2 line 16 character lcd display datasheet in stock

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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.

So apparently the product works fine, and I apologize to all those at sparkfun. I should be on the arduino forums tell them that the tutorial is a cluster F**k and not this item. for those who had the same problem, you have to connect pin 15 Vin and pin 16 to GND, everything on the tutorial is correct.

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.

You are the BEST!!! Thank you. It was worth registering just to post this message to you. I hope to participate further. There are a LOT of bugs in the Arduino sketches (Projects 1-23). Thanks again.

Working OK with Picaxe 20x2 but uses pins I would like to have free for i2c. So, I am getting bigger picaxe to go with it. Used 2 rectifier diodes in series for the voltage drop to 4.2v on the backlight and two 1k ohm resisters in series for the contrast. Looks good.

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!

The post that KHartley posted with regards to all the pin connections and using an Aduino mini pro, who then also got a reply from member 468163, that the code and everything worked.

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 having problems with my contrast - it"s always either too high (washed out characters) or too low (can"t see the character) on separate spaces at the same time. No matter how I adjust it, each character seems to require a different contrast level. Help, please?

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?

Like others have said, works well with liquidcrystal library and I also like to pwm the backlight with a fet on the low side. Looks really cool to have it fade out to 1 or 2% duty cycle standby mode when there has been no button presses/input in a while and then fade back in when you press a button.

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.

3) If you hook it to an Arduino, powering the LED backlight from a digital I/O pin will only source 40mA max. (PIC micros are even less), any more and you are overloading your output. Tie pin K (or 16) to ground, and A (or 15) will be the high side. If you design for 40mA, calculate the current limiting resistor to put between the I/O pin and pin A (or 15) of the LED backlight as follows: 5V-4.2V=0.8V and 0.8V/0.040A=20ohms however, be sure to measure the voltage across your current limiting resistor and calculate the actual current flowing to the LED just in case... don"t overload your Arduino I/O!

4) If you want to really drive it properly, you need more POWER! So grab an NPN transistor such as a 2N4401 or 2N2222 or 2N3904, and amplify your I/O. Hook a 220 to 330 ohm resistor between your I/O and the base of the NPN, hook the emitter of the NPN to ground, and the collector to the K pin (or 16) of the LED backlight. Hook a 5 to 10 ohm 1/4W resistor between the A pin (or 15) of the LED backlight and the 5V rail (make sure your 5V regulator can handle the extra 120-160mA of current you are going to be consuming)

Thanks to the guy who first pointed that for that bcklight to work one needs pin 15 on +4.2V and pin 16 on ground. Without that I was getting a pretty dim job.

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.

The one thing that threw me off was that the standard (not extended) datasheet mentions that the backlight (BKL) can be driven by pins 1,2 or 15,16 -- however I found that I needed to apply 4.2v to pins 15,16 before the backlight would work. Easy fix, just misleading on the datasheet.

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.

Ordered mine a week ago and finally got around to playing with it. I used the included LiquidCrystal.h for Arduino to run this thing. Very easy to use once you get it up and running. To get the contrast working I used a 3.3Kohm resistor going to ground, looks amazing. Not quite as bright as picture but I think I"m close. 2.2Kohm is too washed out and 6.8 Kohm nothing shows up. I can"t believe how much easier this is compared to the 68HC12. Uhhh, I"m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.

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.

Late reply, but I have trouble with this if I forget to add decoupling capacitors on the V+ line. Especialy using multiple serial to parallel converters at high data rates.

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.

Very quick delivery, and well-packed. All LCD displays work okay, with minor ghosting (which might be normal) and subpar viewing angle (for any fixed VL level I tried). These don"t seem to be the model listed due to discrepancies from the datasheet, but they are very close: the mounting hole X pitch is 75 mm (non-E version), but the pinout has the anode at pin 16 (E version).

Dark on light gray sunlight readable 16x2 character LCD with single LED backlight included. All pins and functionality is documented in the datasheet. Contrast can be easily adjusted with a potentiometer or PWM. Each row holds 16 characters there are 2 rows per module.

The Displaytech 162K series is a lineup of 16x2 character LCD modules. These modules have an 85x30 mm outer dimension with 66x16 mm viewing area on the display. The 162K 16x2 LCD displays are available in STN or FSTN LCD modes with or without an LED backlight. The backlight color options include yellow green, white, blue, pure green, or amber color. Get a free quote direct from Displaytech for a 16x2 character LCD display from the 162K series.

The Displaytech 162M series is a lineup of our largest 16x2 character LCD modules. These modules have a 122x44 mm outer dimension with 99x24 mm viewing area on the display. The 162M 16x2 LCD displays are available in STN or FSTN LCD modes with or without an LED backlight. The backlight color options include yellow green, white, blue, pure green, or amber color. Get a free quote direct from Displaytech for a 16x2 character LCD display from the 162M series.

