arduino lcd display hello world quotation

Hello friend welcome to “Techno-E-Solution” in this article we are going to learn how to connect LCD display with Arduino Uno and print "Hello World!" on LCD using Arduino Uno. The 16x2 LCD is most popular LCD in electronics projects. In upcoming project we need this display in our project so it"s the beginners level tutorial learn this tutorial with fun. So friends let"s get started..........

In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to set up an LCD on an Arduino and show you all the different ways you can program it. I’ll show you how to print text, scroll text, make custom characters, blink text, and position text. They’re great for any project that outputs data, and they can make your project a lot more interesting and interactive.

The display I’m using is a 16×2 LCD display that I bought for about $5. You may be wondering why it’s called a 16×2 LCD. The part 16×2 means that the LCD has 2 lines, and can display 16 characters per line. Therefore, a 16×2 LCD screen can display up to 32 characters at once. It is possible to display more than 32 characters with scrolling though.

The code in this article is written for LCD’s that use the standard Hitachi HD44780 driver. If your LCD has 16 pins, then it probably has the Hitachi HD44780 driver. These displays can be wired in either 4 bit mode or 8 bit mode. Wiring the LCD in 4 bit mode is usually preferred since it uses four less wires than 8 bit mode. In practice, there isn’t a noticeable difference in performance between the two modes. In this tutorial, I’ll connect the LCD in 4 bit mode.

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Here’s a diagram of the pins on the LCD I’m using. The connections from each pin to the Arduino will be the same, but your pins might be arranged differently on the LCD. Be sure to check the datasheet or look for labels on your particular LCD:

Also, you might need to solder a 16 pin header to your LCD before connecting it to a breadboard. Follow the diagram below to wire the LCD to your Arduino:

All of the code below uses the LiquidCrystal library that comes pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. A library is a set of functions that can be easily added to a program in an abbreviated format.

In order to use a library, it needs be included in the program. Line 1 in the code below does this with the command #include . When you include a library in a program, all of the code in the library gets uploaded to the Arduino along with the code for your program.

Now we’re ready to get into the programming! I’ll go over more interesting things you can do in a moment, but for now lets just run a simple test program. This program will print “hello, world!” to the screen. Enter this code into the Arduino IDE and upload it to the board:

There are 19 different functions in the LiquidCrystal library available for us to use. These functions do things like change the position of the text, move text across the screen, or make the display turn on or off. What follows is a short description of each function, and how to use it in a program.

TheLiquidCrystal() function sets the pins the Arduino uses to connect to the LCD. You can use any of the Arduino’s digital pins to control the LCD. Just put the Arduino pin numbers inside the parentheses in this order:

This function sets the dimensions of the LCD. It needs to be placed before any other LiquidCrystal function in the void setup() section of the program. The number of rows and columns are specified as lcd.begin(columns, rows). For a 16×2 LCD, you would use lcd.begin(16, 2), and for a 20×4 LCD you would use lcd.begin(20, 4).

This function clears any text or data already displayed on the LCD. If you use lcd.clear() with lcd.print() and the delay() function in the void loop() section, you can make a simple blinking text program:

This function places the cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen, and prints any subsequent text from that position. For example, this code replaces the first three letters of “hello world!” with X’s:

Similar, but more useful than lcd.home() is lcd.setCursor(). This function places the cursor (and any printed text) at any position on the screen. It can be used in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.

The cursor position is defined with lcd.setCursor(column, row). The column and row coordinates start from zero (0-15 and 0-1 respectively). For example, using lcd.setCursor(2, 1) in the void setup() section of the “hello, world!” program above prints “hello, world!” to the lower line and shifts it to the right two spaces:

You can use this function to write different types of data to the LCD, for example the reading from a temperature sensor, or the coordinates from a GPS module. You can also use it to print custom characters that you create yourself (more on this below). Use lcd.write() in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.

