interfacing 16x2 lcd display with pic microcontroller in stock

This is our sixth tutorial in our PIC Tutorial Series, in this tutorial we learn Interfacing of 16x2 LCD with PIC Microcontroller. In our previous tutorials we have learnt the basics of PIC using some LED blinking Programs and have also learnt How to use Timers in PIC Microcontroller. You can check here all the tutorials on Learning PIC Microcontrollers using MPLABX and XC8 compiler.

This tutorial will be an interesting one because we will learn How to Interface 16×2 LCD with PIC16F877A, check the detailed Video at the end this tutorial. Gone are the old days where we used LEDs for user indications. Let us see how we can make our projects look more cool and useful by using LCD displays. Also check our previous articles on Interfacing LCD with 8051, with Arduino, with Raspberry Pi, with AVR.

To make things easier we have made a small librarythat could make things easy while using this LCD with our PIC16F877A. The header file "MyLCD.h" is given here for download, which contains all the necessary function to drive the LCD using PIC MCU. Library code is well explained by comment lines but if you still have doubts reach us through the comment section. Also check this article for Basic LCD working and its Pinouts.

Now, there are two ways to add this code into your program. You can either copy all the above lines of code in MyLCD.h and paste them before the void main(). Or you can download the header file using the link and add them to the header file of your project (#include " MyLCD.h ";). This can be done by right clicking on the header file and selecting Add existing Item and browsing to this header file.

Here I have copied and pasted the header file code into my main C file. So if you are using our code, then you don’t need to download and add the header file into your program, just use the complete Code given at the end of this Tutorial. Also note that this library will only support PIC16F series PIC Microcontroller.

void Lcd_Start():This function should be the first function that has to be called to start working with our LCD. We should call this function only once to avoid lag in the program.

void Lcd_Set_Cursor(x pos, y pos):Once started, our LCD is ready to take commands, we can instruct the LCD to set its cursor in you preferred location by using this function.  Suppose if, we need out cursor at 5th character of 1st row. Then the function will be void Lcd_Set_Cursor(1, 5)

Each time the Lcd_Print_Char(char data)is called, its respective character values is sent to the data-lines of the LCD. These characters reach the HD44780U in form of bits. Now this IC relates the bits to the character to be displayed by using its ROM memory as shown the below table. You can find bits for all the characters in the datasheet of HD44780U LCD Controller.

Now, since we are satisfied with our header file let’s build the circuit and test the program. Also check complete header file given in the link given above.

The hardware for this project is very simple. We are going to reuse the same PIC module that we used last time and connect the LCD module to our PIC using jumper wires.

In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how Alphanumeric LCD works and how to interface a 16×2 LCD with a microcontroller. You’ll learn how LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) works internally and how to send data and commands to it with a microcontroller, specifically PIC MCUs. And you’ll also learn how to develop a simple LCD Driver for your upcoming projects.

There are 2 practical LABs associated with this tutorial and here is a brief animation indicating what you’ll be able to do after completing this tutorial.

We typically add a 16×2 Alphanumeric LCD to small embedded systems & projects to enhance the user experience and UI of the device/project. You can use it to display text messages to the user, number, etc. Other types of LCDs provide different features such as the number of columns and rows (characters) and maybe colored display, and also different interfaces (parallel, spi, i2c, etc).

For this tutorial, we’ll consider the 16×2 LCD with a 16-pin header interface. Assuming it has the standard Hitachi LCD driver HD44780 controller. We’ll see how it works internally and how to interface it with microcontrollers. This small IC on the backside of the LCD module controls the LCD itself and accepts user commands and data sent by the master MCU.

The LCD module consists of 16×2 character cells, and each one of them is 5×8 dots. Controlling all of this is a tedious task for our main microcontroller to do. However, it doesn’t have to do. As there is a specific function controller on the LCD itself controlling the display while reading in the user’s commands & data. Here, I’ll be considering the Hitachi HD44780 controller.

The HD44780U has two 8-bit registers, an instruction register (IR) and a data register (DR). The IR stores instruction codes, such as display clear and cursor shift, and address information for display data RAM (DDRAM) and character generator RAM (CGRAM). The IR can only be written from the MPU. The DR temporarily stores data to be written into DDRAM or CGRAM and temporarily stores data to be read from DDRAM or CGRAM. Data written into the DR from the MPU is automatically written into DDRAM or CGRAM by an internal operation.

Display data RAM (DDRAM) stores display data represented in 8-bit character codes. Its extended capacity is 80 × 8 bits, or 80 characters. The area in display data RAM (DDRAM) that is not used for display can be used as general data RAM. Therefore, whatever data you send to the DDRAM, it’ll get displayed on the LCD. As long as the characters count is below 32 (for 16×2 LCD), it’ll be visible. Otherwise, written characters are stored in the DDRAM but not visible.

