arduino lcd display code price
ERM1601SBS-1 is big 16 characters wide,1 row character lcd module,SPLC780C controller (Industry-standard HD44780 compatible controller),6800 4/8-bit parallel interface,single led backlight with white color included can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM,stn- blue lcd negative,white text on the blue color,wide operating temperature range,rohs compliant,built in character set supports English/Japanese text, see the SPLC780C datasheet for the full character set. It"s optional for pin header connection,5V or 3.3V power supply and I2C adapter board for arduino.
It"s easily controlled by MCU such as 8051,PIC,AVR,ARDUINO,ARM and Raspberry Pi.It can be used in any embedded systems,industrial device,security,medical and hand-held equipment.
Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!".For 8051 microcontroller user,we prepared the detailed tutorial such as interfacing, demo code and Development Kit at the bottom of this page.
Serial LCDs are very convenient, but MUCH more expensive than their parallel conterparts. ($20+ vs $10, and that"s not including the surplus parallel LCDs down in the $5 range.)
The original poster needs to be a bit more specific. Are you wanting ONE character mode LCD to experiment with, form factor and exact size unimportant? Or do you need a part number for something that can be bought in bulk eventually, with exact requirements for physical size, character size, backlight color, power consumption, and so on? Or like Greg, are you looking for some sort of large display with just a few 7-segment digits? Or a color graphics display?
A cheap 1x16 character LCD display with (apparently) standard controller but "awkward" mechanics is available from http://www.bgmicro.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=10730 (and has been for a long time; they must have a bunch!)
An LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is a great way to display information in our Arduino Uno controller. We will be wiring and programming an alphanumeric, two rows with 16 characters on each row. The display has an LED (Light Emitting Diode) backlight with adjustable contrast.
This white and blue LCD will display “Hello World!” on the top line and temperature on the bottom line. The thermistor temperature circuit created last time will be displayed in both Celsius and Fahrenheit degrees. Let’s get started.
When you look at an LCD display, it is made up of a series of dots or pixels. Each of these pixels is a liquid crystal. If electricity flows through the liquid crystal it will change its structure and be more rigid. This rigidity will look darker than if no electricity is applied. If we use a light behind this LCD then the backlight will make the pixels more pronounced. So electricity on the pixel will block the light and no electricity will allow the light through. This contrast is what we see using an LCD display.
The LiquidCrystal.zip file came on the disk with the Arduino UNO R3 super starter kit. It can also be downloaded from the link below with the program. Select this library and then select open. This will add the library to the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
This first part will set up the library and declare the variables for the LCD display unit. Using the Steinhart-Hart Equation we declare our variables and set the coefficients for the equation.
The LCD is set up with 16 characters and 2 lines. The cursor for the LCD display is set for the first character on the first line by default. We then print the message “ Hello, World!”.
The program will calculate the temperature in Celsius (T) and in Fahrenheit (TF). The LCD cursor is then set to the second row and column 0. We can then print our temperatures and units of measure.
You will see the ‘Hello World!’ and the current temperature in two units of measure displayed on the LCD. Hold the thermistor between your fingers to see how rapidly the temperature can be read.
This tutorial shows how to use the I2C LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) with the ESP32 using Arduino IDE. We’ll show you how to wire the display, install the library and try sample code to write text on the LCD: static text, and scroll long messages. You can also use this guide with the ESP8266.
Additionally, it comes with a built-in potentiometer you can use to adjust the contrast between the background and the characters on the LCD. On a “regular” LCD you need to add a potentiometer to the circuit to adjust the contrast.
Before displaying text on the LCD, you need to find the LCD I2C address. With the LCD properly wired to the ESP32, upload the following I2C Scanner sketch.
After uploading the code, open the Serial Monitor at a baud rate of 115200. Press the ESP32 EN button. The I2C address should be displayed in the Serial Monitor.
Displaying static text on the LCD is very simple. All you have to do is select where you want the characters to be displayed on the screen, and then send the message to the display.
