - we can’t wait to see what you create.

Screen Free Tips. A Collection of Screen Free Activities and Resources to help you with your children and students to create a healthy relationship with the…

We have gathered the best 25 screen free activities and at home projects for kids. From crafts, games, to learning activities and more, we have the most fun activities that will make kids want to put down the screen!

Kids of all ages will love these screen free and at home crafts, activities, projects, and games. Perfect for toddlers, preschoolers, even older kids in elementary school! Check out all our at home projects and activities, you won’t be disappointed.

It is going to be easy to rely on screens for kids entertainment and schoolwork as time at home is increased. But kids need time playing “in real life”! Traditional play encourages interaction, creative thinking, problem solving and so much more.

Thisfood dye pasta discovery bin from Fun at Home with Kids is so easy and colorful! Plus, it’s even safe to taste! What a great idea! This is some frugal fun!

Make a rose out of paper with these 2 crafts. Brighten a loved one’s day with a homemade bouquet of paper plate roses that won’t ever die. You can also make some prettyroses with a tie-dye effect from coffee filters! It is a fun way to practice fine motor skills too! I think these are the coolest art projects.

On your mark, get set, go! Race cars using balloons for a fun game that also doubles as a science experiment! These balloon powered toy cars are so cool. What a great way to get creative and competitive! What great projects for kids who love cars.

Put on some music, and clean you floor while getting some exercise, sock mopping! Mop socks are the perfect way to get some energy out, and have fun, while cleaning. Because let’s be honest, mopping the floor usually isn’t that fun. Perfect to get your little kids and other family members cleaning.

Get creative, and upcycle old toys into something newwith items you already have around the house, like stickers and paint. This one of many fun free activities for kids that also teach them to recycle. I love easy crafts. Some simple DIY can turn old things into neat new things!

Teach your kiddo sewing skills by sewing a pillow buddy for a friend (and then make one to keep!). These hand sewing projects for kids are definitely screen free as it requires your child’s full attention!

Make puppets out of toilet paper rolls and other household items, and then help your kiddos put on a puppet show for the whole family. These puppets for kids are a great screen free activities as it promotes pretend play.

Take family game night and summer play dates to the next level by making giant blocks to build a tower with in your backyard! These giant wooden blocks is one of my favorite non screen activities, because not only do you get to craft, but it gets the family outside.

Transform old outlet covers into play dough toys! Uselarge googly eyes, acrylic paint, and paint pens to create eyes, mouths, noses and more! What better way to spend screen free time with your kids than with crafting!?

Use egg cartons to make airplanes! You can find this craft on page 121 of101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever! Over 100 screen free activities to do with your child!

Gather cardboard rolls from toilet paper and paper towel, along with different sized bottle caps, yarn, and paint, and make the longest toilet paper roll train in the world! Watch little ones with the bottle caps!

The next time you go to a store that has paint chips (paint color cards), grab a handful of them and make monster puzzles! This is a free, easy, and fun craft that can be done almost anywhere! The finished puzzles are perfect screen free activities for summer road trips, too.

The next time you sharpen your crayons, start saving the shavings so that you can paint with melted crayons! Or melt crayons OVER hot rocks! <–Both these melted crayon painting crafts definitely requires adult supervision.

Prank a family member with a gross yet fun craft–whip up a batch of pretend snot! This snot is actually a really funny craft to save for those yucky summer sick days when your little one feels gross and cranky.

Some of my best childhood memories involved building a fortwith my brother and parents! This is a fun, easy activity that you can do with things around the house. Check out these epic forts made out of cardboard boxes! There are so many fort ideas!

One of my kids’ favorite box activities is turning cardboard boxes into “cars” complete with cozy pillows and blankets. Then, we set them up in the living room with their friends or cousins, and play “drive-in” while a movie plays, and they enjoy yummy movie night snacks! You can also do this outside with an outdoor movie projector.

I love when we can combine science with a fun game, such as this dart game for kids. All you need are disposable cups, narrow straws, and Q-tips! Go red, white, and blue with the colors, like we did, and this is a perfect game for your 4th of July party!

Use an old shoe box and some craft sticks to make a marble maze! It’s so cool to watch kids come up with a plan and create something like this…This marble maze is not only a fun craft, but also a STEM activity. This would also be a fun way to create a marble run competition! You could even use different colors for the marbles.