The table down below shows you the standard ASCII equivalent characters for the LCD display stored in the CGROM. And you can also create your custom characters and symbols if you want to, as we’ll see in a future tutorial. Note the “A” character which has a binary code of (0100 0001)b this is equivalent to 65 (the ASCII value for A in the ASCII table).

The cursor/blink control circuit generates the cursor or character blinking. The cursor or the blinking will appear with the digit located at the display data RAM (DDRAM) address set in the address counter (AC).

There are two ways to interface the LCD diver (controller) IC. You can use the full bus width (8-Bits) for data or alternatively you can use a 4-Bit interface for a reduced pin count needed to control the LCD. Specifically low pin count MCUs need to operate in the 4-Bit mode.

At the beginning of your system’s firmware, you should do some initialization steps for the LCD display before it’s usable. These steps are listed by the manufacturer of the LCD Driver IC and let your LCD know how it’s going to operate afterward. Which interface mode you’ll be using (4 or 8 bits), which font and so on.

The LCD takes some time to process commands or data. Therefore, there must be a small delay before issuing a new command to the LCD. This delay could be chosen arbitrarily as long as it’s longer than the time required by the LCD itself as indicated in the datasheet. Alternatively, you can just read the busy flag bit to know whether the previous command was successfully processed or not.

When a data or a command is sent to the LCD, the BF or D7 bit of the LCD becomes 1 and as soon as the command is successfully processed, the BF becomes 0.

And here is another table for some commands examples that you can test yourself. We’ll implement a couple of them in the following practical LABs and the rest are left for you to experiment with.

First of all, we should define the IO pins which we’ll be using to interface the LCD. It’s a recommended practice to isolate the hardware drivers firmware from the application layer and for the sake of portability of your code. This step makes your code less dependent on the specific MCU chip you’re using in the current project.

if at any point you found out that a specific pin must be changed, it’ll be an easy task to change it without searching your code and replacing each and every single occurrence for that line of code.

We’ll be using the 4-Bit interface in these tutorials as it’s the most common and most wished for. Nobody wants to consume all of his microcontroller’s pins just to hook an LCD. In fact, there is an I2C interface for the LCD which we’ll be using in a future tutorial and its main feature is reducing the pin count used for LCD control.

All in all, what we need now is a routine to parse out half-a-byte of data and send these bits to the corresponding pins of the IO pins associated with LCD Data. Here is a simple implementation for such a routine.

As we’ve discussed earlier in this tutorial, sending a command to the LCD should start with selecting the command register. Then the command data is transferred to the LCD io data pins. Then we should clock or send enable signal pulse. This routine is followed in general settings, whether it’s a 4-Bit interface of an 8-Bit.

Now, it’s time to create the LCD initialization routine. This function is an exact implementation of the steps we’ve discussed earlier in this tutorial. The 4-Bit interface initialization steps are indicated in a previous flow chart and our task right now is to implement it in C.

Sending an 8-Bit character to the LCD followed by an enable pulse (clock) will display that character on the LCD. However, in our case of using a 4-Bit interface, this step will be divided into two consequent steps. First of which is parsing the 8-Bit character into a high_nibble and low_nibble. Then we’ll send the high4 bits first followed by an EN clock, then we’ll send the low4 bits followed by another EN clock. And that’s it!

To send a string to the LCD, we’ll need a loop to repeatedly send characters to the LCD until a buffer end is found, and typically it’s the NULL character “\0”. Here is the implementation of this routine.

As you’ve seen in the previous sections, the datasheet of the LCD driver IC includes all the command that it could handle. And we’re going to add a couple of them to our LCD Driver code. All the rest are left for you to experiment with. Some specific commands may help you in specific projects and it’s up to you to decide on which one you need to implement.

The commands I’m going to implement in this section are the most used ones in different projects. And will help you get more familiar with sending commands in 4-Bit mode. And there is no difference from what we’ve done so far.

The header file includes only the declarations of sub-routines with simple documentation indicating the functionality of each routine and what it takes and returns if it’s not void, etc. The LCD.h header file will be something like this

It’s now way more clean/clear. And it’s easier to debug or extend the functionality of your LCD driver module. Here is the compiled project, download it and customize it as you wish.

Open the MPLAB IDE and create a new project name it “LCD_16x2_LAB1”. If you have some issues doing so, you can always refer to the previous tutorial using the link below.

Open the MPLAB IDE and create a new project name it “LCD_16x2_LAB2”. If you have some issues doing so, you can always refer to the previous tutorial using the link below.

