2x16 lcd display pinout brands

We come across Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) displays everywhere around us. Computers, calculators, television sets, mobile phones, and digital watches use some kind of display to display the time.

An LCD screen is an electronic display module that uses liquid crystal to produce a visible image. The 16×2 LCD display is a very basic module commonly used in DIYs and circuits. The 16×2 translates a display of 16 characters per line in 2 such lines. In this LCD, each character is displayed in a 5×7 pixel matrix.

Contrast adjustment; the best way is to use a variable resistor such as a potentiometer. The output of the potentiometer is connected to this pin. Rotate the potentiometer knob forward and backward to adjust the LCD contrast.

A 16X2 LCD has two registers, namely, command and data. The register select is used to switch from one register to other. RS=0 for the command register, whereas RS=1 for the data register.

Command Register: The command register stores the command instructions given to the LCD. A command is an instruction given to an LCD to do a predefined task. Examples like:

Data Register: The data register stores the data to be displayed on the LCD. The data is the ASCII value of the character to be displayed on the LCD. When we send data to LCD, it goes to the data register and is processed there. When RS=1, the data register is selected.

Generating custom characters on LCD is not very hard. It requires knowledge about the custom-generated random access memory (CG-RAM) of the LCD and the LCD chip controller. Most LCDs contain a Hitachi HD4478 controller.

CG-RAM address starts from 0x40 (Hexadecimal) or 64 in decimal. We can generate custom characters at these addresses. Once we generate our characters at these addresses, we can print them by just sending commands to the LCD. Character addresses and printing commands are below.

LCD modules are very important in many Arduino-based embedded system designs to improve the user interface of the system. Interfacing with Arduino gives the programmer more freedom to customize the code easily. Any cost-effective Arduino board, a 16X2 character LCD display, jumper wires, and a breadboard are sufficient enough to build the circuit. The interfacing of Arduino to LCD display is below.

The combination of an LCD and Arduino yields several projects, the most simple one being LCD to display the LED brightness. All we need for this circuit is an LCD, Arduino, breadboard, a resistor, potentiometer, LED, and some jumper cables. The circuit connections are below.

16×2 LCD is named so because; it has 16 Columns and 2 Rows. There are a lot of combinations available like, 8×1, 8×2, 10×2, 16×1, etc. But the most used one is the 16*2 LCD, hence we are using it here.

All the above mentioned LCD display will have 16 Pins and the programming approach is also the same and hence the choice is left to you. Below is the Pinout and Pin Description of 16x2 LCD Module:

These black circles consist of an interface IC and its associated components to help us use this LCD with the MCU. Because our LCD is a 16*2 Dot matrix LCD and so it will have (16*2=32) 32 characters in total and each character will be made of 5*8 Pixel Dots.  A Single character with all its Pixels enabled is shown in the below picture.

So Now, we know that each character has (5*8=40) 40 Pixels and for 32 Characters we will have (32*40) 1280 Pixels. Further, the LCD should also be instructed about the Position of the Pixels.

It will be a hectic task to handle everything with the help of MCU, hence an Interface IC like HD44780 is used, which is mounted on LCD Module itself. The function of this IC is to get the Commands and Data from the MCU and process them to display meaningful information onto our LCD Screen.

The LCD can work in two different modes, namely the 4-bit mode and the 8-bit mode. In 4 bit mode we send the data nibble by nibble, first upper nibble and then lower nibble. For those of you who don’t know what a nibble is: a nibble is a group of four bits, so the lower four bits (D0-D3) of a byte form the lower nibble while the upper four bits (D4-D7) of a byte form the higher nibble. This enables us to send 8 bit data.

As said, the LCD itself consists of an Interface IC. The MCU can either read or write to this interface IC. Most of the times we will be just writing to the IC, since reading will make it more complex and such scenarios are very rare. Information like position of cursor, status completion interrupts etc. can be read if required, but it is out of the scope of this tutorial.

The Interface IC present in most of the LCD is HD44780U,in order to program our LCD we should learn the complete datasheet of the IC. The datasheet is given here.

There are some preset commands instructions in LCD, which we need to send to LCD through some microcontroller. Some important command instructions are given below:

Character LCD modules are one of the most popular LCD technologies thanks to their ease of programming, low cost, low power consumption, and short lead times. They can be seen in a wide variety of products.

Most character LCDs are driven by an eight-bit parallel interface which makes use of the standard HD44780 protocol. The display has sixteen pins/connections to drive both the LCD and the optional LED backlight.

A character LCD contains several 5x8 pixel character blocks. Each block has five (5) dots across and eight (8) dots up and down. These dots are turned on and off to generate all possible characters.