The function lcd.noCursor() turns the cursor off. lcd.cursor() and lcd.noCursor() can be used together in the void loop() section to make a blinking cursor similar to what you see in many text input fields:

Cursors can be placed anywhere on the screen with the lcd.setCursor() function. This code places a blinking cursor directly below the exclamation point in “hello, world!”:

This function creates a block style cursor that blinks on and off at approximately 500 milliseconds per cycle. Use it in the void loop() section. The function lcd.noBlink() disables the blinking block cursor.

This function turns on any text or cursors that have been printed to the LCD screen. The function lcd.noDisplay() turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD, without clearing it from the LCD’s memory.

These two functions can be used together in the void loop() section to create a blinking text effect. This code will make the “hello, world!” text blink on and off:

This function takes anything printed to the LCD and moves it to the left. It should be used in the void loop() section with a delay command following it. The function will move the text 40 spaces to the left before it loops back to the first character. This code moves the “hello, world!” text to the left, at a rate of one second per character:

Like the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, the text can be up to 40 characters in length before repeating. At first glance, this function seems less useful than the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, but it can be very useful for creating animations with custom characters.

lcd.noAutoscroll() turns the lcd.autoscroll() function off. Use this function before or after lcd.autoscroll() in the void loop() section to create sequences of scrolling text or animations.

This function sets the direction that text is printed to the screen. The default mode is from left to right using the command lcd.leftToRight(), but you may find some cases where it’s useful to output text in the reverse direction:

This code prints the “hello, world!” text as “!dlrow ,olleh”. Unless you specify the placement of the cursor with lcd.setCursor(), the text will print from the (0, 1) position and only the first character of the string will be visible.

This command allows you to create your own custom characters. Each character of a 16×2 LCD has a 5 pixel width and an 8 pixel height. Up to 8 different custom characters can be defined in a single program. To design your own characters, you’ll need to make a binary matrix of your custom character from an LCD character generator or map it yourself. This code creates a degree symbol (°):

(1) If the module has a backlight then get it working properly. This involves only pins 15 and 16 on most LCD modules. Make sure to use a current limiting resistor if there is none on the LCD module.

(2) Get the power and contrast working properly. This involves only pins 1, 2, and 3 on most LCD modules. You should be able to just barely see blocks on one row of a two row display and on two rows of a four row display.

NOTE: The Arduino has not been used yet, except as a possible source for the power needed for the first two steps. Do not try to go any further until this is working. If you don"t see the blocks then no amount of program code will help.

If you get a display but it is garbled or has some other problems then try again with a "static" sketch, one that displays a simple message on the top row of the display and then stops. All of your code should be in setup() and loop() should be empty between the brackets.

If you are still having problems then we need to see a photograph of your setup that clearly and unambiguously shows all of the connections between your Arduino and your LCD module. We also need a copy/paste version of the code that you are actually using, not a link to the code that you think you are using.

This tutorial includes everything you need to know about controlling a character LCD with Arduino. I have included a wiring diagram and many example codes. These displays are great for displaying sensor data or text and they are also fairly cheap.

The first part of this article covers the basics of displaying text and numbers. In the second half, I will go into more detail on how to display custom characters and how you can use the other functions of the LiquidCrystal Arduino library.

As you will see, you need quite a lot of connections to control these displays. I therefore like to use them with an I2C interface module mounted on the back. With this I2C module, you only need two connections to control the LCD. Check out the tutorial below if you want to use an I2C module as well:

These LCDs are available in many different sizes (16×2 1602, 20×4 2004, 16×1 etc.), but they all use the same HD44780 parallel interface LCD controller chip from Hitachi. This means you can easily swap them. You will only need to change the size specifications in your Arduino code.

For more information, you can check out the datasheets below. The 16×2 and 20×4 datasheets include the dimensions of the LCD and in the HD44780 datasheet you can find more information about the Hitachi LCD driver.

Most LCDs have a built-in series resistor for the LED backlight. You should find it on the back of the LCD connected to pin 15 (Anode). If your display doesn’t include a resistor, you will need to add one between 5 V and pin 15. It should be safe to use a 220Ω resistor, but this value might make your display a bit dim. You can check the datasheet for the maximum current rating of the backlight and use this to select an appropriate resistor value.