In this tutorial, we’ve implemented some of the most common LCD commands that you are most likely to use in your various projects. However, there still are some other commands that you can implement and test on your own. Just get the datasheet and start tinkering around and if you feel stuck at any point, just drop me a comment and I’ll be here to help you.

As we’ve discussed in a previous section, it’s a recommended practice to separate your device drivers layer from the application layer as much as possible. It helps in terms of portability and enhances code re-usability. Each device driver should have a header file .h and a source file .c and you can #include this library in whichever project you want. Reducing the time to port your project to another platform (microcontroller).

You can use the sprintf function from the standard library by including stdio.h. Now you can combine numbers (int, float, etc) with text in a single array “string” that you can print out on your LCD. We’ve done this in a previous lab for the LM35 sensor.

In this tutorial, you will learn to interface anLCD with a pic microcontroller. It is very simple and easy to understand the project for beginners and is commonly used in several electronic products. LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)provides a user-friendly interface and can be very useful for debugging purposes. After completion of this tutorial, you will be able to display data on an LCD using MPLAB XC8 Compiler and Mikro C compiler. We will provide examples with two Compilers such as MPLAB XC8 Compiler and Mikro C for PIC.

The reason LCD is more popular than LED, Seven Segment displays. Because we can display characters, numbers and custom characters with ease ( Just by easily programming a module).

First of all, to interface LCD with a pic microcontroller, we used GPIO pins.  GPIO pins are general-purpose input-output pins. Because we send control and data signals to LCD through these I/O pins.  Therefore, you should know how to use digital input-output pins of the pic microcontroller. To know about GPIO pins programming, check these tutorials:

It can work in two modes, 4-bit and 8-bit. In this tutorial, we have used the 4-bit mode which uses only 4 data lines, thus saving pins of the microcontroller. So It is recommended to use LCD in four bits mode to save pins of the microcontroller for other applications.

As you can see in this diagram, if we use 8-bit mode interfacing, we will need to use 11 pins of pic microcontroller. On the other hand, if we use 4-bit mode, we need only 6 GPIO pins. Therefore, it is recommended to use 4-bit mode interfacing.  The only difference between  4-bit and 8-bit is that data transfer speed is faster for 8-bit mode. However, it doesn’t make any major difference.

A variable resistor is used to adjust the contrast of 5×8 dot pixels according to background light. Therefore, if you are not able to see anything on LCD after programming, the maximum changes are that you need to adjust contrast with the variable resistor. This contrast register makes adjust to the voltage applied on the VEE pin.

For MPLAB XC8 Compiler, we will use the PIC18F4550 microcontroller. For MikroC Pro for PIC, we will use the PIC16F877A microcontroller. In the case of MPLAB XC8, we will develop our own LCD library. Because the XC8 compiler does not provide built-in libraries. In the contrary, MikroC Pro provides libraries for all modules such as LCD, Keypad, ADC Module, UART module.

In this section, we will see how to write example code for 16×2 LCD interfacing with PIC18F4550 microcontroller. Although, you can use see code with other Pic microcontrollers also.

As we mentioned earlier, we can use the 8-bit mode and 4-bit mode interfacing. But due to the efficient use of MCU pins, we will be using 4-bit Mode. To interface LCD, we follow these steps:

In this circuit, we used the PORTB of PIC18F4550. But you can use any PORT. To do this, we need to change the pin assignment inside the code. I will show you how to assign pins for LCD in the next section.

These lines define which pins of the pic microcontroller should connect with LCD. For instance, in this example, we used the PORTD of PIC18F4550 microcontroller. Connect RD0-RD3 pins with D4-D7 pins of LCD respectively and other pins with RW, EN, RS and Power pins. But you can change PORT to other PORT of PIC microcontroller also by changing the PORT name with these commands.

LCDWriteNibble() function is used to write a nibble. Nibble is basically a half a byte. Because we are using LCD in four bits mode. Therefore, we need to send 8-bit commands/data in four bits chunks. This function writes the specified nibble to the LCD.

Because we will use 4-bit mode, data and commands transfer in 4-bits format. Even it requires at least 8-bit to display a character. To resolve this issue, we send data in a 4-bits format two times.

void LCDPutChar(char ch): Writes a character to LCD at current cursor position. This function displays the specified ASCII character at the current position on the LCD.

LCDGoto(char pos, char ln): This function positions the cursor at the specified line and column. Column and line at which the cursor should be positioned between 0-15 for pos (column) and 0-1 for ln(row).

In last section, we have seen how to display ASCII characters or string. But in almost all practical projects, we need to display, integer, float values. This code displays the counter value which increments from 0-9 after every one second. This is the main function of code only. Because the rest of the code is same as the previous program example.

