2 line 16 character lcd display datasheet factory

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:

RC1602D is a 2 Line x 16 Character LCD display with module dimension 85.0 x 30.0 mm. Default interface of RC1602D Two Line 16 Character LCD Display module is 6800 with built-in IC ST7066; if you require interface such as SPI or I2C, they’re available as well, but the IC will be replaced with RW1063. Power supply of RC1602D LCD display 16x2 is 5V. Negative voltage version is available for 3V power supply.

Raystar provides various LED backlight combinations for RC1602D 16 character x 2 lines LCD display module, such as yellow-green and white. You can choose module with LED backlight or without it. This RC1602D display LCD 16x2 offers a selection of fonts, including English/Japanese, Europe and Cyrillic (Russian), etc. Feel free to contact us if you need full datasheet or more info of this display LCD 16x2.

The 162D is one of our 16 character x 2 row chip on board (COB) alphanumeric displays. These classic 16x2 LCD modules are available in a multitude of LCD and LED backlight color combinations to achieve the perfect look for your product. Some of our most popular combinations are STN yellow-green LCD with yellow-green LED backlight, STN blue LCD with white LED backlight, and STN grey LCD with either blue, amber or pure green LED backlight.

The Displaytech 162J series is a lineup of 16x2 character LCD modules. These modules have an 80x36 mm outer dimension with 66x16 mm viewing area on the display. The 162J 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 162J series.

Winstar 16x2 Character LCD Display WH1602W is having two pinout interfaces on upper and bottom sides of the LCD module. This 16x2 lcd display has the outline size of 80.0 x 36.0 mm and VA size of 66.0 x 16.0 mm and the maximum thickness is 13.2 mm. WH1602W 16x2 LCD Displays are built-in controller ST7066 or equivalent. It is optional for + 5.0 V or + 3.0 V power supply. The LEDs can be driven by pin 1, pin 2, or pin 15 pin 16 or A/K. This type of module can be operating at temperatures from -20℃ to +70℃; its storage temperatures range from -30℃ to +80℃.

WH1602T is a LCD 16 x 2 display module which including 16 characters by 2 lines. WH1602T module is built in with ST7066 controller or equivalent, 5V power supply default 6800 4/8-bit parallel interface. There are different LED backlights available in various colors including blue, green, yellow-green and red. But, please note this item white LED backlight is not available. For more details, please contact us for this lcd 16x2 datasheet.

Newhaven 16x2 character Liquid Crystal Display shows characters with blue pixels on a gray background when powered on. This transflective LCD Display is visible with ambient light or a backlight while offering a wide operating temperature range from -20 to 70 degrees Celsius. This NHD-0216SZ-FSW-GBW display has an optimal view of 6:00. This display operates at 5V supply voltage and is RoHS compliant.

Adjust the length, position, and pinout of your cables or add additional connectors. Get a cable solution that’s precisely designed to make your connections streamlined and secure.

Easily modify any connectors on your display to meet your application’s requirements. Our engineers are able to perform soldering for pin headers, boxed headers, right angle headers, and any other connectors your display may require.

Choose from a wide selection of interface options or talk to our experts to select the best one for your project. We can incorporate HDMI, USB, SPI, VGA and more into your display to achieve your design goals.

Lcd stands for liquid crystal display. Character and graphical lcd’s are most common among hobbyist and diy electronic circuit/project makers. Since their interface serial/parallel pins are defined so its easy to interface them with many microcontrollers. Many products we see in our daily life have lcd’s with them. They are used to show status of the product or provide interface for inputting or selecting some process. Washing machine, microwave,air conditioners and mat cleaners are few examples of products that have character or graphical lcd’s installed in them. In this tutorial i am going to discuss about the character lcd’s. How they work? their pin out and initialization commands etc.

​Character lcd’s come in many sizes 8×1, 8×2, 10×2, 16×1, 16×2, 16×4, 20×2, 20×4, 24×2, 30×2, 32×2, 40×2 etc .Many multinational companies like Philips, Hitachi, Panasonic make their own custom type of character lcd’s to be used in their products. All character lcd’s performs the same functions(display characters numbers special characters, ascii characters etc).Their programming is also same and they all have same 14 pins (0-13) or 16 pins (0 to 15).​

In an mxn lcd. M denotes number of columns and n represents number of rows. Like if the lcd is denoted by 16×2 it means it has 16 columns and 2 rows. Few examples are given below. 16×2, 8×1 and 8×2 lcd are shown in the picture below. Note the difference in the rows and columns.

