arduino connect lcd display brands

Liquid Crystal displays or LCDs have been used in electronics equipment since the late 1970s.   LCD displays have the advantage of consuming very little current And they are ideal for your Arduino projects.

In this article and in the accompanying video I’ll show you how easy it is to add an LCD display to your next Arduino design. I’ll also show you a very popular Arduino Shield that has a keypad which you can use in your projects as well.

Today LCD displays are used in a variety of items from test equipment to televisions. They’re inexpensive and versatile, this makes them ideal for all sorts of designs.

LCD displays do not emit light. Instead they block the passage of light, like little windows which open and shut the let light through. The liquid crystals used inside LCD displays are sandwiched between two layers of polarized material. By changing the orientation of the liquid crystals they allow light to pass or they block the light entirely.

Because transmissive LCD displays (the type we will be using) work by blocking light they require a backlight. Several methods have been used to create back lights including electroluminescent panels and fluorescent tubes.   these days the most common form of backlight is an LED, in fact so-called LED televisions are usually just LCD screens with an LED backlight system.

Another type of LCD display, the passive-matrix display, does not require a backlight, it works using reflected light. This type of display is often found in digital watches.

The principles of liquid crystals were discovered in the late 1880s but work on Modern LCD displays did not begin until the mid-1960s. a number of patents were filed in the early 1970s and in 1973 the Sharp Corporation introduced LCD displays for calculators.

The first color LCD displays were developed in the early 1980s but production units were not commonly available until the mid-1990s. By the late 1990s LCD displays were quite common.

A number of LCD displays are available for experimenters. These low-cost monochrome displays are ideal for use with microcontrollers like the Arduino and micro computers like the Raspberry Pi.

These displays are available in a number of different configurations. The part number for the display generally relates to the number of rows and columns in the display.

Common display configurations include 16 x 2, 16 x 4 and 20 x 4.  All of these displays are used in a virtually identical fashion the only difference being the number of columns and rows they have.

The LCD1602 display module is a very popular and inexpensive LCD display.  It is available in a number of different colors such as blue yellow and green and can easily be connected to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi.

In operation data is sent down the parallel data lines for the display. There are two types of data that can be sent to the display. The first type of data are the ASCII characters which are to be displayed on the display. The other type of data are the control characters that are used to activate the various display functions.

Brightness– This is the input for the brightness control voltage, which varies between 0 and 5 volts to control the display brightness. On some modules this pin is labeled V0.

Because the LCD module uses a parallel data input it requires 8 connections to the host microcontroller for the data alone. Add that to the other control pins and it consumes a lot of connections.  On an Arduino Uno half of the I/O pins would be taken up by the display, which can be problematic if you want to use the I/O pins for other input or output devices.

In 4-wire mode the data is sent a half a byte at a time, thus requiring only 4 data connections. The upper half of the data input (D4 to D7) is used while the other pins are not connected to anything.

We will begin our experiments by hooking up the LCD1602 to an Arduino Uno and running a few of the example sketches included with the Arduino IDE.  This will allow you to get familiar with the display without needing to write any code.

We need to hookup our LCD display to our Arduino. The display can use any of the Arduino digital I/O pins as it has no special requirements, but if you hook it up as I’ve illustrated here you can run the example sketches without needing to make any modifications.

In addition to the LCD1602 display ands the Arduino Uno you will need a 10K trimpot ot potentiometer, this is used a s a brightness control for the display. You’ll also need a 220 ohm resistor to drop the voltage for the displays LED backlight.

The Arduino IDE includestheLiquidCrystallibraryand this library has a number of example sketches. I’ll go over three of them here but you can also try the other ones.

The sketch starts with a number of credits and a description of the required hardware hookup. You’ll note that this is the same hookup you just performed on your Arduino and LCD module.

We then initialize an object that we call “lcd” using the pinouts of the LCD display. If you decide to hook up your display to different pins then you’ll need to modify this section.