In this section, we will see how to interface LCD with pic microcontroller and programming examples using MikroC for pic. MikroC pro has a built-in library.

We have used 16×2 LCD which means there are 2 rows and 16 characters in each row. So we can display a total of 32 characters at a time in two rows with 16 characters in each row.

This is the main command which prints our text on LCD. It also gives the privilege to specify the position of the text. In the horizontal direction, we count rows number and in a vertical direction, we count the column number. In above command,

However if your string is longer than the number of characters that could be displayed in a row from the starting position, the last characters will not be displayed. E.g. Lcd_Out (1, 6 “LCD Interface”);will display text in row 1 starting from column position 6 and will display only LCD Interfacethe rest of the characters will not be displayed as there is no room for them.

void Lcd_Out_Cp(char *text);will start printing the text from the current cursor position. For example after printing Lcd_Out (1, 1, “LCD”);if you write Lcd_Out_Cp(“Hello”);it will display “Hello”at a position from column position of 4 in row 1.

void Lcd_Chr(char row, char column, char out_char);allows only single characters to be displayed at specified positions. E.g. Lcd_Chr(2, 5, ‘A’); will print only A on column 5 row 2.

void Lcd_Chr_Cp(char out_char); allows to print only single character from current cursor position like after Lcd_Chr(2, 5, ‘A’);if your writeLcd_Chr_Cp(‘B’);it will be printed at row 2 column 6.

To interface LCD withPIC16F877A and display the text ‘LCD INTERFACE’ on it. LCDs come in different sizes and shapes. For this project, we have selected a 16×2 character, alphanumeric LCD. It contains 2 rows of 16 character.

When using PIC microcontroller, the mikroC compiler has a built-in LCD library that supports the commands to carry out LCD initialization. The library consists of a number of functions to control LCDs with 4-bit data interface.

The main program first clears the LCD screen and then displays “LCD INTERFACE” in the first row of LCD. The LCD pin directions are all set as outputs. The RS pin of LCD is set to 1, which indicates that the information received from DB4-DB7 is a valid text to be printed on LCD screen. The EN pin is also set to 1 which indicates that data is send to the LCD.

Programmed LCDs are vastly used for industrial as well as commercial applications. LCDs are used in UPSs or inverters, where voltage and current readings are displayed on the screen. Instructions to be followed are displayed on an LCD screen in airports, banks, hospitals, etc. If you still have any issue after reading this article, feel free to comment on this post with your issues.

Here, you will learn how to interface 16×2 LCD to PIC18F4550 microcontroller which is of family PIC18F. PIC18F4550 is an 8bit microcontroller and uses RISC architecture. PIC18F4550 has 40 pins in PDIP (dual in line package) and 44 pin in TQFP (Quad flat package). You may get detailed information about this circuit by reading the post - How to Interface 16X2 LCD with PIC Microcontroller.

This tutorial is in continuation with our learning for PIC Microcontroller PIC16F877A. In this project we are going to Interface 16X2 LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) with our PIC Controller. In previous tutorials we have seen the how to configure and use the Timers in PIC controller and Timer1 in PIC Controller with simple LED blinking program.

LCD’s are generally used as a display in many applications as they are easy to use then seven segment displays. 16*2 LCD are alphanumeric LCD’s which can display alphabets, numbers and some special characters. They are easily operated using commands which are hexadecimal values.

We have already discussed in detail about Basic Working of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and LCD 16×2 Pin Diagram in similar projects with Arduino like LCD (Liquid Crystal) Display With Arduino Board and Interfacing LCD with Arduino Proteus. I request you please go through this project to know more about LCD display and to get general Interfacing idea.

LCD stands for Liquid crystal display. 16×2 LCD is named so because; it has 16 Columns and 2 Rows. There are a lot of combinations available like 8×1, 8×2, 10×2, 16×1, etc. but the most used one is the 16×2 LCD. So, it will have 16×2 = 32 characters in total and each character will be made of 5×8 Pixel Dots.

In 16×2 LCD there are 16 pins over all if there is a back light, if there is no back light there will be 14 pins. One can power or leave the back light pins. Now in the 14 pins there are 8 data pins (7-14 or D0-D7), 2 power supply pins (1&2 or VSS&VDD or GND&+5v), 3rd pin for contrast control (VEE-controls how thick the characters should be shown), and 3 control pins (RS&RW&E).

Pin4 (RS/Register Select/Control Pin): This pin toggles among command or data register, used to connect a microcontroller unit pin and obtains either 0 or 1(0 = data mode, and 1 = command mode).

Pin5 (Read/Write(RW)): This pin toggles the display among the read or writes operation, and it is connected to a microcontroller unit pin to get either 0 or 1 (0 = Write Operation, and 1 = Read Operation).