Thanks loophole! I got the display working fine using this link that link that was mentioned, http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LiquidCrystal, but it was dim since the backlight was not working. After reading loophole"s comment and looking at datafile I applied 4.2V pin 15 and grounded pin 16, and all was GREAT!

I am using the exact components and have followed the exact pin configurations for the past 2 weeks, connecting then reconnecting, I have also tried different FTDI cables for uploading onto the Arduino pro mini. BUT have had no success, PLEASE help me as it is a basic issue I am sure but cannot find the solution, My 16*2 LCD lights up and also when I upload a program the arduino page reads that it has successfully uploaded (Done Uploading).

We"ve had customers order face plates through Ponoko for these LCDs and be pretty happy with it. Check around on the comments on other products and on the forum. You"ll probably find a lot of different examples of mounting solutions.

can this run in 8bit mode? I"m trying so hard to just wire up the 8 data lines and manually send the bits required for certain symbols. But it"s either stuck in 4bit mode, or I"m completely lost. My program is simple and I KNOW that it is sending the 1"s and 0"s down the appropriate lines but I can"t get a response at all. And I can succesfully apply the example code for liquid crystal. In class we just banged some bits into those old lcd"s and got the expected response... Is this one more advanced or something? Thanks, I really appreciate any help.

No matter what line I set the cursor at using lcd.setCursor(0,0), or lcd.setCursor(0,1), it will print everything on line 0. I"ve used the same LCD, different size before and never had this issue.

You should make the LCD"s connection pins on the bottom, like on the RGB backlit LCD"s (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10862). I like standing them straight up and down on breadboards. If I tried that with this one, it would be upside down.

I"m having a problem with this lcd, I can"d print custom caracters, I tried the code that this site http://icontexto.com/charactercreator/ gives you when you create a custom char, tried some other examples, but nothing, I always get just two vertical bars on the second and fourth columns.

I love this little LCD! It works great. However, I"m having a wicked hard time finding hardware (i.e. self-clinching PEM stud) that I can use to mount this. The 2.5mm mounting holes are pretty small. I"m trying hard not to use glues.

I"m also having trouble with LCD. I hooked up at 10kOhm pot, but when I upload the code it just gives me random pixels and characters. Is my Atmega on my Arduino Uno shot?

Also no external resistor is needed for the backlight; just like almost all other 5v character LCDs this one has a series resistor right on the board. Mine is 130 ohms.

I was able to achieve much better contrast by applying a slightly negative voltage on the Vo pin (3). Minus 200 mV did the trick. I seem to remember that LCD"s used to have a negative output for just this reason. I don"t know what the rating of this pin is, so proceed with caution.

I made it work by using the same schematic featured in the LiquidCrystal Arduino library page, except LCD pin 6 is hooked to a digital PWM instead of a potentiometer for controlling contrast.

Pretty cool little LCD. I had some problems initially with the 4bit LCD library, but after finding that the standard LiquidCrystal library supports 4-bit data lines it worked great.

I"m very impressed. I followed the connections from the data sheet and set them up the same way the LiquidCrystal "Hello World" example sketch calls for, and the display worked perfectly with my Arduino Duemilanove. It does take some playing with the contrast potentiometer, but I quickly found the perfect setting. The display is sharp, clear, and cool white letters on a black background.

Have you wired in the backlight? That tutorial doesn"t include wiring pins 15 and 16 on the lcd. I have hooked the backlight up to a pwm output so that I can turn it on and off via sketch.

I am also ahving this same problem. The LCD was great and easy to set up, but the brightness is really really poor. I installed a pot and all, but no dice.

Has anyone got this working with the LiquidCrystal or LCD4bit library? I am having quite a bit of trouble getting it to work reliably and am at the point where I am going to try and code my own library for it.

I"m also having heaps of trouble. I can sometimes get it to display text, maybe once out of every 30 attempts. And IF it decides to display anything it ends up garbling the message and locking up, not displaying the other strings in the sequence. Is this the LCD, my Arduino or the library? I tried using LCD4bit and a modified LiquidCrystal and they all yield the same, frustrating results.

Great little lcd, for basic output, debugging etc. Very easy to interface, and looks very slick! If you need a basic no frills LCD, this is a good buy.

The easiest way would be to stick a transistor inline with the power lead of the lcd and turn it off just before the cpu goes into the low power state.

This product worked great. I wrote a tutorial about manually writing data to the display using dips switches and push buttons. http://volatileinterface.com/2015/05/30/using-a-hd44780-lcd-display-in-4-bit-mode/

Completely useless, I have no idea what happened but when I wire it up according to the tutorial on arduinos site for the Hello World! LCD program, nothing but the backlight comes on. Also the pins are flipped from where they are in the schematic. Total cluster fuck of a product.