In this simple sketch we show you the most useful and important functions from the LiquidCrystal_I2C library. So, let’s take a quick look at how the code works.
The next two lines set the number of columns and rows of your LCD display. If you’re using a display with another size, you should modify those variables.
Then, you need to set the display address, the number of columns and number of rows. You should use the display address you’ve found in the previous step.
To display a message on the screen, first you need to set the cursor to where you want your message to be written. The following line sets the cursor to the first column, first row.
Scrolling text on the LCD is specially useful when you want to display messages longer than 16 characters. The library comes with built-in functions that allows you to scroll text. However, many people experience problems with those functions because:
The messageToScroll variable is displayed in the second row (1 corresponds to the second row), with a delay time of 250 ms (the GIF image is speed up 1.5x).
In a 16×2 LCD there are 32 blocks where you can display characters. Each block is made out of 5×8 tiny pixels. You can display custom characters by defining the state of each tiny pixel. For that, you can create a byte variable to hold the state of each pixel.
In summary, in this tutorial we’ve shown you how to use an I2C LCD display with the ESP32/ESP8266 with Arduino IDE: how to display static text, scrolling text and custom characters. This tutorial also works with the Arduino board, you just need to change the pin assignment to use the Arduino I2C pins.
We hope you’ve found this tutorial useful. If you like ESP32 and you want to learn more, we recommend enrolling in Learn ESP32 with Arduino IDE course.
– Arduino is an open-source platform used for building electronics projects. Arduino consists of both a physical programmable microcontroller and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that runs on your computer, used to write and upload computer code to the physical board.
– The Arduino platform unlike most previous programmable circuit boards, the Arduino does not need a separate programmer to load new code onto the board — you can simply use a USB cable. Additionally, the Arduino IDE uses a simplified version of C++, making it easier to learn to program.
– The open sources and extensible language: Arduino IDE is based on open source tool. The programming language used can be extended through the C++ library.
– The open source and expandable hardware: Arduino is based on Atmel’s ATMEGA 8-bit microcontrollers and its SAM3X8E and SAMD21 32-bit microcontrollers. Development boards and modules are planned to be released under the premise of following the “Creative Commons License Agreement”, so experienced circuit designers can make their own modules and carry out corresponding expansions and improvements. Even users who are relatively inexperienced can make a trial version of the basic Uno development board, which is easy to understand the principle of its operation and save costs.
– The Arduino hardware and software were designed for artists, designers, hobbyists, hackers, newbies, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can interact with buttons, LEDs, motors, speakers, GPS units, cameras, the internet, and even your smart-phone or your TV.
Arduino Leonardo: Arduino’s first development board to use one microcontroller with built-in USB. It is cheaper and simpler. The code libraries allow the board to emulate a computer keyboard, mouse, and more.
LCD means liquid crystal display. Basically, any displays can be used with Arduino, including alphanumeric character LCD display, monochrome graphic LCD display, color TFT LCD display, IPS LCD display. It can also be used for non LCD displays like: PMOLED display, AMOLED display, E-ink (E-paper) displays. Orient Display developed easy interface (SPI, I2C) displays which can be easily used with Arduino.
LCD displays were first used for watches and calculators. Now, LCD display technology dominants the display world, it can be found in wearables, smart homes, mobile phones, TVs, laptops, monitors, kiosks, aircraft cockpit, digital cameras, lab instrument, power grid etc.
LCD itself can emit light itself. It has to utilize outside light sources. LCD display module normally includes LCD glass (or LCD panel), LCD driving circuitry ( can be COG, COB or TAB) and a backlight.
A LCD display 16*2 is actually a basic and simple to use LCD module. It includes LCD glass, COB (Chip on PCB Board) LCD control board, backlight, zebra to connect LCD glass and control board and a bezel to hold everything together. 16×2 LCD display can display 16 characters per line and there are two lines. Each character has 5×7 dot matrix pixels and the cursor underneath. All 16×2 LCD display originally used standard Hitachi HD44780 driver. Of course the legendary HD44780 controller had EOL long time ago. All the 16×2 LCD displays use HD44780 compatible LCD controllers. Some of them are drop replacement, some of them need to modify the initialization code a little.
