I recently completed an independent school project for which I designed and built a prototype of a hand-held sensor platform. It consisted of an ATmega328, a ST7565 LCD and a couple sensors. I ended up using the Arduino environment with Adufruit Industries’ ST7565 Arduino library. Being tired of writing new code every time I wanted some sort of LCD user interaface, I set out to create my own API on top of Adafruit’s library.
The basic structure I was after was a menu based UI, involving layers of menus and sub-menus, each consisting of different selectable items, whose functions were all user-defined. This ended up being an easier task than it sounds, and I ended up with a rather cool library which I’ve dubbed the exceedingly creative name of ST7565 Menu
Graphic ST7565 Positive LCD (128×64) with RGB backlight + extras. This graphical display looks great, costs less! The dark gray pixels are visible in daylight, and there’s also a full RGB LED backlight, which you can control with PWM to make any color you can imagine.
Four mounting holes and a blank 11 pin 2mm-pitch labeled breakout on the side – we just soldered some wire to each hole as shown in the photos, its very easy. (The LCDs have no wires soldered in when we ship them)
Bonus! We’re including a free 4050 level shifter chip so that you can safely use it with your favorite 5V microcontroller
Advantages!
Lower cost than KS0108 LCDs
Serial interface uses only 4 or 5 digital pins
Low power, full-color RGB LED backlight
Visible in daylight without backlight
Works perfectly with 3V logic
Challenges!…
3.3v power and logic means a level converter is needed for 5V Arduinos (we include this part when purchasing from us)
Microcontroller must buffer display – uses 1Kb of RAM. This means you must upgrade to a ATmega328 if you are using an Arduino with a ‘8 or ‘168
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