I just realized I forgot the bridge connections over the cnter of the breadboard to actually connect the data lines to the LCD. It works now I think I need to adjust the contrast or something. The text on the display is more visible when looking at the display from an angle.

I just bought this and thought it had the HD44780 chipset but now I started looking at the datasheet for the pin interface descriptions and I realize that it has the KS006U chipset? Is the datasheet wrong or is the sparkfun description wrong? Or maybe they are basically the same chipset? I"m confused right now. Do I need to buy a different LCD?

HD44780 is more a standard that a chipset at this point. there are tons of different chipsets that use the same protocols. like how people say "allen wrench" instend of saying hex key. HD44780 is the LCD equivilent of X86 instruction set. the cool think is you can lean how to use the 16x2, and then use the same code on everything from 8x1 to 40x4 displays.

You can simulate data on each pin of the HD44780 compatible LCD and see how it works, or if you are more advanced you can write directly your own scripts in the web browser to control the LCD, same as you would use them in the MCU code

Is there a flat cable assembly available for these? I"m OK using the 0.1" headers, but the electronics I need to hook up requires a cable interconnect. And I"d like it so that I can replace the LCD without desoldering it.

I?m considering using this in a battery powered device that will experience long periods of inactivity. During the inactive periods all system components will enter a low power stand-by or sleep state. This display does not appear to have a low power (uA) state.

This is a very late response, but anybody in this situation can simply connect the LCD in series with a MOSFET. YOu can then switch the LCD on and off from a microcontroller. Remember to leave all the microcontroller outputs floating because power can still flow into the LCD if you keep these in certain states.

ERM1602DNS-1 is big 16 characters wide,2 rows character lcd module,SPLC780C controller (Industry-standard HD44780 compatible controller),6800 4/8-bit parallel interface,single led backlight with white color included can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM,stn-lcd positive,white text on the black color,wide operating temperature range,rohs compliant,built in character set supports English/Japanese text, see the SPLC780C datasheet for the full character set. It"s optional for pin header connection,5V or 3.3V power supply and I2C adapter board for arduino.

If you’ve ever tried to connect an LCD display to an Arduino, you might have noticed that it consumes a lot of pins on the Arduino. Even in 4-bit mode, the Arduino still requires a total of seven connections – which is half of the Arduino’s available digital I/O pins.

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

True to their name, these LCDs are ideal for displaying only text/characters. A 16×2 character LCD, for example, has an LED backlight and can display 32 ASCII characters in two rows of 16 characters each.

If you look closely you can see tiny rectangles for each character on the display and the pixels that make up a character. Each of these rectangles is a grid of 5×8 pixels.

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 are using multiple devices on the same I2C bus, you may need to set a different I2C address for the LCD adapter so that it does not conflict with another I2C device.

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

So your LCD probably has a default I2C address 0x27Hex or 0x3FHex. However it is recommended that you find out the actual I2C address of the LCD before using it.

Connecting an I2C LCD is much easier than connecting a standard LCD. You only need to connect 4 pins instead of 12. Start by connecting the VCC pin to the 5V output on the Arduino and GND to ground.

After wiring up the LCD you’ll need to adjust the contrast of the display. On the I2C module you will find a potentiometer that you can rotate with a small screwdriver.

Plug in the Arduino’s USB connector to power the LCD. You will see the backlight lit up. Now as you turn the knob on the potentiometer, you will start to see the first row of rectangles. If that happens, Congratulations! Your LCD is working fine.

To drive an I2C LCD you must first install a library called LiquidCrystal_I2C. This library is an enhanced version of the LiquidCrystal library that comes with your Arduino IDE.

The I2C address of your LCD depends on the manufacturer, as mentioned earlier. If your LCD has a Texas Instruments’ PCF8574 chip, its default I2C address is 0x27Hex. If your LCD has NXP Semiconductors’ PCF8574 chip, its default I2C address is 0x3FHex.

So your LCD probably has I2C address 0x27Hex or 0x3FHex. However it is recommended that you find out the actual I2C address of the LCD before using it. Luckily there’s an easy way to do this, thanks to the Nick Gammon.

But, before you proceed to upload the sketch, you need to make a small change to make it work for you. You must pass the I2C address of your LCD and the dimensions of the display to the constructor of the LiquidCrystal_I2C class. If you are using a 16×2 character LCD, pass the 16 and 2; If you’re using a 20×4 LCD, pass 20 and 4. You got the point!

First of all an object of LiquidCrystal_I2C class is created. This object takes three parameters LiquidCrystal_I2C(address, columns, rows). This is where you need to enter the address you found earlier, and the dimensions of the display.

