LCD 16x2 Add-On

How it works
LCD stands for liquid crystal display. The liquid crystal display glass substrate transparent dots or pixels in a grid of electrodes etched with each. Naturally, the liquid crystal molecules, but when electricity is applied to them to straighten out. It is dark or clear the way light passes through the point to be able to be, affected. HD44780 controller chip built into the display (it is at the bottom of the black blob) receives commands from your Arduino, and a variety of letters, numbers and symbols formation of active pixels on and off. Datasheet is a diagram of all the characters stored in the controller chip. The backlighting of the display, which is powered by 15 and 16 pins for the LCD has an LED.



Assembling Display
Display Module Kit, a strip of header pins, and a potentiometer to adjust the display contrast comes with. You can plug it into breadboard in order to solder the pins to display the header. Follow this link to our handy guide assembly, and come back here when you're done.

Connecting your Arduino Display Hardware
This display is a parallel interface, 4-bit or 8-bit wide, which could be used. We'll use 4 bits since it requires less wiring. A total of 8 wires connect your Arduino to show it will take; For information on the four, two data load, and two for power and ground. You'll also need to connect to display the supplied potentiometer; This is in contrast to the need to establish visibility for the display. The following schematic and layout for details, see:

LCD 16x2 Add-On 

LCD 16x2 Add-On 

LCD 16x2 Add-On

Connecting your Arduino Display Software

You can usually determine how to control the display controller chip HD44780 should read the datasheet. Fortunately, Arduino, which is a built-in library called LiquidCrystal that comes with all the hard work for you. (A prebuilt library is a collection of software functions, you can easily include in your code).

Open the Arduino IDE, and the program loads, for example: File> Examples> LiquidCrystal> HelloWorld. Upload it to your board, and "Hello, world!" The display should appear. No message will be displayed, you may need to adjust the contrast. To do this, turn the potentiometer until the "Hello, world!" There is a maximum contrast. If you still do not see anything, double-check your wiring.

You can see the "Hello, world!", Then congratulations not! For example, look at the sketch, and tried to change it to display "Hello, is your name!" Or any other text you want. For example, take a look at the other sketches also LiquidCrystal, and Arduino.cc documentation on how to take advantage of the sketch show to write.

LiquidCrystal Library

Here are a few LiquidCrystal library commands to get you started. For a complete list, see: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/LiquidCrystal.

#include ;
// Tell the Arduino you want to use the LCD library

LiquidCrystal lcd(12,11,5,4,3,2)
// Create a new LiquidCrystal object named lcd
// using the listed pins for a 4 bit data bus (as in the above schematic)

lcd.begin(16,2);
// Initializes the library for a 16 x 2 display

lcd.clear();
// Clears the display and moves the cursor to upper left corner

lcd.home();
// Just move the cursor to the upper left corner

lcd.setCursor(col, row);
// moves the cursor to column col and row row

lcd.print(data);
// prints a string ("hello, world!") or numerical data (data, BASE) to the display

More Information

• LCD add-ons for sik (dev-10054) Product Page
• PDF Guidelines for Dev-10054
• The reference library Arduino.cc LiquidCrystal
• LCD datasheet (basic)
• LCD datasheet (extended)
• HD44780 datasheet