Pin5 (Read/Write/Control Pin): 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).
Pins 7-14 (Data Pins): These pins are used to send data to the display. These pins are connected in two-wire modes like 4-bit mode and 8-bit 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.
A 16×2 LCD has two registers like data register and command register. The RS (register select) is mainly used to change from one register to another. When the register set is ‘0’, then it is known as command register. Similarly, when the register set is ‘1’, then it is known as data register.
Command Register: The main function of the command register is to store the instructions of command which are given to the display. So that predefined tasks can be performed such as clearing the display, initializing, set the cursor place, and display control. Here commands processing can occur within the register.
Data Register: The main function of the data register is to store the information which is to be exhibited on the LCD screen. Here, the ASCII value of the character is the information which is to be exhibited on the screen of LCD. Whenever we send the information to LCD, it transmits to the data register, and then the process will be starting there. When register set =1, then the data register will be selected.
All of the code below uses the LiquidCrystal library that comes pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. A library is a set of functions that can be easily added to a program in an abbreviated format. In order to use a library, it needs be included in the program. Line 1 in the code below does this with the command #include
Now we’re ready to get into the programming! I’ll go over more interesting things you can do in a moment, but for now let’s just run a simple test program. This program will print “hello, world!” to the screen. Enter this code into the Arduino IDE and upload it to the board:
There are 19 different functions in the LiquidCrystal library available for us to use. These functions do things like change the position of the text, move text across the screen, or make the display turn on or off. What follows is a short description of each function, and how to use it in a program.
The LiquidCrystal() function sets the pins the Arduino uses to connect to the LCD. You can use any of the Arduino’s digital pins to control the LCD. Just put the Arduino pin numbers inside the parentheses in this order:
This function sets the dimensions of the LCD. It needs to be placed before any other LiquidCrystal function in the void setup() section of the program. The number of rows and number of columns are specified as lcd.begin(columns, rows). For a 16×2 LCD, you would use lcd.begin(16, 2), and for a 20×4 LCD you would use lcd.begin(20, 4).
This function clears any text or data already displayed on the LCD. If you use lcd.clear() with lcd.print() and the delay() function in the void loop() section, you can make a simple blinking text program.
Similar, but more useful than lcd.home() is lcd.setCursor(). This function places the cursor (and any printed text) at any position on the screen. It can be used in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.
The cursor position is defined with lcd.setCursor(column, row). The column and row coordinates start from zero (0-15 and 0-1 respectively). For example, using lcd.setCursor(2, 1) in the void setup() section of the “hello, world!” program above prints “hello, world!” to the lower line and shifts it to the right two spaces:
This function creates a block style cursor that blinks on and off at approximately 500 milliseconds per cycle. Use it in the void loop() section. The function lcd.noBlink() disables the blinking block cursor.
This function turns on any text or cursors that have been printed to the LCD screen. The function lcd.noDisplay() turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD, without clearing it from the LCD’s memory.
These two functions can be used together in the void loop() section to create a blinking text effect. This code will make the “hello, world!” text blink on and off.
This function takes anything printed to the LCD and moves it to the left. It should be used in the void loop() section with a delay command following it. The function will move the text 40 spaces to the left before it loops back to the first character. This code moves the “hello, world!” text to the left, at a rate of one second per character.
lcd.noAutoscroll() turns the lcd.autoscroll() function off. Use this function before or after lcd.autoscroll() in the void loop() section to create sequences of scrolling text or animations.
This function sets the direction that text is printed to the screen. The default mode is from left to right using the command lcd.leftToRight(), but you may find some cases where it’s useful to output text in the reverse direction.