In ‘setup’ we call three functions. The first function is init(). It initializes the LCD object. The second function is clear(). This clears the LCD screen and moves the cursor to the top left corner. And third, the backlight() function turns on the LCD backlight.

After that we set the cursor position to the third column of the first row by calling the function lcd.setCursor(2, 0). The cursor position specifies the location where you want the new text to be displayed on the LCD. The upper left corner is assumed to be col=0, row=0.

There are some useful functions you can use with LiquidCrystal_I2C objects. Some of them are listed below:lcd.home() function is used to position 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 above function, use this inside a for loop for continuous scrolling.

If you find the characters on the display dull and boring, you can create your own custom characters (glyphs) and symbols for your LCD. They are extremely useful when you want to display a character that is not part of the standard ASCII character set.

CGROM is used to store all permanent fonts that are displayed using their ASCII codes. For example, if we send 0x41 to the LCD, the letter ‘A’ will be printed on the display.

CGRAM is another memory used to store user defined characters. This RAM is limited to 64 bytes. For a 5×8 pixel based LCD, only 8 user-defined characters can be stored in CGRAM. And for 5×10 pixel based LCD only 4 user-defined characters can be stored.

After the library is included and the LCD object is created, custom character arrays are defined. The array consists of 8 bytes, each byte representing a row of a 5×8 LED matrix. In this sketch, eight custom characters have been created.

This is a basic 16 character by 2 line display. Black text on Green background. Interface code is freely available. You will need ~11 general I/O pins to interface to this LCD screen. Using the very common Sumsang KS0066 parallel interface chipset which is equivalent of Hitachi HD44780. Includes LED backlight.

This 16-character, 2-line parallel liquid crystal display achieves a large viewing area in a compact package. It features a yellow-green LED backlight and uses the common HD44780 interface (330k pdf), so sample interface code is widely available for a variety of microcontrollers. This LCD is also available without a backlight.

As shown in the diagram above, a potentiometer whose output is connected to Vo will allow you to set the contrast for optimal viewing of your display.

The backlight in this LCD is composed of LEDs in series. The total voltage drop across these LEDs is typically 4.2 V and the recommended current through the LEDs is 120 mA. You should use a current limiting resistor RLIMIT as shown above where:

Note: No cables or connectors are included with this product, but a 40×2-pin 0.100" male header strip and 20", 16-conductor ribbon cable can be purchased separately. You can break a 7×2 segment from the header strip and solder it to the 14 through-holes on the left side of the LCD PCB; the ribbon cable will then plug into the header pins (leaving two holes empty). The header pins won’t enforce proper orientation of the cable, so you will need to take care to plug it into the correct pins. The 8×2 shrouded box header can be used with this LCD if you use pliers to pull out connector pins 15 and 16, effectively turning it into a 7×2 keyed receptacle for a 16-conductor ribbon cable.

This is just a complementary answer for people facing this question for the first time (beginners or even non-beginners), like I did a few months ago when received a batch of no-name LCD modules clones of the JHD162A with an incorrect datasheet. This answer only apply to LCD modules with a LED backlight (using a single LED or an array of LEDs) which are the most popular.

If you don"t have the datasheet, check the back of the LCD. Usually you can find easily if there is a resistor in series with the A (or even the K) pin. The following images show how some modules which already have a limiting resistor. Just be sure it is really a resistor and not a jumper (a zero ohm "resistor").

If you are designing a PCB and you are not sure if the provisioned LCD modules will have already a resistor, just add the space for a resistor in your circuit; so later on, during production, you can use a resistor or a jumper. (Of course that kind of thing should be known in advance, but sometimes is not always possible, or the requirements may state that your circuit it should work with any LCD module).

In this image a LCD 16x2 character module has a 100 ohm resistor (R8) in series with the A pin (pin 15) trace. The value was verified measuring from pin 15 to the A pad (in the left edge) soldered to the backlight.

In this image, a JDH204A (JHD629) LCD 20x4 character module has a combination of jumpers and resistors to select what pins are for the cathode (K) and anode (A) (the table in the silkscreen describe the configuration options). In this case R9 and R11 are using jumpers, meaning pin 15 is for the anode and 16 is for the cathode of the backlight, and the R12 and R13 are the limiting resistors (they are in parallel, in this case both are 68 ohms, providing 34 ohms). The value was verified by measuring the resistance between pin 15 and the A1 pad (at the left edge) soldered to the backlight.

In all modules I have used over the years, the backlight supply pins (A and K) are completely independents of the LCD and controller circuit, so you may use a different supply rail with a different voltage than the rest of the circuit. (Just note that this has just been my experience with the original JHD modules and some clones, but this may not apply to other brands).