Create kinetic sand and have fun with sand, even on rainy days. Kinetic sand is so cool, because unlike play dough, it’s textured. Plus, it’s kind of like playing in the sand at the beach. The sand at the beach is wet and stays together kind of like how kinetic sand does! What a cool craft project.

One of my kids’ favorite summer science experiments is the magnetic mud science experiment. It’s mesmerizing! This project does require some adult supervision, but it is fun to learn how to make ferrofluid. Who knew science had so many fun things to try.

Paper dolls are wonderful imaginative play! Check out these free printables at the bottom, too! This is a classing screen free activity that has been around for years! It’s much more fun than just drawing on a piece of paper.

Looking for some sensory bottle ideas? Make a glowing sensory bottle for bedtime ,and add it to your family’s nighttime routine. This is one of the greatest non screen activities because it actually works to calm your child rather than stimulate them like a screen can. Reuse plastic bottles and add small toys, glitter, beads, and more!

Make a yarn maze in a laundry basket! Your kiddos will love fishing items through the leveled web of yarn. What a fun project! It is fun to set up and even more fun game! What type of things will you add to the basket?

In this article, you will learn how to use TFT LCDs by Arduino boards. From basic commands to professional designs and technics are all explained here.

There are several components to achieve this. LEDs,  7-segments, Character and Graphic displays, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, type of user interaction, and processor capacity.

TFT LCD is a variant of a liquid-crystal display (LCD) that uses thin-film-transistor (TFT) technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven LCDs with a few segments.

In Arduino-based projects, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex, high definition images and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-color TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands.

In this article, we have used libraries and advanced technics to display data, charts, menu, etc. with a professional design. This can move your project presentation to a higher level.

There are several components to achieve this. LEDs,  7-segments, Character and Graphic displays, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, type of user interaction, and processor capacity.

TFT LCD is a variant of a liquid-crystal display (LCD) that uses thin-film-transistor (TFT) technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven LCDs with a few segments.

In Arduino-based projects, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex, high definition images and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-color TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands.

In this article, we have used libraries and advanced technics to display data, charts, menu, etc. with a professional design. This can move your project presentation to a higher level.

Size of displays affects your project parameters. Bigger Display is not always better. if you want to display high-resolution images and signs, you should choose a big size display with higher resolution. But it decreases the speed of your processing, needs more space and also needs more current to run.

After choosing the right display, It’s time to choose the right controller. If you want to display characters, tests, numbers and static images and the speed of display is not important, the Atmega328 Arduino boards (such as Arduino UNO) are a proper choice. If the size of your code is big, The UNO board may not be enough. You can use Arduino Mega2560 instead. And if you want to show high resolution images and motions with high speed, you should use the ARM core Arduino boards such as Arduino DUE.

In electronics/computer hardware a display driver is usually a semiconductor integrated circuit (but may alternatively comprise a state machine made of discrete logic and other components) which provides an interface function between a microprocessor, microcontroller, ASIC or general-purpose peripheral interface and a particular type of display device, e.g. LCD, LED, OLED, ePaper, CRT, Vacuum fluorescent or Nixie.

The display driver will typically accept commands and data using an industry-standard general-purpose serial or parallel interface, such as TTL, CMOS, RS232, SPI, I2C, etc. and generate signals with suitable voltage, current, timing and demultiplexing to make the display show the desired text or image.

The LCDs manufacturers use different drivers in their products. Some of them are more popular and some of them are very unknown. To run your display easily, you should use Arduino LCDs libraries and add them to your code. Otherwise running the display may be very difficult. There are many free libraries you can find on the internet but the important point about the libraries is their compatibility with the LCD’s driver. The driver of your LCD must be known by your library. In this article, we use the Adafruit GFX library and MCUFRIEND KBV library and example codes. You can download them from the following links.

You must add the library and then upload the code. If it is the first time you run an Arduino board, don’t worry. Just follow these steps:Go to www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software and download the software of your OS. Install the IDE software as instructed.

By these two functions, You can find out the resolution of the display. Just add them to the code and put the outputs in a uint16_t variable. Then read it from the Serial port by Serial.println(); . First add Serial.begin(9600); in setup().