That ends the loop, so we start back at the top of the loop and repeat. The result will be a counter on the second line that counts seconds from the htime the Arduino was last reset.

Load the sketch up to your Arduino and observe your display. If you don’t see anything try adjusting the brightness control that you wired to the display.

The second example we will try isthe Scroll sketch. Scrolling is a useful technique when you can’t get your text to fit on one line of the LCD display.

In the loop the code demonstrates the use of thescrollDisplayLeftandscrollDisplayRightfunctions.  As their names imply they move the text in a left or right direction.

Finally the last counter moves the text 16 positions to the left again, which will restore it back to the center of the display. The loop then repeats itself.

Custom characters are useful when you want to display a character that is not part of the standard 127-character ASCII character set. Thi scan be useful for creating custom displays for your project.

A character on the display is formed in a 5 x 8 matrix of blocks so you need to define your custom character within that matrix. To define the character you’ll use thecreateCharfunctionof the LiquidCrystal library.  You are limited to defining a maximum of eight characters.

The Custom Character demonstration requires one additional component to be wired to the Arduino, a potentiometer (10K or greater) wired up to deliver a variable voltage to analog input pin A0.

As with the previous sketches we examined this one starts by loading theLiquidCrystallibrary and defining an object calledlcdwith the connection information for the display.  It then moves on to define the custom characters.

The last two arrays,amsUpandarmsDowndefine the shape of a little “stickman”, or “stickperson” if you want to be politically correct! This is done to show how we can animate a character on the display.

Finally the setup routine ends by printing a line to the first row of the LCD display. The line makes use of two of the custom characters, the “heart” and the “smiley”.

We begin by reading the value of the voltage on pin A0 using the ArduinoanalogReadfunction. As the Arduino has a 10-bit analog to digital converter this will result in a reading ranging from 0 to 1023.

We then use an Arduinomapfunction to convert this reading into a range from 200 to 1000. This value is then assigned to an integer calleddelayTime, which as its name implies represents a time delay period.

One thing you may have noticed about using the LCD display module with the Arduino is that it consumes a lot of connections. Even in 4-wire mode there are still a total of seven connections made to the Arduino digital I/O pins. As an Arduino Uno has only 14 digital I/O pins that’s half of them used up for the display.

In other cases you would need to resort to using some of the analog pins as digital pins or even moving up to an Arduino Mega which has many more I/O pins.

But there is another solution. Use the I2C bus adapter for the LCD display and connect using I2C.  This only consumes two I/O pins and they aren’t even part of the set of digital I/O pins.

The bus has evolved to be used as an ideal method of communicating between microcontrollers, integrated circuits, sensors and micro computers.  You can use it to allow multiple Arduinos to talk to each other, to interface numerous sensors and output devices or to facilitate communications between a Raspberry Pi and one or more Arduinos.

In I2C communications there is the concept of Master and Slave devices. There can be multiples of each but there can only be one Master at any given moment. In most Arduino applications one Arduino is designated Master permanently while the other Arduinos and peripherals are the Slaves.

The I2C Adapter for the LCD display is a tiny circuit board with 16 male header pins soldered to it. These pins are meant to be connected directly to the 16-pin connection on the LCD1602 display (or onto other displays that use the same connection scheme).

The device also has a 4-pin connector for connection to the I2C bus. In addition there is a small trimpot on the board, this is the LCD display brightness control.

Most Arduino Unos also have some dedicated pins for I2C, these are internally connected to A4 and A5 and are usually located above the 14 digital I/O pins.  Some models of the Uno have additional I2C connectors as well.

Note how much easier it is to use the I2C connection, which does not consume any of the Arduino Unos 14 digital I/O pins. Since A4 and A5 are being used for the I2C bus they can’t be used as analog inputs in this configuration.

Load this sketch into your Arduino then open your serial monitor. You’ll see the I2C address of your I2C LCD display adapter. You can then make note of this address and use it in the sketches we’ll be looking at now.