After you have wired up the LCD, you will need to adjust the contrast of the display. This is done by turning the 10 kΩ potentiometer clockwise or counterclockwise.

Plug in the USB connector of the Arduino to power the LCD. You should see the backlight light up. Now rotate the potentiometer until one (16×2 LCD) or 2 rows (20×4 LCD) of rectangles appear.

In order to control the LCD and display characters, you will need to add a few extra connections. Check the wiring diagram below and the pinout table from the introduction of this article.

We will be using the LCD in 4-bit mode, this means you don’t need to connect anything to D0-D3. The R/W pin is connected to ground, this will pull the pin LOW and set the LCD to WRITE mode.

To control the LCD we will be using the LiquidCrystal library. This library should come pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. You can find it by going to Sketch > Include Library > LiquidCrystal.

The example code below shows you how to display a message on the LCD. Next, I will show you how the code works and how you can use the other functions of the LiquidCrystal library.

After including the library, the next step is to create a new instance of the LiquidCrystal class. The is done with the function LiquidCrystal(rs, enable, d4, d5, d6, d7). As parameters we use the Arduino pins to which we connected the display. Note that we have called the display ‘lcd’. You can give it a different name if you want like ‘menu_display’. You will need to change ‘lcd’ to the new name in the rest of the sketch.

In the loop() the cursor is set to the third column and first row of the LCD with lcd.setCursor(2,0). Note that counting starts at 0, and the first argument specifies the column. If you do not specify the cursor position, the text will be printed at the default home position (0,0) if the display is empty, or behind the last printed character.

Next, the string ‘Hello World!’ is printed with lcd.print("Hello World!"). Note that you need to place quotation marks (” “) around the text. When you want to print numbers or variables, no quotation marks are necessary.

The LiquidCrystal Arduino library has many other built-in functions which you might find useful. You can find an overview of them below with explanation and some code snippets.

Clears the LCD screen and positions the cursor in the upper-left corner (first row and first column) of the display. You can use this function to display different words in a loop.

This function turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD. The text/data is not cleared from the LCD memory. This means it will be shown again when the function display() is called.

Scrolls the contents of the display (text and cursor) one space to the left. You can use this function in the loop section of the code in combination with delay(500), to create a scrolling text animation.

This function turns on automatic scrolling of the LCD. This causes each character output to the display to push previous characters over by one space. If the current text direction is left-to-right (the default), the display scrolls to the left; if the current direction is right-to-left, the display scrolls to the right. This has the effect of outputting each new character to the same location on the LCD.

The following example sketch enables automatic scrolling and prints the character 0 to 9 at the position (16,0) of the LCD. Change this to (20,0) for a 20×4 LCD.

With the function createChar() it is possible to create and display custom characters on the LCD. This is especially useful if you want to display a character that is not part of the standard ASCII character set.

Technical info: LCDs that are based on the Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller have two types of memories: CGROM and CGRAM (Character Generator ROM and RAM). CGROM generates all the 5 x 8 dot character patterns from the standard 8-bit character codes. CGRAM can generate user-defined character patterns.

/* Example sketch to create and display custom characters on character LCD with Arduino and LiquidCrystal library. For more info see www.www.makerguides.com */

After including the library and creating the LCD object, the custom character arrays are defined. Each array consists of 8 bytes, 1 byte for each row. In this example 8 custom characters are created.

In this article I have shown you how to use an alphanumeric LCD with Arduino. I hope you found it useful and informative. If you did, please share it with a friend that also likes electronics and making things!

I would love to know what projects you plan on building (or have already built) with these LCDs. If you have any questions, suggestions, or if you think that things are missing in this tutorial, please leave a comment down below.

The Serial Monitor is a convenient way to view data from an Arduino, but what if you want to make your project portable and view sensor values without access to a computer? Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are excellent for displaying a string of words or sensor data.

This guide will help you in getting your 16×2 character LCD up and running, as well as other character LCDs (such as 16×4, 16×1, 20×4, etc.) that use Hitachi’s LCD controller chip, the HD44780.

As the name suggests, these LCDs are ideal for displaying only characters. A 16×2 character LCD, for example, can display 32 ASCII characters across two rows.