This command allows you to create your own custom characters. Each character of a 16×2 LCD has a 5 pixel width and an 8 pixel height. Up to 8 different custom characters can be defined in a single program. To design your own characters, you’ll need to make a binary matrix of your custom character from an LCD character generator or map it yourself. This code creates a degree symbol (°).
The detailed LCD tutorial can be found in the article. ARDUINO LCD SET UP AND PROGRAMMING GUIDE or to check https://github.com/arduino-libraries/LiquidCrystal
The LCD can be connected in the 4 bit as well as 8 bit mode. In the 4 bit mode we have to use only the 4 data pins while in the 8 bit mode we will have to use all the 8 data pins. You can do almost everything in the 4 bit mode, so in this example we are going to connect it in the 4 bit mode.
This module works with at least the LiquidCrystal I2C and LiquidCrystal_PCF8574 libraries available in the Arduino library manager. Address 0x3F worked for me since the A0, A1, and A2 jumpers are not shorted.
Recently purchased unit has a different address than the same part number purchased a year ago. It seems that if the small board is marked MH, the address is not going to be 0x27 or 0x20 but 0x3F. With that change of address, this display works and looks great.
Google for LCM1602 and you will find many pages that mention the board - including the pinouts stated above and sample programs using the Arduino library.
I liked the idea of the 4-wire interface, but I was disappointed that no documentation was available for this part. However after a night of hacking I got it to work with my Arduino Uno. I thought Id pass along the following information to spare others the trouble.
On the software side, you have to download and install a new LiquidCrystal_I2C library for Arduino, which has the capability to talk to the LCD display over the I2C bus. Heres a link to the library. Follow the example code for the DFRobot board, which turns out to have the same configuration as this LCD, and it should fire right up for you. The LCD has white characters on a backlit blue background, and looked great.
In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to set up an LCD on an Arduino and show you all the different ways you can program it. I’ll show you how to print text, scroll text, make custom characters, blink text, and position text. They’re great for any project that outputs data, and they can make your project a lot more interesting and interactive.
The display I’m using is a 16×2 LCD display that I bought for about $5. You may be wondering why it’s called a 16×2 LCD. The part 16×2 means that the LCD has 2 lines, and can display 16 characters per line. Therefore, a 16×2 LCD screen can display up to 32 characters at once. It is possible to display more than 32 characters with scrolling though.
The code in this article is written for LCD’s that use the standard Hitachi HD44780 driver. If your LCD has 16 pins, then it probably has the Hitachi HD44780 driver. These displays can be wired in either 4 bit mode or 8 bit mode. Wiring the LCD in 4 bit mode is usually preferred since it uses four less wires than 8 bit mode. In practice, there isn’t a noticeable difference in performance between the two modes. In this tutorial, I’ll connect the LCD in 4 bit mode.
BONUS: I made a quick start guide for this tutorial that you can download and go back to later if you can’t set this up right now. It covers all of the steps, diagrams, and code you need to get started.
The 3-in-1 Smart Car and IOT Learning Kit from SunFounder has everything you need to learn how to master the Arduino. It includes all of the parts, wiring diagrams, code, and step-by-step instructions for 58 different robotics and internet of things projects that are super fun to build!
Here’s a diagram of the pins on the LCD I’m using. The connections from each pin to the Arduino will be the same, but your pins might be arranged differently on the LCD. Be sure to check the datasheet or look for labels on your particular LCD:
Also, you might need to solder a 16 pin header to your LCD before connecting it to a breadboard. Follow the diagram below to wire the LCD to your Arduino:
All of the code below uses the LiquidCrystal library that comes pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. A library is a set of functions that can be easily added to a program in an abbreviated format.
In order to use a library, it needs be included in the program. Line 1 in the code below does this with the command #include
Now we’re ready to get into the programming! I’ll go over more interesting things you can do in a moment, but for now lets just run a simple test program. This program will print “hello, world!” to the screen. Enter this code into the Arduino IDE and upload it to the board:
There are 19 different functions in the LiquidCrystal library available for us to use. These functions do things like change the position of the text, move text across the screen, or make the display turn on or off. What follows is a short description of each function, and how to use it in a program.