In order to run the subsequent sketches you’ll need to install another library. This is theNewLiquidCrystallibrarywhich, as its name implies, is an improved version of the LiquidCrystal library packaged with your Arduino IDE.

The sketch starts by loading the ArduinoWirelibrary. This is the Arduino library that facilitates communications over I2C and it’s part of your Arduino IDE installation.

On the next line we define the connections to the LCD display module from the I2C Adapter,. Note that these are NOT the connections from the Arduino, they are the connections used by the chip on the adapter itself.

In setup we set the size of the display and then print “Hello world!” on the first line in the first position.  After a short delay we print “How are you?” on the second line.

Load the sketch and run it on your Arduino. If you can’t get it to work check out the address and connection information to be sure you have it right.

As you can see the DHT22 is connected with its output tied to pin 7 of the Arduino. The other two connections are 5 volts and ground. Note that pin 3 of the DHT22 is not used.

This sketch also makes use of theDHTlibrary from Adafruit. We used this library in a previous article, “Using the HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor with Arduino” so you may want to take a look at that one in order to get it installed.

The key thing to note is that this library is dependant upon another Adafruit library, theirUnified Sensorlibrary. Both can be installed using the Library Manager in your Arduino IDE.

The sketch is similar to our demo sketch in that it creates an “lcd” object with the I2C and display connection information.  It also defines a couple of parameters for the DHT22 sensor, as well as some floating variables to hold the temperature and humidity values.

Note that this displays the temperature in Celsius. If you want to change this to Fahrenheit its a simple matter of using some math. The formula( temp * 1.8 ) + 32will convert the results to Fahrenheit.

So far we have used the LCD1602 display module for all of our experiments. For our final demonstration we’ll switch to a popular Arduino shield that contains a LCD1602 along with some push buttons.

The LCD Keypad Shield is available from several different manufacturers. The device fits onto an Arduino Uno or an Arduino Mega and simplifies adding an LCD display to your project.

The Reset button is simply connected to the Arduino Reset pin and works just like the Reset button on the Arduino itself. This is common on many shields as the shields physically cover the Reset button.

Instead the buttons are connected to a resistor array that acts as a voltage divider. The entire array is connected to the Arduino’s analog A0 pin.  One pin for five push buttons.

Note that the LCD is being used in 4-wire mode. The LCD itself is the same one used on the LCD1602 module, so all of the code for that module will work with the LCD Keypad Shield as well.

Now that you know how the LCD Keypad module works and which Arduino pins it uses all that remains is to install it onto your Arduino and load the demo sketch.

One thing – once the shield is installed on the Arduino you won’t have easy access to the unused I/O pins to connect any sensors or output devices you may want to use (although the demo sketch doesn’t need anything else connected).  There are a couple of ways to get around this:

Use a shield that exposes the pins for prototyping before you install the LCD Keypad shield. In the video associated with this article I use a “Screw Shield” that brings all of the Arduino I/O pins out to a series of screw connectors. There are other similar shields. Using one of these shields is the easiest way to work with the LCD Keypad shield, as well as other Arduino shields.

The sketch begins by including theLiquidCrystallibrary. You can use the original one or the one includes with theNewLiquidCrystallibrary.  We then set up an object with the LCD connections, note that these are just hard-coded as they won’t change.

Next we define a number of constants, one for each of the push buttons. Note that nothing is defined for the Reset button as it simply mimics the Arduino Reset button, however a constant is defined for the “none” condition.

After that we define a function calledread_LCD_buttons().  This function reads the value on analog port A0 and returns an integer corresponding to the button integers we defined earlier. Note that the function adds approximately 50 to each of the manufacturers specified values to account for intolerances in the resistors in the voltage divider.

We start the loop by placing the cursor 9 spaces over on the second line. We then use themillisfunction to display a counter that counts the time since the Arduino was reset. This is to test the Reset button.

We then call ourread_LCD_buttons()function and use it to display the value of the push button, right before the counter. Then we end the loop and do it again.