Pin 6 (Enable(E)): This pin should be held high to execute Read/Write process, and it is connected to the microcontroller unit & constantly held high.

Pins 7-14 (Data Pins/D0……D7): These pins are used to send data to the display. These pins are connected in two-wire modes like 4-wire mode and 8-wire mode. In 4-wire mode, only four pins are connected to the microcontroller unit like 0 to 3, whereas in 8-wire mode, 8-pins are connected to microcontroller unit like 0 to 7.

So without spending much time further on discussing about LCD in this project we will continue our configuration of PIC controller required for interfacing LCD. In previous Arduino Projects we have seen we need LiquidCrystal library or header file to handle or initialize function related to LCD. Similarly we need lcd.h header file to handle all LCD related functions.

As I explain in previous tutorial to getting start with PIC controller programming we need install MPLAB X IDE software and XC8 compiler on our system. Also we need Proteus simulator to simulate the circuit with program.

So let us prepare circuit diagram to Interface LCD display with PIC controller. Pick the PIC controller PIC16F877A and LCD LM16l (16×2) alphanumeric display from pick terminal. Do the connection as shown below:

In this project i am going to interface 16×2 lcd display in 4-bit mode with Microchip Pic16f877 microcontroller. We can interface any size of character lcd display (8×1,8×2,10×1,10×2, 16×2,16×2,16×4,20×1,20×2,40×1,40×2 etc) in 4-bit mode with pic microcontrollers. In 4-bit interface mode only 4 lcd data lines are used to display data on lcd screen. Usually lcd is interfaced in 4-bit mode with microcontrollers to save I\O pins of microcontrollers. Before beginning any further i assume that you know difference between 4-bit and 8-bit lcd interfacing mode with microcntrollers. If not just take the below simple tutorial. Tutorial will help you in understating the basic difference, pros and cons of both the modes. It will also help you in understanding the code below easily.

In 4-bit mode only 4-bit data is send to lcd at a time. Since 8-bit microcontrollers contains data in 8-bit form so we divide our data in to two nibbles(1-nibble=4-bits). First higher 4-bits(nibble) is send to lcd and then the lower 4-bits(nibble) with enable stroke signal. Only D4,D5,D6,D7 data pins of 16×2 lcd are used in 4-bit interface mode. D1,D2,D3,D4 are left empty. D4 is our least significant bit and D7 is highest significant bit in 4-bit interface mode. A typical interfacing diagram is given at the right side.

Interfacing 16×2 lcd with Pic16f877 microcontroller is simple, if you have taken the above tutorial. The circuit of the project is also very simple. Port-B first 4 bits (RB0,RB1,RB2,RB3) of Pic16f877 microcontroller are used to send 4-bit data and commands to lcd. These four Pins(RB0,RB1,RB2,RB3) are Connected to four data pins of 16×2 lcd(D4,D5,D6,D7).Port-D pin# 5 is connected to rw(read-write) pin of lcd. Port-D pin# 6 is connected to rs(register select) pin of lcd. Port-D pin# 7 is connected to en(Enable) pin of 16×2 lcd. If you are newbie and have to idea about the working and pin configuration of lcd. Below is a good tutorial.

This function is separating four bits from our command and puts them on RB0,RB1,RB2,RB3 line and then sends them to lcd. The following instructions are separating four bits.

This function is separating four bits from our 8-bit data and puts the 4-bit data on RB0,RB1,RB2,RB3 pins and then sends them to lcd. Following instructions are separating four bits.

In the main function i first called lcdint() function. This function is initializing our lcd. Refer to the data sheet of lcd if you dont know what is lcd initialization. Then i am sending data to 16×2 lcd which i want to display on lcd screen. I am displaying word “Microcontroller” on lcd display screen.

16×2 Character LCD is a very basic LCD module which is commonly used in electronics projects and products. It contains 2 rows that can display 16 characters. Each character is displayed using 5×8 or 5×10 dot matrix. It can be easily interfaced with a microcontroller. In this tutorial we will see how to write data to an LCD with PIC Microcontroller using Hi-Tech C Compiler. Hi-Tech C has no built in LCD libraries so we require the hardware knowledge of LCD to control it. Commonly used LCD Displays uses HD44780 compliant controllers.