ERM1601DNS-2 is 16 characters wide,1 row 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,ffstn- black lcd negative,white text on the black color,high contrast,wide operating temperature range,wide view angle,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.

Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!".For 8051 microcontroller user,we prepared the detailed tutorial such as interfacing, demo code and Development Kit at the bottom of this page.

These displays are straightforward to use and are a great way to provide a user interface on many projects where you need more info than simple LED indicators or 7-Segment displays can provide since these are full alphanumeric displays with 2 lines of 16 characters each for a total of 32 characters.  For an interactive display, pairing this type of display with a rotary encoder to navigate and select menu items on the display can provide a very nice user interface.

The display is composed of a 16 character x 2 line LCD display with a blue backlight and white characters.  Each of the characters are composed of a 5 x 8 dot matrix for good character representation.  Custom characters can be defined and used with the display.

The backlight has a VO (Display Contrast) input for connecting a potentiometer for adjustment of the contrast of the display for best viewing.  The potentiometer can be somewhere in the 10K-50K range and should connect between 5V and ground.  The wiper output of the potentiometer feeds the VO pin with a variable voltage that sets the contrast.  If this is not adjusted correctly the display may not show any characters or solid blocks may be displayed.

The backlight can go down to about 3.2V before it goes out.  It can be operated off the 3.3V line if a lower brightness is desired for the application.  The backlight can be driven by a logic pin using a transistor if PWM brightness or ON/OFF control is desired

This display incorporates a parallel interface that can operate using an 8-bit (byte) mode or a 4-bit (nibble) mode.  8-bit mode uses data pins D0-D7 and 4-bit mode uses the upper data pins of D4-D7.

In practice, the 4-bit mode is normally used as it saves 4 pins on the MCU and maximizing communication speeds with the display are generally not a concern.  The LiquidCrystal.h library makes the difference between using the two modes transparent to the user.

If it is desirable to minimize the pins used on the MCU even further, check out the version with an I2C interface down below which uses only 2 pins plus power and ground.

Connections to the module are outlined in the program comments.  The MCU data lines used can be changed and redefined in the following line if needed.

A potentiometer is required between 5V and ground to feed the VO line to set the display contrast or else the text may not be visible.  Also be sure to connect 5V and ground to the backlight A / K pins and ground the R/W pin to put the module into write mode

These displays are straightforward to use and are a great way to provide a user interface on many projects where you need more info than simple LED indicators or 7-Segment displays can provide since these are full alphanumeric displays with 2 lines of 16 characters each.  For an interactive display, pairing this type of display with a rotary encoder to navigate and select menu items on the display can provide a very nice user interface.

The display is composed of a 16 character x 2 line LCD display with a blue backlight and white characters.  Each of the characters are composed of a 5 x 8 dot matrix for good character representation.

The backlight has a potentiometer for adjustment of the contrast of the display for best viewing.  If the potentiometer is turned too far in one direction or the other, the display will appear blank or solid squares will appear instead of characters.  If this happens, just fiddle with the adjustment until it gives the best display.

Note:  The non-uniformity in the picture is due to the protective film covering the display playing a trick on the camera.  The display has nice uniformity.

This display incorporates an I2C interface that requires only 2 pins on a MCU to interface with and it has good library support to get up and running fast.   The I2C interface is a daughter board attached to the back of the LCD module.

If you need to adjust I2C address to avoid a conflict, this can be done on the I2C adapter board on the back of the module.  There are 3 address jumper locations marked A0, A1, A2.  Normally these lines are pulled high.  If you bridge these pads, it grounds that address line.  If you were to bridge all 3 to ground, the address would be 0x38 (or  0x20) depending on which version you have.  The range of all possible addresses spans from 0x38 – 0x3F or 0x20 – 0x27

We also offer the raw 16×2 displays without the I2C interface.  Those have a parallel bus interface that requires many pins on the MCU to control.  For most applications it is generally easiest to stick with the I2C interface version like this one.

Note that the I2C address of the module we sell is either 0x3F (63 decimal) or 0x27 (39 decimal) but can be adjusted if needed as explained above.  The address will be printed on the label on the bag.

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.

Now you must have guessed it, Yes 8-bit mode is faster and flawless than 4-bit mode. But the major drawback is that it needs 8 data lines connected to the microcontroller. This will make us run out of I/O pins on our MCU, so 4-bit mode is widely used. No control pins are used to set these modes. It"s just the way of programming that change.

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:

16x2 LCD modules are very commonly used in most embedded projects, the reason being its cheap price, availability, programmer friendly and available educational resources.

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. 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 is shown in the below picture.

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. Hence it will be a hectic task to handle everything with the help of MCU, hence an Interface IC like HD44780is used, which is mounted on the backside of the 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. You can learn how to interface an LCD using the above mentioned links. If you are an advanced programmer and would like to create your own library for interfacing your Microcontroller with this LCD module then you have to understand the HD44780 IC working and commands which can be found its datasheet.

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.