Load the code onto the Arduino and run it. You should see the value of each button as you press it, along with a counter that increments each second. If you press Reset the counter should reset itself back to zero.

As you can see LCD displays are pretty simple to use thanks to the availability of some excellent libraries for the Arduino.  As these displays are also very inexpensive they will make an ideal addition to many of your Arduino projects.

And finally the LCD Keypad Shield is a convenient method of adding both a display and a simple keypad to your project, no wiring or soldering required.

If you’ve ever attempted to connect an LCD display to an Arduino, you’ve probably noticed that it uses a lot of Arduino pins. Even in 4-bit mode, the Arduino requires seven connections – half of the Arduino’s available digital I/O pins.

The solution is to use an I2C LCD display. It only uses two I/O pins that are not even part of the digital I/O pin set and can be shared with other I2C devices.

As the name suggests, these LCDs are ideal for displaying only characters. A 16×2 character LCD, for example, can display 32 ASCII characters across two rows.

At the heart of the adapter is an 8-bit I/O expander chip – PCF8574. This chip converts the I2C data from an Arduino into the parallel data required for an LCD display.

If you have multiple devices on the same I2C bus, you may need to set a different I2C address for the LCD adapter to avoid conflicting with another I2C device.

An important point to note here is that several companies, including Texas Instruments and NXP Semiconductors, manufacture the same PCF8574 chip. And the I2C address of your LCD depends on the chip manufacturer.

So the I2C address of your LCD is most likely 0x27 or 0x3F. If you’re not sure what your LCD’s I2C address is, there’s an easy way to figure it out. You’ll learn about that later in this tutorial.

Now we are left with the pins that are used for I2C communication. Note that each Arduino board has different I2C pins that must be connected correctly. On Arduino boards with the R3 layout, the SDA (data line) and SCL (clock line) are on the pin headers close to the AREF pin. They are also referred to as A5 (SCL) and A4 (SDA).

After wiring the LCD, you will need to adjust the contrast of the LCD. On the I2C module, there is a potentiometer that can be rotated with a small screwdriver.

Now, turn on the Arduino. You will see the backlight light up. As you turn the potentiometer knob, the first row of rectangles will appear. If you have made it this far, Congratulations! Your LCD is functioning properly.

Before you can proceed, you must install the LiquidCrystal_I2C library. This library allows you to control I2C displays using functions that are very similar to the LiquidCrystal library.

As previously stated, the I2C address of your LCD depends on the manufacturer. If your LCD has a PCF8574 chip from Texas Instruments, its I2C address is 0x27; if it has a PCF8574 chip from NXP Semiconductors, its I2C address is 0x3F.

If you’re not sure what your LCD’s I2C address is, you can run a simple I2C scanner sketch that scans your I2C bus and returns the address of each I2C device it finds.

However, before you upload the sketch, you must make a minor change to make it work for you. You must pass the I2C address of your LCD as well as the display dimensions to the LiquidCrystal_I2C constructor. If you’re using a 16×2 character LCD, pass 16 and 2; if you’re using a 20×4 character LCD, pass 20 and 4.

The next step is to create an object of LiquidCrystal_I2C class. The LiquidCrystal_I2C constructor accepts three inputs: I2C address, number of columns, and number of rows of the display.

In the setup, three functions are called. The first function is init(). It initializes the interface to the LCD. The second function is clear(). This function clears the LCD screen and positions the cursor in the upper-left corner. The third function, backlight(), turns on the LCD backlight.

The function setCursor(2, 0) is then called to move the cursor to the third column of the first row. The cursor position specifies where you want the new text to appear on the LCD. It is assumed that the upper left corner is col=0 and row=0.