This is the pin diagram of a 16×2 Character LCD display. As in all devices it also has two inputs to give power Vcc and GND. Voltage at VEE determines the Contrast of the display. A 10K potentiometer whose fixed ends are connected to Vcc, GND and variable end is connected to VEE can be used to adjust contrast. A microcontroller needs to send two informations to operate this LCD module, Data and Commands. Data represents the ASCII value (8 bits) of the character to be displayed and Command determines the other operations of LCD such as position to be displayed. Data and Commands are send through the same data lines, which are multiplexed using the RS (Register Select) input of LCD. When it is HIGH, LCD takes it as data to be displayed and when it is LOW, LCD takes it as a command. Data Strobe is given using E (Enable) input of the LCD. When the E (Enable) is HIGH, LCD takes it as valid data or command. The input signal R/W (Read or Write) determines whether data is written to or read from the LCD. In normal cases we need only writing hence it is tied to GROUND in circuits shown below.

The interface between this LCD and Microcontroller can be 8 bit or 4 bit and the difference between them is in how the data or commands are send to LCD. In the 8 bit mode, 8 bit data and commands are send through the data lines DB0 – DB7 and data strobe is given through E input of the LCD. But 4 bit mode uses only 4 data lines. In this 8 bit data and commands are splitted into 2 parts (4 bits each) and are sent sequentially through data lines DB4 – DB7 with its own data strobe through E input. The idea of 4 bit communication is introduced to save pins of a microcontroller. You may think that 4 bit mode will be slower than 8 bit. But the speed difference is only minimal. As LCDs are slow speed devices, the tiny speed difference between these modes is not significant. Just remember that microcontroller is operating at high speed in the range of MHz and we are viewing LCD with our eyes. Due to Persistence of Vision of our eyes we will not even feel the speed difference.

Hope that you got rough idea about how this LCD Module works. Actually you need to read the datasheet of HD44780 LCD driver used in this LCD Module to write a Hi-Tech C program for PIC. But we solved this problem by creating a header file lcd.h which includes all the commonly used functions. Just include it and enjoy.

Lcd8_Init() & Lcd4_Init() : These functions will initialize the LCD Module connected to the following defined pins in 8 bit and 4 bit mode respectively.

Lcd8_Set_Cursor() & Lcd4_Set_Cursor() : These functions set the row and column of the cursor on the LCD Screen. By using this we can change the position of the character being displayed by the following functions.

Lcd8_Write_Char() & Lcd4_Write_Char() :These functions will write a character to the LCD Screen when interfaced through 8 Bit and 4 Bit mode respectively.

Lcd8_Shift_Left() & Lcd4_Shift_Left() : These functions are used to shift the content on the LCD Display left without changing the data in the display RAM.

Lcd8_Shift_Right() & Lcd4_Shift_Right() : Similar to above functions, these are used to shift the content on the LCD Display right without changing the data in the display RAM.

In this tutorial we will see How to Interface a 16×2 character LCD module with PIC 16F877A Microcontroller using MPLAB X IDE and MPLAB XC8 C Compiler. 16×2 Character LCD is a very basic and low cost LCD module which is commonly used in electronic products and projects. 16×2 means it contains 2 rows that can display 16 characters. Its other variants such as 16×1 and 16×4 are also available in the market. In these displays, each character is displayed using 5×8 or 5×10 dot matrix.

For controlling LCD using MPLAB XC8 compiler we need to know the hardware of LCD. These LCDs commonly uses HD44780 compliant controllers. So we need to learn HD44780 Dot Matrix LCD Controller Datasheet. Don’t worry we already developed an LCD library including commonly used functions, so you can use it without any hardware knowledge of LCD.

First two pins GND and VCC (VSS and VDD) are for providing power to LCD display. 3ed pin VEE is used to control the contrast of the LCD display. A 10KΩ preset whose fixed ends connected to VDD, VSS and variable end connected to VEE can be used to control contrast of the LCD. A microcontroller or microprocessor need to send 2 types of information for operating this LCD Module, Data Information and Command Information. Data Information is the ASCII value of the characters to be displayed in the LCD screen and Command Information determines other operations such as position to be displayed, clear screen, shift etc. Data and Command Information are send to LCD through same data lines (DB0 – DB7) which are multiplexed using RS (Register Select) pin of LCD. When RS is HIGH LCD treats DB0 – DB7 data pins information as Data to be displayed and when it is LOW LCD treats it as Command Information. Enable (E) input of the LCD is used to give Data Strobe. HIGH (5V) Voltage Level in the Enable (E) pin tells the LCD that DB0 – DB7 contains valid information. The input signal R/W (Read or Write) determines whether data is written to or read from the LCD. In normal cases we need only writing hence it is tied to GROUND in circuit shown below.