TheLiquidCrystal() function sets the pins the Arduino uses to connect to the LCD. You can use any of the Arduino’s digital pins to control the LCD. Just put the Arduino pin numbers inside the parentheses in this order:
This function sets the dimensions of the LCD. It needs to be placed before any other LiquidCrystal function in the void setup() section of the program. The number of rows and columns are specified as lcd.begin(columns, rows). For a 16×2 LCD, you would use lcd.begin(16, 2), and for a 20×4 LCD you would use lcd.begin(20, 4).
This function clears any text or data already displayed on the LCD. If you use lcd.clear() with lcd.print() and the delay() function in the void loop() section, you can make a simple blinking text program:
This function places the cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen, and prints any subsequent text from that position. For example, this code replaces the first three letters of “hello world!” with X’s:
Similar, but more useful than lcd.home() is lcd.setCursor(). This function places the cursor (and any printed text) at any position on the screen. It can be used in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.
The cursor position is defined with lcd.setCursor(column, row). The column and row coordinates start from zero (0-15 and 0-1 respectively). For example, using lcd.setCursor(2, 1) in the void setup() section of the “hello, world!” program above prints “hello, world!” to the lower line and shifts it to the right two spaces:
You can use this function to write different types of data to the LCD, for example the reading from a temperature sensor, or the coordinates from a GPS module. You can also use it to print custom characters that you create yourself (more on this below). Use lcd.write() in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.
The function lcd.noCursor() turns the cursor off. lcd.cursor() and lcd.noCursor() can be used together in the void loop() section to make a blinking cursor similar to what you see in many text input fields:
Cursors can be placed anywhere on the screen with the lcd.setCursor() function. This code places a blinking cursor directly below the exclamation point in “hello, world!”:
This function creates a block style cursor that blinks on and off at approximately 500 milliseconds per cycle. Use it in the void loop() section. The function lcd.noBlink() disables the blinking block cursor.
This function turns on any text or cursors that have been printed to the LCD screen. The function lcd.noDisplay() turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD, without clearing it from the LCD’s memory.
These two functions can be used together in the void loop() section to create a blinking text effect. This code will make the “hello, world!” text blink on and off:
This function takes anything printed to the LCD and moves it to the left. It should be used in the void loop() section with a delay command following it. The function will move the text 40 spaces to the left before it loops back to the first character. This code moves the “hello, world!” text to the left, at a rate of one second per character:
Like the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, the text can be up to 40 characters in length before repeating. At first glance, this function seems less useful than the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, but it can be very useful for creating animations with custom characters.
lcd.noAutoscroll() turns the lcd.autoscroll() function off. Use this function before or after lcd.autoscroll() in the void loop() section to create sequences of scrolling text or animations.
This function sets the direction that text is printed to the screen. The default mode is from left to right using the command lcd.leftToRight(), but you may find some cases where it’s useful to output text in the reverse direction:
This code prints the “hello, world!” text as “!dlrow ,olleh”. Unless you specify the placement of the cursor with lcd.setCursor(), the text will print from the (0, 1) position and only the first character of the string will be visible.
This command allows you to create your own custom characters. Each character of a 16×2 LCD has a 5 pixel width and an 8 pixel height. Up to 8 different custom characters can be defined in a single program. To design your own characters, you’ll need to make a binary matrix of your custom character from an LCD character generator or map it yourself. This code creates a degree symbol (°):
This tutorial includes everything you need to know about controlling a character LCD with Arduino. I have included a wiring diagram and many example codes. These displays are great for displaying sensor data or text and they are also fairly cheap.
The first part of this article covers the basics of displaying text and numbers. In the second half, I will go into more detail on how to display custom characters and how you can use the other functions of the LiquidCrystal Arduino library.