There are many useful functions you can use with LiquidCrystal_I2C Object. Some of them are listed below:lcd.home() function positions the cursor in the upper-left of the LCD without clearing the display.

lcd.scrollDisplayRight() function scrolls the contents of the display one space to the right. If you want the text to scroll continuously, you have to use this function inside a for loop.

lcd.scrollDisplayLeft() function scrolls the contents of the display one space to the left. Similar to the above function, use this inside a for loop for continuous scrolling.

lcd.display() function turns on the LCD display, after it’s been turned off with noDisplay(). This will restore the text (and cursor) that was on the display.

If you find the default font uninteresting, you can create your own custom characters (glyphs) and symbols. They come in handy when you need to display a character that isn’t in the standard ASCII character set.

The CGROM stores the font that appears on a character LCD. When you instruct a character LCD to display the letter ‘A’, it needs to know which pixels to turn on so that we see an ‘A’. This data is stored in the CGROM.

CGRAM is an additional memory for storing user-defined characters. This RAM is limited to 64 bytes. Therefore, for a 5×8 pixel LCD, only 8 user-defined characters can be stored in CGRAM, whereas for a 5×10 pixel LCD, only 4 can be stored.

Creating custom characters has never been easier! We’ve developed a small application called Custom Character Generator. Can you see the blue grid below? You can click on any pixel to set or clear that pixel. And as you click, the code for the character is generated next to the grid. This code can be used directly in your Arduino sketch.

After including the library and creating the LCD object, custom character arrays are defined. The array consists of 8 bytes, with each byte representing a row in a 5×8 matrix.

Today, among the various projects with Arduino used in the market, those that involve integration with LCD displays for the display of information stand out.

In this case, the I2C module needs to be connected to the display to have all its communication reduced to four wires: two for power and two for signal.

In order not to make a mistake in the numbering of the pinout, it is important to carefully observe the characteristics of each pin and their locations on the Arduino.

Meanwhile, pin 5 (R/W), connected to GND, demonstrates the read and write signal of the display, and pin 6 (E) serves to enable or disable the signal.

In addition, pins 15 (LED+) and 16 (LED-) will be responsible for supplying power to the LEDs at the bottom of the display. It is possible to connect pin 15 using:Using 2 resistors of 220 ohms in parallel;

With the proper connections, it"s time to program the Arduino by connecting it to the computer and opening the official Arduino IDE in its updated version.

Furthermore, despite being highly efficient, LCD technology is not new to the market, which lowers its cost in relation to other displays with similar benefits.

This connection is very simple. There are 16 pins to LCD display. We only need to connect 12 pins.Pin 1 - Vss - Arduino GNDPin 2 - Vcc - Arduino 5VPin 3 - Vee - Centre pin of 10k resistor potPin 4 - Rs - Digital pin 12 on ArduinoPin5 - R/W - Arduino GNDPin6 - E - Digital pin 11 on ArduinoPin7 - D0 - EmptyPin8 - D1 - EmptyPin9 - D2 - EmptyPin10 - D3 - EmptyPin11 - D4 - Digital pin 5 on ArduinoPin12 - D5 - Digital pin 4 on ArduinoPin13 - D6 - Digital pin 3 on ArduinoPin14 - D7 - Digital pin 2 on ArduinoPin15 - LED+/ Anode - Arduino 5VPin16 - LED-/ Cathode - Arduino GND

We have used 6 LEDs: 4 Blue and 2 Golden yellow. They are made into 3 pairs. Positive(Anode) of each pair is connected to a different digital pin on Arduino with a 220ohm resistor in between. The Negative(cathode) is connected to the common GND on the breadboard. You will definitely get more clarity when you see the Circuit diagram and go through the Code. Follow the colour code, it"s easier that way...

Hello friend welcome to “Techno-E-Solution” in this article we are going to learn how to connect LCD display with Arduino Uno and print "Hello World!" on LCD using Arduino Uno. The 16x2 LCD is most popular LCD in electronics projects. In upcoming project we need this display in our project so it"s the beginners level tutorial learn this tutorial with fun. So friends let"s get started..........