Character LCDs are available in a variety of sizes and colors, including 16×1, 16×4, 20×4, white text on a blue background, black text on a green background, and many more.

One advantage of using any of these displays in your project is that they are “swappable,” meaning that you can easily replace them with another LCD of a different size or color. Your code will need to be tweaked slightly, but the wiring will remain the same!

Before we get into the hookup and example code, let’s check out the pinout. A standard character LCD has 16 pins (except for an RGB LCD, which has 18 pins).

Vo (LCD Contrast) pin controls the contrast of the LCD. Using a simple voltage divider network and a potentiometer, we can make precise contrast adjustments.

RS (Register Select) pin is used to separate the commands (such as setting the cursor to a specific location, clearing the screen, etc.) from the data. The RS pin is set to LOW when sending commands to the LCD and HIGH when sending data.

R/W (Read/Write) pin allows you to read data from or write data to the LCD. Since the LCD is only used as an output device, this pin is typically held low. This forces the LCD into WRITE mode.

E (Enable) pin is used to enable the display. When this pin is set to LOW, the LCD ignores activity on the R/W, RS, and data bus lines; when it is set to HIGH, the LCD processes the incoming data.

D0-D7 (Data Bus) pins carry the 8 bit data we send to the display. To see an uppercase ‘A’ character on the display, for example, we set these pins to 0100 0001 (as per the ASCII table).

The LCD has two separate power connections: one for the LCD (pins 1 and 2) and one for the LCD backlight (pins 15 and 16). Connect LCD pins 1 and 16 to GND and 2 and 15 to 5V.

Depending on the manufacturer, some LCDs include a current-limiting resistor for the backlight. It is located on the back of the LCD, close to pin 15. If your LCD does not contain this resistor or if you are unsure whether it does, you must add one between 5V and pin 15. It should be safe to use a 220 ohm resistor, although a value this high may make the backlight slightly dim. For better results, check the datasheet for the maximum backlight current and choose an appropriate resistor value.

Let’s connect a potentiometer to the display. This is necessary to fine-tune the contrast of the display for best visibility. Connect one side of the 10K potentiometer to 5V and the other to Ground, and connect the middle of the pot (wiper) to LCD pin 3.

That’s all. Now, turn on the Arduino. You will see the backlight light up. As you turn the potentiometer knob, you will see the first row of rectangles appear. If you have made it this far, Congratulations! Your LCD is functioning properly.

We know that data is sent to the LCD via eight data pins. However, HD44780-based LCDs are designed so that we can communicate with them using only four data pins (in 4-bit mode) rather than eight (in 8-bit mode). This helps us save 4 I/O pins!

The sketch begins by including the LiquidCrystal library. This library comes with the Arduino IDE and allows you to control Hitachi HD44780 driver-based LCD displays.

Next, an object of the LiquidCrystal class is created by passing as parameters the pin numbers to which the LCD’s RS, EN, and four data pins are connected.

In the setup, two functions are called. The first function is begin(). It is used to initialize the interface to the LCD screen and to specify the dimensions (columns and rows) of the display. If you’re using a 16×2 character LCD, you should pass 16 and 2; if you’re using a 20×4 LCD, you should pass 20 and 4.

In the loop, the print() function is used to print “Hello world!” to the LCD. Please remember to use quotation marks " " around the text. There is no need for quotation marks when printing numbers or variables.

The function setCursor() is then called to move the cursor to the second row. The cursor position specifies where you want the new text to appear on the LCD. It is assumed that the upper left corner is col=0 and row=0.

There are many useful functions you can use with LiquidCrystal Object. Some of them are listed below:lcd.home() function positions 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 the above function, use this inside a for loop for continuous scrolling.

lcd.display() function turns on the LCD display, after it’s been turned off with noDisplay(). This will restore the text (and cursor) that was on the display.

If you find the default font uninteresting, you can create your own custom characters (glyphs) and symbols. They come in handy when you need to display a character that isn’t in the standard ASCII character set.