As you will see, you need quite a lot of connections to control these displays. I therefore like to use them with an I2C interface module mounted on the back. With this I2C module, you only need two connections to control the LCD. Check out the tutorial below if you want to use an I2C module as well:
These LCDs are available in many different sizes (16×2 1602, 20×4 2004, 16×1 etc.), but they all use the same HD44780 parallel interface LCD controller chip from Hitachi. This means you can easily swap them. You will only need to change the size specifications in your Arduino code.
For more information, you can check out the datasheets below. The 16×2 and 20×4 datasheets include the dimensions of the LCD and in the HD44780 datasheet you can find more information about the Hitachi LCD driver.
Most LCDs have a built-in series resistor for the LED backlight. You should find it on the back of the LCD connected to pin 15 (Anode). If your display doesn’t include a resistor, you will need to add one between 5 V and pin 15. It should be safe to use a 220Ω resistor, but this value might make your display a bit dim. You can check the datasheet for the maximum current rating of the backlight and use this to select an appropriate resistor value.
After you have wired up the LCD, you will need to adjust the contrast of the display. This is done by turning the 10 kΩ potentiometer clockwise or counterclockwise.
Plug in the USB connector of the Arduino to power the LCD. You should see the backlight light up. Now rotate the potentiometer until one (16×2 LCD) or 2 rows (20×4 LCD) of rectangles appear.
In order to control the LCD and display characters, you will need to add a few extra connections. Check the wiring diagram below and the pinout table from the introduction of this article.
We will be using the LCD in 4-bit mode, this means you don’t need to connect anything to D0-D3. The R/W pin is connected to ground, this will pull the pin LOW and set the LCD to WRITE mode.
To control the LCD we will be using the LiquidCrystal library. This library should come pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. You can find it by going to Sketch > Include Library > LiquidCrystal.
The example code below shows you how to display a message on the LCD. Next, I will show you how the code works and how you can use the other functions of the LiquidCrystal library.
After including the library, the next step is to create a new instance of the LiquidCrystal class. The is done with the function LiquidCrystal(rs, enable, d4, d5, d6, d7). As parameters we use the Arduino pins to which we connected the display. Note that we have called the display ‘lcd’. You can give it a different name if you want like ‘menu_display’. You will need to change ‘lcd’ to the new name in the rest of the sketch.
In the loop() the cursor is set to the third column and first row of the LCD with lcd.setCursor(2,0). Note that counting starts at 0, and the first argument specifies the column. If you do not specify the cursor position, the text will be printed at the default home position (0,0) if the display is empty, or behind the last printed character.
Next, the string ‘Hello World!’ is printed with lcd.print("Hello World!"). Note that you need to place quotation marks (” “) around the text. When you want to print numbers or variables, no quotation marks are necessary.
The LiquidCrystal Arduino library has many other built-in functions which you might find useful. You can find an overview of them below with explanation and some code snippets.
Clears the LCD screen and positions the cursor in the upper-left corner (first row and first column) of the display. You can use this function to display different words in a loop.
This function turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD. The text/data is not cleared from the LCD memory. This means it will be shown again when the function display() is called.
Scrolls the contents of the display (text and cursor) one space to the left. You can use this function in the loop section of the code in combination with delay(500), to create a scrolling text animation.
This function turns on automatic scrolling of the LCD. This causes each character output to the display to push previous characters over by one space. If the current text direction is left-to-right (the default), the display scrolls to the left; if the current direction is right-to-left, the display scrolls to the right. This has the effect of outputting each new character to the same location on the LCD.
The following example sketch enables automatic scrolling and prints the character 0 to 9 at the position (16,0) of the LCD. Change this to (20,0) for a 20×4 LCD.
With the function createChar() it is possible to create and display custom characters on the LCD. This is especially useful if you want to display a character that is not part of the standard ASCII character set.