First you should convert your image to hex code. Download the software from the following link. if you don’t want to change the settings of the software, you must invert the color of the image and make the image horizontally mirrored and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise. Now add it to the software and convert it. Open the exported file and copy the hex code to Arduino IDE. x and y are locations of the image. sx and sy are sizes of image. you can change the color of the image in the last input.

Upload your image and download the converted file that the UTFT libraries can process. Now copy the hex code to Arduino IDE. x and y are locations of the image. sx and sy are size of the image.

In this template, We just used a string and 8 filled circles that change their colors in order. To draw circles around a static point ,You can use sin();  and cos(); functions. you should define the PI number . To change colors, you can use color565(); function and replace your RGB code.

In this template, We converted a .jpg image to .c file and added to the code, wrote a string and used the fade code to display. Then we used scroll code to move the screen left. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We used sin(); and cos(); functions to draw Arcs with our desired thickness and displayed number by text printing function. Then we converted an image to hex code and added them to the code and displayed the image by bitmap function. Then we used draw lines function to change the style of the image. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We created a function which accepts numbers as input and displays them as a pie chart. We just use draw arc and filled circle functions.

In this template, We added a converted image to code and then used two black and white arcs to create the pointer of volumes.  Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We added a converted image and use the arc and print function to create this gauge.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We display simple images one after each other very fast by bitmap function. So you can make your animation by this trick.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We just display some images by RGBbitmap and bitmap functions. Just make a code for touchscreen and use this template.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this Arduino tutorial we will learn how to connect and use an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)with Arduino. LCD displays like these are very popular and broadly used in many electronics projects because they are great for displaying simple information, like sensors data, while being very affordable.

You can watch the following video or read the written tutorial below. It includes everything you need to know about using an LCD character display with Arduino, such as, LCD pinout, wiring diagram and several example codes.

An LCD character display is a unique type of display that can only output individual ASCII characters with fixed size. Using these individual characters then we can form a text.

If we take a closer look at the display we can notice that there are small rectangular areas composed of 5×8 pixels grid. Each pixel can light up individually, and so we can generate characters within each grid.

The number of the rectangular areas define the size of the LCD. The most popular LCD is the 16×2 LCD, which has two rows with 16 rectangular areas or characters. Of course, there are other sizes like 16×1, 16×4, 20×4 and so on, but they all work on the same principle. Also, these LCDs can have different background and text color.

It has 16 pins and the first one from left to right is the Groundpin. The second pin is the VCCwhich we connect the 5 volts pin on the Arduino Board. Next is the Vo pin on which we can attach a potentiometer for controlling the contrast of the display.

Next, The RSpin or register select pin is used for selecting whether we will send commands or data to the LCD. For example if the RS pin is set on low state or zero volts, then we are sending commands to the LCD like: set the cursor to a specific location, clear the display, turn off the display and so on. And when RS pin is set on High state or 5 volts we are sending data or characters to the LCD.

Next comes the R/W pin which selects the mode whether we will read or write to the LCD. Here the write mode is obvious and it is used for writing or sending commands and data to the LCD. The read mode is used by the LCD itself when executing the program which we don’t have a need to discuss about it in this tutorial.

Next is the E pin which enables the writing to the registers, or the next 8 data pins from D0 to D7. So through this pins we are sending the 8 bits data when we are writing to the registers or for example if we want to see the latter uppercase A on the display we will send 0100 0001 to the registers according to the ASCII table. The last two pins A and K, or anode and cathode are for the LED back light.

After all we don’t have to worry much about how the LCD works, as the Liquid Crystal Library takes care for almost everything. From the Arduino’s official website you can find and see the functions of the library which enable easy use of the LCD. We can use the Library in 4 or 8 bit mode. In this tutorial we will use it in 4 bit mode, or we will just use 4 of the 8 data pins.

We will use just 6 digital input pins from the Arduino Board. The LCD’s registers from D4 to D7 will be connected to Arduino’s digital pins from 4 to 7. The Enable pin will be connected to pin number 2 and the RS pin will be connected to pin number 1. The R/W pin will be connected to Ground and theVo pin will be connected to the potentiometer middle pin.

We can adjust the contrast of the LCD by adjusting the voltage input at the Vo pin. We are using a potentiometer because in that way we can easily fine tune the contrast, by adjusting input voltage from 0 to 5V.