The CGROM stores the font that appears on a character LCD. When you instruct a character LCD to display the letter ‘A’, it needs to know which dots to turn on so that we see an ‘A’. This data is stored in the CGROM.

CGRAM is an additional memory for storing user-defined characters. This RAM is limited to 64 bytes. Therefore, for a 5×8 pixel LCD, only 8 user-defined characters can be stored in CGRAM, whereas for a 5×10 pixel LCD, only 4 can be stored.

Creating custom characters has never been easier! We’ve developed a small application called Custom Character Generator. Can you see the blue grid below? You can click on any pixel to set or clear that pixel. And as you click, the code for the character is generated next to the grid. This code can be used directly in your Arduino sketch.

After including the library and creating the LCD object, custom character arrays are defined. The array consists of 8 bytes, with each byte representing a row in a 5×8 matrix.

Using an LCD display can give you an advantage in your Arduino project. This LCD can show some information about your project. For example, you can create a distance measurement system that displays the distance on LCD, or you can create a simple project that only shows some message on LCD.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to use a 16×2 Character LCD display with Arduino. I will show you how you can print text, blink text, scroll text, display custom characters.

Character LCDs are available in many different sizes (16×2 or 1602, 20×4 or 2004, etc.) but most of them use the same HD44780 parallel interface LCD controller from Hitachi. So you can easily modify the code a little bit and it would work for 20×4 LCD.

RS : Register select pin. Basic 16×2 character LCD has two types of register, command register, and data register. Logic 0 at pin RS selects command register and Logic 1 at pin RS selects data register. If we select the data register, input through the data line (D0-D7) will be treated as data to show in the display and when we select command register input will be treated as a command.

LED+/A & LED-/K : These two pins are for controlling the backlight of the LCD. Connect a 5v power supply to this pin. Or if you want to control the brightness you can connect a variable resistor to this pin.

Then you have four data pins D4 to D7. I connect those pins to Arduino digital pin no 4, 5, 6, 7 respectively. We are using the 4-bit mode so you don’t need to connect anything to pins D0 to D3.

Note :-If you want to use the 8-bit mode simply connect the remaining four data pins i.e D0 to D3with four Arduino digital pins and change the code accordingly.

We are using Arduino LiquidCrystal Library to control our LCD. It is a great library to control LCD with an Arduino. And it comes pre-installed with Arduino IDE.

Now we are ready to get into programming. Before we get into detailed programming first run a simple program given below. It will print “Hello,Welcome to Circuit Geeks” on the screen.

Then in the void loop() section, we set the cursor at 0th column 0th row position by lcd.setCursor(0, 0); this line and print Hello,Welcome totothefirst line by lcd.print("Hello,Welcome to"); this line of code.

Then set the cursor at the second line i.e 0th column 1st row by lcd.setCursor(0, 1); this line and print Circuit Geeksbylcd.print("Circuit Geeks"); this line of code.

So you got the basic idea of how the code works with Arduino and LCD display. Now we will discuss about various functions available in LiquidCrystal Library. There are 20 different functions available in the Arduino LiquidCrystal library. We will discuss one by one with an example.

Here we use Arduino pin 2 to connect with LCD’s RS pin, pin 3 to connect with Enable pin, and pin 4, 5, 6, 7 to connect with pin D4, D5, D6, and D7 respectively.

If you create a variable with a different name then use it throughout the program. Let’s say you create a variable named “mylcd”, then you have to use it like this mylcd.begin();, mylcd.setCursor();, mylcd.print();

The basic syntax for this function is lcd.begin(columns, rows);. For the 16×2 LCD we would use lcd.begin(16, 2);, and for the 20×4 LCD we would use lcd.begin(20, 4);.

This function is used to clear the LCD screen and set the cursor at the upper left corner. The Basic syntax for this function is lcd.clear(); where ‘lcd’ is a variable of type LiquidCrystal.

This function is very useful for displaying long sentences. For example, if I want to display “Hello, welcome to CircuitGeeks. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks”, I can’t show it at once on a 16×2 display. But we can display it in three instances using this function.