Technical info: LCDs that are based on the Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller have two types of memories: CGROM and CGRAM (Character Generator ROM and RAM). CGROM generates all the 5 x 8 dot character patterns from the standard 8-bit character codes. CGRAM can generate user-defined character patterns.
/* Example sketch to create and display custom characters on character LCD with Arduino and LiquidCrystal library. For more info see www.www.makerguides.com */
After including the library and creating the LCD object, the custom character arrays are defined. Each array consists of 8 bytes, 1 byte for each row. In this example 8 custom characters are created.
In this article I have shown you how to use an alphanumeric LCD with Arduino. I hope you found it useful and informative. If you did, please share it with a friend that also likes electronics and making things!
I would love to know what projects you plan on building (or have already built) with these LCDs. If you have any questions, suggestions, or if you think that things are missing in this tutorial, please leave a comment down below.
Liquid Crystal Display is made use in various kinds of devices from small display screen in calculator to large screens in televisions. There are lots of advantages in using the LCD displays in systems like power efficiency, thin size, low cost etc. LCD based small display modules are normally found in all kinds of embedded devices.The LCD even though looks simple, but it is actually difficult to make it work.
The LCD works with voltage pulses only and that with precise timing and voltage levels. Hence special kinds of LCD drivers are developed to drive the LCD. Two or more of this kind of driver ICs together with the LCD screen forms LCD modules which are normally found in embedded systems.The LCD module makes a system stand-alone which can take input and display the corresponding output. This particular project demonstrates how to interface a 16x2 LCD display with an Arduino board.
Any AVR microcontroller based board which follows the standard Arduino schematic and is flashed with the Arduinobootloadercan be called an Arduino board. There is no other tool available which helps in easy prototyping like the Arduino does. The Arduino board has all the required circuitary to get the built-in AVR microcontroller running. When it comes to programming the Arduino board anyone who have basic knowledge of c programming can quickly get started with the Arduino IDE. The tutorial onGetting started with Arduinoexplains about the steps required to get start with an Arduino board.The Arduino board used in this project is the Arduino pro-mini board and the IDE version of the Arduino is 1.0.3 for windows. The image of the Arduino pro-mini board and the Arduino IDE are shown below;
Since the Arduino pro-mini board has no circuitary for interfacing it with the serial port or the USB port of the PC, an external USB to TTL converter board is required to connect it with the PC. This hardware helps in programming the Arduino board and also helps in the serial communication with the USB port of the PC.
It is assumed that the reader has gone through the projectand tried out all the things discussed there.The Arduino IDE has so many functions which help one to interface the four bit LCD module. There are functions to initialize the LCD module and to write character characters in the LCD module. The functions used in the coding of this projects are lcd.begin(), and lcd.print(). The functions are available in the library
This function should be called to initialize the four bit LCD library and then only the library functions can be called in the code. The function has six parameters which should be provided during a function call as per the circuit connection with the Arduino board and the LCD module. The details of the function parameters are listed in the order below.
For example the following statement can be used to initialize an LCD library for the code written for the circuit in which the RS pin is connected to pin12, Enable pin to 11, and D4, D5, D6 and D7 to pins 5, 4, 3 and 2 resepectievely.
This function can be used to initialize the LCD module. The first parameter is the number of rows of the LCD module in use and the second parameter is the number of columns. The lcd.begin() function can be used to initialize a 16*2 LCD using the statement;
This function is used to display an ASCII character or string in an LCD screen. If a value is provided as the parameter of the function, it will format that value into displayable string and then display it on the LCD.
The lcd.print() function is analogues to the function Serial.print() discussed with the projecton how to do serial debugging with Arduino,how to do serial input and output with Arduinoandhow send serial data from Arduino.
The above statement will print the string “hello world” in the LCD screen. If the value of a variable need to be printed on the LCD screen the same function can be used as it can format a value to the ASCII string representing the value.
The code first includes the
The code initializes the module, display a string in the module using the functions available in the
Ms.Josey 
Ms.Josey