Yes, in case we don’t have a potentiometer, we can still adjust the LCD contrast by using a voltage divider made out of two resistors. Using the voltage divider we need to set the voltage value between 0 and 5V in order to get a good contrast on the display. I found that voltage of around 1V worked worked great for my LCD. I used 1K and 220 ohm resistor to get a good contrast.

There’s also another way of adjusting the LCD contrast, and that’s by supplying a PWM signal from the Arduino to the Vo pin of the LCD. We can connect the Vo pin to any Arduino PWM capable pin, and in the setup section, we can use the following line of code:

It will generate PWM signal at pin D11, with value of 100 out of 255, which translated into voltage from 0 to 5V, it will be around 2V input at the Vo LCD pin.

First thing we need to do is it insert the Liquid Crystal Library. We can do that like this: Sketch > Include Library > Liquid Crystal. Then we have to create an LC object. The parameters of this object should be the numbers of the Digital Input pins of the Arduino Board respectively to the LCD’s pins as follow: (RS, Enable, D4, D5, D6, D7). In the setup we have to initialize the interface to the LCD and specify the dimensions of the display using the begin()function.

The cursor() function is used for displaying underscore cursor and the noCursor() function for turning off. Using the clear() function we can clear the LCD screen.

In case we have a text with length greater than 16 characters, we can scroll the text using the scrollDisplayLeft() orscrollDisplayRight() function from the LiquidCrystal library.

We can choose whether the text will scroll left or right, using the scrollDisplayLeft() orscrollDisplayRight() functions. With the delay() function we can set the scrolling speed.

The first parameter in this function is a number between 0 and 7, or we have to reserve one of the 8 supported custom characters. The second parameter is the name of the array of bytes.

So, we have covered pretty much everything we need to know about using an LCD with Arduino. These LCD Character displays are really handy for displaying information for many electronics project. In the examples above I used 16×2 LCD, but the same working principle applies for any other size of these character displays.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something new. Feel free to ask any question in the comments section below and don’t forget to check out my full collection of 30+ Arduino Projects.

The Arduino board has a wide variety of compatible displays that you can use in your electronic projects. In most projects, it’s very useful to give the user some sort of feedback from the Arduino.

With the TFT display you can display colorful images or graphics. This module has a resolution of 480 x 320. This module includes the SD card socket and SPI FLASH circuit.

This is a tiny display with just 1 x 0.96 Inch. This display has a black background, and displays characters in white. There are other similar displays that can show the characters in other colors.

Now’s the time to start planning your epic Screen-Free Week adventures! Our resource library is full of activity ideas, organizing kits, and tips to make your celebration the best yet! Plus, check out some of our favorite resources below! Happy unplugging!

We come across Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) displays everywhere around us. Computers, calculators, television sets, mobile phones, and digital watches use some kind of display to display the time.

An LCD screen is an electronic display module that uses liquid crystal to produce a visible image. The 16×2 LCD display is a very basic module commonly used in DIYs and circuits. The 16×2 translates a display of 16 characters per line in 2 such lines. In this LCD, each character is displayed in a 5×7 pixel matrix.

Contrast adjustment; the best way is to use a variable resistor such as a potentiometer. The output of the potentiometer is connected to this pin. Rotate the potentiometer knob forward and backward to adjust the LCD contrast.

Sends data to data pins when a high to low pulse is given; Extra voltage push is required to execute the instruction and EN(enable) signal is used for this purpose. Usually, we set en=0, when we want to execute the instruction we make it high en=1 for some milliseconds. After this we again make it ground that is, en=0.

A 16X2 LCD has two registers, namely, command and data. The register select is used to switch from one register to other. RS=0 for the command register, whereas RS=1 for the data register.

Command Register: The command register stores the command instructions given to the LCD. A command is an instruction given to an LCD to do a predefined task. Examples like:

Data Register: The data register stores the data to be displayed on the LCD. The data is the ASCII value of the character to be displayed on the LCD. When we send data to LCD, it goes to the data register and is processed there. When RS=1, the data register is selected.

Generating custom characters on LCD is not very hard. It requires knowledge about the custom-generated random access memory (CG-RAM) of the LCD and the LCD chip controller. Most LCDs contain a Hitachi HD4478 controller.

