multiple lcd displays free sample
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We will print a simple text on the LCD using Arduino UNO in this example. In this case, you control what is displayed on the Arduino readily. You only need four cables. Power, Ground, I2C data, and I2C clock.
The below line code adds the LCD library to your project. This consists of all the LCD-related functions. Since we are using the I2C version, we have included the standard LCD library made for the I2C version.#include
The following line of the code resets and initializes all the LCD registers and prepares them for project usage. This function will be called only once in thesetup()function.lcd.init();
To turn on the backlight, you can use the below code. You will be able to see the contents of the display without a backlight, too, if it is a green LCD. Backlight, nevertheless, makes the project more beautiful and reading crisper.lcd.backlight();
The first parameter tells the position column-wise (0indicated first place,1indicates the second place, and so on). The second parameter tells the row number. We have only two rows (0and1).lcd.setCursor(1, 0);
This completes a basic introduction to the LCD as well as an example project to start the LCD exploration. In the coming sections, we will see different projects as soon as possible