The interface between this LCD and Microcontroller can be 8 bit or 4 bit and the difference between them is in how the data or commands are send to LCD. In the 8 bit mode, 8 bit data and commands are send through the data lines DB0 – DB7 and data strobe is given through E input of the LCD. But 4 bit mode uses only 4 data lines. In this 8 bit data and commands are splitted into 2 parts (4 bits each) and are sent sequentially through data lines DB4 – DB7 with its own data strobe through E input. The idea of 4 bit communication is introduced to save pins of a microcontroller. You may think that 4 bit mode will be slower than 8 bit. But the speed difference is only minimal. As LCDs are slow speed devices, the tiny speed difference between these modes is not significant. Just remember that microcontroller is operating at high speed in the range of MHz and we are viewing LCD with our eyes. Due to Persistence of Vision of our eyes we will not even feel the speed difference.

Hope that you got rough idea about how this LCD Module works. Actually you need to read the datasheet of HD44780 LCD driver used in this LCD Module to write a MPLAB XC8 program for PIC. But we solved this problem by creating a header file lcd.h which includes all the commonly used functions using 4 bit mode. Just include it and enjoy.

Lcd_Set_Cursor(int row, int column) : This function is used to set row and column of the cursor on the LCD screen. By using this function we can change the position of the character or string displayed by following functions.

sprintf() can be used to write formatted string to a variable. It can be used with this LCD library to format displayed texts. This enables us to display integers and floating point numbers on the LCD very easily. You should include the header file stdio.h for using sprintf().

Unsigned Integer with decimal place inserted. Specify two numbers for n. The first is a total field width. The second is the desired number of decimal places.

In this session we will see how to interface 16×2 LCD to PIC18F4550 microcontroller which is of family PIC18F. You can get information of 16×2 LCD in the session

PIC18F4550 belongs to the PIC18F family; PIC18F4550 is an 8bit microcontroller and uses RISC architecture. PIC18F4550 has 40 pins in PDIP (dual in line package) and 44 pin in TQFP (Quad flat package).

32KB flash memory, 2048 bytes of SRAM (synchronous Random Access memory), EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Program Read Only Memory) of 256 bytes are embedded in the PIC18F4550.

It has 35 I/O pins for interfacing and communication with other peripherals, 13channel of 10bit analog to digital converters which are used for interfacing and communicating the analog peripherals (DC motor, LDR, etc.).

PIC18F4550 has SPI (serial peripheral interface) and i2c (inter integrated circuit) for master and slave modes. It has SPP (Streaming Parallel Port) for USB streaming transfer.

PIC18F4550 is embedded with 4 timer modules (timer0 to timer3), 2 comparator modules and 3 external interrupt. It has Dual Oscillator options allow microcontroller and USB module to run at different clock speeds. It can operate in 2.0V to 5.5V

The resistor R1 is used for giving the contrast to the LCD. The crystal oscillator of 12 MHz is connected to the OSC1 and OSC2 pins of Pic microcontroller PIC18F4550 for system clock. The capacitor C2 and C3 will act filters to the crystal oscillator. You can use different ports or pins for interfacing the LCD before going to different ports please check the data sheet whether the pins for general purpose or they are special function pins.

Interfacing LCD to PIC is not different from interfacing to 8051. The basic concept and gist of the programming is almost same. Visit the following link for more information

Only the pins, registers and architecture using for interfacing will be different. When we look at the program, functions like initialization, sending data to the LCD will be almost same.

In the pic programming also for initializing the LCD the R/W pin should be low for writing the data, Enable pins should be high and register select pin (RS) should be high for writing the data. For sending a command the RS should be low, R/W pin should be low and enable pin should be high.

Install MPLAB in your system and create a new project, in selecting device and family select PIC18F family and add PIC18F4550 controller to your project.

In the previous chapter, we have discussed how a character LCD is interfaced with a PIC microcontroller in 8-bit mode, where we used predefined characters stored in the LCD to display our data. In this article, we will learn more about the LCD and how we can create and use custom characters.

DDRAM or “Data Display Random Access Memory” is the working data buffer of the display. Each character on the display has a corresponding DDRAM location and the byte loaded in DDRAM controls which character is displayed.

CGROM or “Character Generation Read Only Memory” holds all the standard patterns for the 5 x 7 dot matrix characters. For instance, if you want to display character “A”, you would send ASCII code 65 (decimal) to the DDRAM. The display controller looks up the pattern of dots to display for this code in the CGROM and lights up the ones appropriate for “A”. The CGROM contents depend on the particular character set and model of display, US, Chinese etc. and cannot be changed.

CGRAM or “Character Generation Random Access Memory” allows the user to define special supplementary non-standard character types that are not in the CGROM. You can load your own dot pattern shapes and call these up for display.

For making custom patterns we need to write values to the CGRAM area defining which pixel to glow. These values are to be written in the CGRAM address starting from 0x40. CGRAM has a total of 64 Bytes. For LCD using 8×5 dots for each character, you can define a total of 8 user defined patterns (1 Byte for each row and 8 rows for each pattern).