CG-RAM is the main component in making custom characters. It stores the custom characters once declared in the code. CG-RAM size is 64 bytes providing the option of creating eight characters at a time. Each character is eight bytes in size.

CG-RAM address starts from 0x40 (Hexadecimal) or 64 in decimal. We can generate custom characters at these addresses. Once we generate our characters at these addresses, we can print them by just sending commands to the LCD. Character addresses and printing commands are below.

LCD modules are very important in many Arduino-based embedded system designs to improve the user interface of the system. Interfacing with Arduino gives the programmer more freedom to customize the code easily. Any cost-effective Arduino board, a 16X2 character LCD display, jumper wires, and a breadboard are sufficient enough to build the circuit. The interfacing of Arduino to LCD display is below.

The combination of an LCD and Arduino yields several projects, the most simple one being LCD to display the LED brightness. All we need for this circuit is an LCD, Arduino, breadboard, a resistor, potentiometer, LED, and some jumper cables. The circuit connections are below.

I know if we aren’t careful at our house, the screen thing sneaks up on us and all of a sudden it seems like none of my four kids can get by without their electronic fix. Ugh.

This is made all the harder for so many people who are using a mixture of remote schooling or online schooling or distance schooling this year. However you want to slice it, it’s far too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of too many electronics.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that multiple studies have recommended limiting screen time for kids (see here). But where does that leave us work at home moms who need to get work done during the day while our kids are home?

While the TV can be a trusty babysitter (and believe me I use it if I absolutely have to), it’s nice to have some other activities on hand. I always aim to make television a last resort, and not my first go-to.

These screen-free activities for kids work for anyone who’s looking to minimize tech time, but I’ve curated the list specifically to help work at home moms. That means you won’t find any family or mom-intensive activities on this list.

While you may need to buy the supplies or help your kids get set up with a few things, the rest they should be able to do on their own. This gives you time to get work done!

If you’re in the market for gift ideas, many of these activities also make great gifts. You do have to purchase supplies for many (but not all) of the suggestions, which is why many of them are great Christmas or birthday gifts. I also view it as an investment in my work. If these items keep my kids happy and allow me time to work, that’s a win in my book.

Some of our favorites for all ages are Ticket to Ride, Monopoly Junior (yes, even my big kids like to play), and this silly card game, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza.

This one is always a hit, and sometimes I only pull it out when I need to work, making it a “special thing.” Simply put a whole lot of art supplies in a big container and call it a day. I always make sure to have the staples on hand – crayons, markers, glue, and tape – but I also like to jazz it up with extras like pipe cleaners, pom-poms, and fun scissors.

Kids love to dress up, so why not help them out? Gather any old items they may like to wear or even thrift a few fun finds and keep them in a special tub to aid in pretend play.

I remember loving these hidden pictures books as a kid, and it turns out my girls love them too! They will pour over these books for at least an hour looking for the pictures. We always take one along while my son is playing basketball and my wiggly girls have to sit in the stands and watch.

This one’s easy to create all on your own. Create a list of items either inside or outside your house that you know your kids should be able to find (but might be a little challenging). Then send them on their way.

If you’re willing to part with a bag of grapes or some cheese cubes, you may buy yourself several hours of uninterrupted work time! Hand over these items along with a box of toothpicks and instruct your kids to build a tower or building. The sky’s the limit with this type of project.

Someone gave my daughter a hand-me-down box of paper dolls, and I couldn’t believe how much she enjoyed playing with them. Dig around and see what you might have in the attic, or find affordable optionshere.

You don’t need screens to make playtime educational. While your kids are doing other activities, turn on an audiobook in the background. This will further engage them and make them less likely to disturb you as you’re working.

Crafty kids love things they can do with their hands. For example, my daughter can spend hours working on her latch-hook kit, rainbow loom, and cross stitch kit.

We find puzzles to be a really fun family activity during the cold winter months, but there’s no reason you can’t do one of these all year long. If you have a spare table or space in your home, set up a puzzle that your kids can work on when they’re bored.

You don’t need any special supplies for this screen-free activity, and it can even be considered an act of kindness. Have your kids write a letter or draw a picture to send to a friend, relative, or neighbor. Teach your children that this is a great way to brighten someone’s day.

Hey, I didn’t say these activities were all fun