Standard LCD 16×2 + extras in the Adafruit store… Standard HD44780 LCDs are useful for creating standalone projects and we’ve got’em!
- 16 characters wide, 2 rows
- White text on blue background
- Connection port is 0.1″ pitch, single row for easy breadboarding and wiring
- Pins are documented on the back of the LCD to assist in wiring it up
- Single LED backlight included can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM and uses much less power than LCD with EL (electroluminescent) backlights
- Can be fully controlled with only 6 digital lines!
- Built in character set supports most English/European/Japanese text, see the HD44780 datasheet for the full character set
- Up to 8 extra characters can be created for custom glyphs or ‘foreign’ language support
- Comes with necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header
For more information, check out this datasheet with useful stuff like the character map. To use with an Arduino, we suggest using our updated LiquidCrystal library. This one is faster, more complete, uses 1 less pin and is works with more LCDs.
To use, connect pin 1 (GND) to ground, pin 2 (VDD) to +5V, pin 3 (Vo) to the middle of the pot, pin 4 (RS) to Arduino pin 7, pin 5 (RW) to ground, pin 6 (E) to Arduino pin 8, leave pins 7-10 disconnected, pin 11 thru 14 (DB4-DB7) to Arduino pins 9 thru 12, pin 15 (BL+) to +5V and pin 16 (BL-) to ground. See For a detailed photo if you’re having difficulty
Then delete the old LiquidCrystal library in Arduino/hardware/libraries and in its place copy the updated LiquidCrystal library. Now in the IDE select the LiquidCrystal->CustomChars example sketch to see the image above! (You may need to adjust the contrast pot.)
Do you have some tipps how to identify displays like this, which one can scrap from old printers or servers?
Combine this with one of these:
http://www.moderndevice.com/LCD.shtml
And you have a nice serial display.
The library works nicely on my 4×20 LCD except when it wraps across lines. For example when I print “line1 line2 line3 line4 “, it displays as:
line1
line3
line2
line4
I modified the LCD4Bit library to solve this problem and add a few bells/whistles
hmm, that should be “line1 [followed by 15 space chars]line2 [ollowed by 15 space chars]…” oh yeah, HTML ignores extra whitespace.
“Do you have some tips how to identify displays like this”
They look like this and have formats like 8×2, 16×2, 20×2. They almost always have 16 ‘pins’ but sometimes 14. They have 5×7 fonts with space between each character. There is never an HD44780 chip on them since that chip isn’t manufactured anymore. They usually just have the usual black epoxy blob. The screw holes are pretty much a standardized spacing these days. They are also available in 16×4, 20×4, 40×2 and 40×4. The spacing between the 5×7 characters is pretty much a dead giveaway. If there is no 5×7 character areas you most likely have a graphical display. Those are cool too though.