Custom characters are assigned fixed display codes from 0 to 7 for pattern stored in the location pointed by CGRAM address 0x40, 0x48, 0x56… and so on. So, if the user wants to display second pattern (pattern stored at CGRAM address 0x48), simply call the data function with value 1 as an argument at a desired location in the LCD.

To display the sequence in the LCD, we need to specify the position on LCD and which pattern to display at the position. Provide adequate delay in between frames to observe the sequence distinctly.

first you have to initialize the PIC itself by entering the correct crystal settings and configuration bits as shown in my previous tutorial of this series.

I"m designing a digital incubator using a DHT-22 sensor and a 16x2 LCD. I programmed the pic to display my name and the title of my project before displaying the temperature and humidity, but I don"t have the DHT-22 sensor yet.

In the simulation, when I disconnected the DHT-22 sensor, it displayed just my name and title and then blanked out but when I did the hardware connection it displayed gibberish. I used mikroC to code the project. I don"t know if the fault is from my end or because I didn"t connect the sensor.

Interfacing 16x2 LCD with PIC16f877a 16x2 LCD is basic output module used in microcontroller based projects. It has 16 columns and 2 rows to display characters. It can be easily interfaced with PIC microcontroller. In this tutorial we will see how to interface 16x2 LCD with PIC 16f877a using “MikroC PRO for PIC v6.6.1” compiler.

Software Required: 1- MikroC PRO for PIC (version 6.6.1 is good enough for this tutorial, NOTE: latest version will give errors. ) 2- Proteus  (v7.8 or 8)

https://hassam794.weebly.com/interfacing-16x2-lcd-with-pic16f877a.html 1/612/11/2020 Interfacing 16x2 LCD with PIC16f877a

Procedure: Now make sure you have all this stuff, rst of all create new project in MikroC, choose your Microcontroller i.e PIC16f877a and set frequency 20MHz (this is basically the frequency of oscillator, in our case we have used 20MHz). If MikroC asks to import libraries then click OK to import all libraries. Create a new C le for you project and add the C code (comment your email address for source code) and save your project. Now it’s time to build .HEX le (we need this le for Simulation and Hardware) you can nd BUILD on the top layer of MikroC simply click on it or just press Ctrl+F9. .HEX le is now saved in your project folder.

For Proteus simulation open the .DSN simulation le (comment your email address for simulation le). You will see PIC16f877a in simulation double click on it and add the .HEX le you generated in MikroC. Now run the Simulation and wow LCD is interfaced with PIC microcontroller. If you have any question leave a comment.

Also want to implement this on hardware?? Yes, so keep reading. It’s not as hard as you are thinking just connect all wires as in simulation. Make sure your wires are not loose otherwise you will face lot of problems. Connect pin 15 of LCD to +5 Volts and Pin 16 to ground. Now connect PIN 3 of LCD with 10K variable resistor to ground. Again make sure your LCD PIN 3 is properly connected otherwise even if everything is working properly you can’t see anything on LCD. Now apply 5v to PIC16f877a and LCD. If u are using 9v battery then use 7805 voltage regulator to regulate voltage to +5v. If u are not sure how to use 7805 regulator see my article “7805 voltage regulator”. Set the contrast of LCD by varying 10k resistor.

then your LCD is not damaged and is working perfectly check if your PIN 3 (contrast PIN) is properly connected to 10K variable resistor. Adjust the contrast by changing variable resistor value. If problem is not solved check microcontroller PIN 1, connect PIN 1 ofPOWERED BY to +5v, also check oscillator again. PIC with 1k resistor

https://hassam794.weebly.com/interfacing-16x2-lcd-with-pic16f877a.html 2/612/11/2020 Interfacing 16x2 LCD with PIC16f877a

If your LCD display looks like this, as below image then either you forget to connect 10k variable resistor with PIN 3 of LCD or your LCD is damaged.

https://hassam794.weebly.com/interfacing-16x2-lcd-with-pic16f877a.html 3/612/11/2020 Interfacing 16x2 LCD with PIC16f877a

Video Tutorial: Here is complete video tutorial with design, source code and working of LCD with PIC16f877a, Download link for the simulation and source code is in the description of video. This is my new youtube channel please smile, subscribe, comment and like video if it helps you. Thanks

https://hassam794.weebly.com/interfacing-16x2-lcd-with-pic16f877a.html 4/612/11/2020 Interfacing 16x2 LCD with PIC16f877a

https://hassam794.weebly.com/interfacing-16x2-lcd-with-pic16f877a.html 5/612/11/2020 Interfacing 16x2 LCD with PIC16f877a

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.

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 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.