Arduino-related projects are very popular and, like Raspberry Pi, it is one of the most used Free Hardware projects among companies. That is why we are going to talk about one of the most popular combinations among Arduino users: LCD + Arduino.

The LCD display is an increasingly economical and accessible accessory, which makes it a great option to accompany our Arduino board. But Can an LCD screen be used with our Arduino board? What projects can be used with LCD and Arduino, is this combination worth using?

Novice users are unaware of what LCD stands for, even though they will have seen it more than once in their lifetime. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display, or what comes to be Liquid Crystal Display. A small or large screen that many of us have known in various devices such as alarm clocks, clock screens, calculators, etc ... Endless electronic devices that are expanded thanks to the combination of LCD + Arduino and Free Hardware.

LCD screens are compatible with any Free Hardware, including Arduino Project boards, although they require that the boards have certain connectors or pins to make the connection between the electronics board and the LCD screen.

A priori, there is no impediment to using different LCD screen sizes. In other words, the same Arduino board can use a 5-inch, 20 “LCD screen or a 5 × 2 character size, to speak of a small size. But we must be aware thatArduino board is not the same as a graphics card or motherboard, so the message to be displayed on a screen will not work the same on a small screen as on a large screen, as long as it is the same Arduino board.

If you have enough pins and pins compatible with the above, LCD screen will work perfectly with Arduino board. So it is always advisable to check the pins of both devices to make sure that the connection exists. In any case, it is rare for the Arduino board that cannot be connected to an lcd display and in case of having such a situation, there are different lcd modules on the market that are easily connected to Arduino and whose cost is quite affordable.

El Line LCD is a type of screen that shows information through lines. The information is situated in lines and we cannot get out of that frame. This type of LCD is the most widely used, economical and well-known but it is also the type of lcd that gives less play, since it only shows certain information and is usually just text.

El dot lcd It works almost the same as the previous type of lcd, but unlike the previous one, in the lcd by points we have a matrix of points. Thus, in this type of lcd we can place the text and even images anywhere on the lcd screen. What"s more we can have several font sizes within the same lcd screen, something that does not happen in the lcd display of lines, whose size must always be the same.

El OLED display It is for many a type of display of their own while for others it is within the types of lcd. The OLED Display is a screen that shows us information but its construction is different from that of the LCD screen since uses led diodes with organic components for its creation. Unlike the previous types, OLED displays offer higher resolution, color and lower energy consumption. Like computer monitors or dot lcd, OLED screens use the matrix of dots or pixels (since we can use several colors on the same display) to display content.

El LED or LCD Led display is similar to OLED Display, but led diodes do not contain organic elements. Its performance is not as high as the OLED display but it does offer more resolution than the dot LCD screen and offers color.

El TFT display is the latest type of lcd on the market. We can say that the TFT display uses pixels like computer monitors or televisions and that we can emit any type of information through these screens. Its energy consumption is higher than any of the previous types hence small sizes are used. The size of these displays is measured in inches unlike some of the other types of displays. They are measured by characters or by screen width.

Thanks to online commerce we can find countless models of lcd displays, but only a few are the most popular. This popularity is due to its easy acquisition, its price, its performance or simply its quality.. Here we talk about these models:

This display comes from the old Nokia 5110 mobile phones. The LCD of these mobiles outperformed the mobile and the company has continued to sell this display for its own use. The screen is monochrome and is Lineas LCD type. The Nokia 5110 display offers 48 rows and 84 columns. Its power is such that it offers the ability to view images, although not efficiently. Its performance is very good although we will need to use backlighting to be able to correctly view the screen, in general it is usually accompanied by this backlighting although there may be modules that lack this function. The display uses a Philips PCD8544 driver. The Nokia 5110 LCD screen can be found at shops for 1,8 euros.

The Hitachi HD44780 LCD It is a module created by the manufacturer Hitachi. The lcd panel is monochrome and is line type. We can find a model with 2 lines of 16 characters each and another model with 4 lines of 20 characters each. We usually find the Hitachi HD44780 LCD display in any store but it may also happen that we only find the Hitachi HD44780 controller without a screen, the price can help us in this situation, the cost being screen plus controller for 1,70 euros and only the 0,6 euro driver.