On a character lcd a character is generated in a matrix of 5×8 or 5×7. Where 5 represents number of columns and 7/8 represent number of rows. Maximum size of the matrix is 5×8. You can not display character greater then 5×8 dimension matrix. Normally we display a character in 5×7 matrix and left the 8th row for the cursor. If we use the 8th row of the matrix for the character display, then their will be no room for cursor. The picture below shows the 5×8 dot matrix pixels arrangement.

To display character greater than this dimension you have to switch to graphical lcd’s. To learn about graphical lcds here is a good tutorialGraphical Lcd’s Working and Pin out.

The picture above shows the pin out of the character lcd. Almost all the character lcd’s are composed of the same pin out. Lcd’s with total pin count equal to 14 does not have back light control option. They might have back light always on or does not have a back light. 16 total pin count lcd’s have 2 extra A and K pins. A means anode and K cathode, use these pins to control the back light of lcd.

Character Lcd’s have a controller build in to them named HD44780. We actually talk with this controller in order to display character on the lcd screen. HD44780 must be properly handled and initialized before sending any data to it. HD44780 has some registers which are initialized and  manipulated for character displaying on the lcd. These registers are selected by the pins of character lcd.

When we send commands to lcd these commands go to Command register and are processed their.Commands with their full description are given in the picture below.When Rs=0 command register is selected.

When we select the register Rs(Command and Data) and set Rw(read –  write) and placed the raw value on 8-data lines, now its time to execute the instruction. By instruction i mean the 8-bit data or 8-bit command present on Data lines of lcd. For sending the final data/command present on the data lines we use this enable pin.Usually it remains en=0 and when we want to execute the instruction we make it high en=1 for some mills seconds. After this we again make it ground en=0.

To set lcd display sharpness use this pin. Best way is to use variable resistor such as potentiometer a variable current makes the character contrast sharp. Connect the output of the potentiometer to this pin. Rotate the potentiometer knob forward and backward to adjust the lcd contrast.

NOTE: we can not send an integer, float, long, double type data to lcd because lcd is designed to display a character only. Only the characters that are supported by the HD44780 controller. See the HD44780 data sheet to find out what characters can we display on lcd.  The 8 data pins on lcd carries only  Ascii 8-bit code of the character to lcd. How ever we can convert our data in character type array and send one by one our data to lcd. Data can be sent using lcd in 8-bit or 4-bit mode. If 4-bit mode is used, two nibbles of data (First high four bits and then low four bits) are sent to complete a full eight-bit transfer. 8-bit mode is best used when speed is required in an application and at least ten I/O pins are available. 4-bit mode requires a minimum of seven bits. In 4-bit mode, only the top 4 data pins (4-7) are used.

Command 0x30 means we are setting 8-bit mode lcd having 1 line and we are initializing it to be 5×7 character display.Now this 5×7 is some thing which every one should know what it stands for. usually the characters are displayed on lcd in 5×8 matrices form. where 5 is total number of columns and is number of rows.Thus the above 0x30 command initializes the lcd to display character in 5 columns and 7 rows the last row we usually leave for our cursor to move or blink etc.

The command 0x80 initialize the cursor to the first position means first line first matrix(start point) now if we add 1 in 0x80+1=0x81 the cursor moves to second matrix.

NOTE:You can send commands in hexadecimal or decimal form which one do you like the result is same because the microcontroller translate the command in 8-bit binary value and sends it to the lcd.

Character Lcd’s can be used in 4-bit and 8-bit mode.Before you send commands and data to your lcd. Lcd must first be initialized. This initialization is very important for lcd that are made by Hitachibecause they use HD44780 driver chip sets. Hd44780 Chip set  first has to be initialized before using it. If you don’t initialize it properly you will see nothing on your lcd.

In 4-bit mode the high nibble is sent first before the low nibble and the En pin is toggled eachtime four bits is sent to the LCD. To initialize in 4-bit mode:

To learn more about the difference between 4-bit and 8-bit character lcd mode and operation with demo example visit the tutorial link given below. Demo examples are very easy to understand and one can make changes easily in the code. Please also give us your feed back on the post.

Arduino LCD Display Modules are mostly used in embedded projects, because of its affordability and availability. The 16×2 Display LCD Module represents 16 Columns and 2 Rows. There are so many other combinations like 8×1, 8×2, 10×2, 16×1 and so on. However, 16 x 2 display LCD is most commonly used.

Arduino 16×2 LCD Display Module has 16 characters by a 2-line LCD display screen with an I2C interface. It displays 2 lines of 16 characters, white characters are displayed on a blue background.

This I2C 16×2 Arduino LCD Display Module uses the I2C communication interface. This means that we can use 4 pins for the display that is: VCC, GND, SDA, SCL. Thus, it gives us the advantage of saving 4 digital / analog pins on Arduino.