This lcd display is OLED type. The I2C OLED LCD is a one-inch size monochrome OLED screen that connects to the Arduino via the I2C protocol, this protocol uses a bidirectional bus that allows us to save pins, being necessary four pins in front of the necessary ones previously mentioned. The driver for this LCD screen is generic so we can use free libraries for its use. The price of this model is not as cheap as the previous models but if it is affordable by many users, we can find for 10 euros a unit.

The E-Ink LCD screen uses electronic ink to display information. Like the rest of the models, uses the I2C protocol to communicate with Arduino. The screens are of the TFT type but using electronic ink which makes consumption considerably lower but without losing resolution. Although there are no color screens (at the moment), they are all in black and gray scale.

As a curiosity about this model of lcd screens, we have to say that price and size are united. We can find different sizes and the bigger the size, the more expensive the screen. Thus, 1 or 2,5 inch E-Ink screens They have a price of 25 euros per unit. The larger size panels can reach 1.000 euros per unit.

The connection between an LCD screen and Arduino is very simple. In principle we have to follow the pins mentioned above and connect them to the Arduino board. The connection diagram would be the following:

But it is not the only thing we have to take into account to connect the LCD screen to Arduino. What"s more we have to use a library that will help us to give the program that we create the necessary code to make it work correctly with the screen. This bookstore it"s called LiquidCrystal.h and it can be obtained for free throughthe official Arduino website. This library must be used like the rest of the libraries, invoking it at the beginning of the code as follows:

Continuing with the above, we have to ask ourselves if it is really convenient to have an LCD screen and Arduino for our personal project or project. Personally, I think that for certain projects it is necessary and for the rest of them it is something more personal than necessary. For example, we can talk about the latest models of 3D printers, models that only add in some cases the LCD display and nothing else, but the price of the model is significantly more expensive.

In these cases I do not think that an LCD display is needed, but this is not the case in certain projects where the LCD display is very important. Examples of the latter are projects such as watches, a game console or simply a GPS locator. Projects that need to have a graphical interface to function effectively. What we say may be silly, especially for the most expert users, but any component can make any project more expensive and even make it unviable. Hence, it is important to assess whether our project should have an LCD screen or not.

We realize a change is not always welcomed but we feel it"s the best way to move forward. The new Workshop4 IDE supports 4 development environments, to cater for different user requirements and skill levels and the Serial environment you"ve mentioned is one of them. The Serial environment is basically a 4DGL application that uses a very simple protocol and makes the display act as a slave and it works well when the host and the display are in close proximity, i.e. both on the same application PCB or the distance of the host is within a foot or two from the display. In most cases this works real well as long as the transmission path is free of external noise. There are many high end commercial products designed by many thousands of customers using just the serial platform. If the environment is noisy or the distance between the display and the host is far apart, then why not use the Designer environment and roll out your own top notch serial protocol with many different levels of error checking? Many customers also employ this method. A good outcome for any application always starts by proper understanding of what"s required and a good feasibility study of all the factors involved. You mention you"ve used many of our displays (thank you for your support), but have you tried seeking help from our very helpful team of tech support engineers? If not, please do so, I"m sure you"ll find they"ll be able to resolve most of your problems.

Edit: I have just been informed that a user reported a crashing problem on Friday the 22nd of February, he was supplied with a Fix on Saturday the 23rd and Workshop was shipping with the fix integrated on Monday the 25th. If you are that user we apologize for any inconvenience. This problem was only limited to the Goldelox based displays and not on the Picaso.

I"m using LCD for the first time and I"m unable to make it work. It lights the background but it does not show any text. I tried three times from the beginning, each time with a different tutorial, and none of the solutions worked. Is there any mistake in my wiring that I do not see?