First, we print “Hello,welcome to CircuitGeeks.” for one second then clear the display and print “Follow us on Facebook,Twitter” for one second and “and Instagram. Thanks” for one second.

This function is used to set the cursor at the home location i.e upper left corner of the LCD and use that location to output subsequent text to the display.

For example, if you want to display any text at the bottom right half of the display, simply place the cursor at the (7,1) position (columns, rows) by using this line lcd.setCursor(7,1);

Note that the columns and row count start from 0. So (0,0) would be the first place of the display and (15,1) would be the last place for a 16×2 display.

lcd.cursor() turns the cursor on and lcd.noCursor() turns the cursor off. Using these two functions we can create a blinking cursor.#include

This function scrolls the contents of the LCD one step to the left. If we use this function within the loop() section followed by a delay(), we can achieve a moving text animation.#include

This function prints the text or number from left to right. By default LCD prints texts from left to right. So you don’t need to use it normally. When you change the orientation by rightToleft() function, you can get back to the previous state (default state) by leftToRight() function.#include

16×2 LCD with HD44780 chipset (or a compatible) has a 64 bytes internal ​CG-RAM(character generated ram) where we can place our custom character. We can place 8 characters of size 5×8 at a time in CG-RAM.

To create a custom character first we need to create a byte array for that character. Then place it into LCD’s CG-RAM memory using createChar(); function and print it using write(); function.

Basic syntax for createChar() is lcd.createChar(num, data); where num denotes the number of the custom character. And data means the character’s pixel data.

In the setup() section, we use lcd.createChar(0, smiley); to put the byte array data to the LCD’s CG-RAM. In the loop() section, we use the write() function to write that custom character to the display. Simply put the character number inside the write() function like lcd.write(byte(0)); to print that custom character.

In this tutorial, you have learned how to display different types of text, number, characters as well as custom characters on the display. but one thing you have noticed is that the LCD consumes a lot of I/O pins on the Arduino. To reduce the pin consumption you can use an Arduino I2C LCD display in your project. In my Arduino I2C LCD tutorial, I have covered how to connect an I2C LCD display with Arduino.

having trouble getting the simple liquid crystal display "hello world" to work. IDE 1.7.11. Sketch from File>Examples>LiquidCrystal...file shown below. Photo of my setup attached. After successful compiling and uploading all I see is about 3-4 random characters. So, after deleting the lcd.begin and lcd.print statements from void setup(), milliseconds/1000 is displayed (upper row, left) and counting upwards. So, the display appears to be functioning. I switched to a different lcd with the same result. I am seeing similar results from the other basic lcd sketches in that library. Suggestions welcome.

Most of the time we use the serial plotter of the Arduino IDE to visualize our solutions or output of a sketch. This is great and a big time saver when you are doing prototyping. But there is a time when your system will go live. If you are for example only sending data from sensors to a database on a Raspberry Pi, than you are able to view the output remote from your PC by connecting to the database. But there are use cases like an indoor weather station, where you want to see the output like the current temperature directly and not when you are on you PC.

Than displays are the way to go. There are different kinds of displays like 7 Segment LED display, 4 Digit 7 Segment display, 8×8 Dot Matrix display, OLED display or the easiest and cheapest version the liquid crystal display (LCD).

Most LCD displays have either 2 rows with 16 characters per row or 4 rows with 20 characters per row. There are LCD screen with and without I2C module. I highly suggest the modules with I2C because the connection to the board is very easy and there are only 2 instead of 6 pins used. But we will cover the LCD screen with and without I2C module in this article.

The LCD display has an operating voltage between 4.7V and 5.3V with a current consumption of 1mA without backlight and 120mA with full backlight. There are version with a green and also with a blue backlight color. Each character of the display is build by a 5×8 pixel box and is therefore able to display custom generated characters. Because each character is build by (5×8=40) 40 pixels a 16×2 LCD display will have 16x2x40= 1280 pixels in total. The LCD module is able to operate in 8-bit and 4-bit mode. The difference between the 4-bit and 8-bit mode are the following:

If we use the LCD display version without I2C connection we have to add the potentiometer manually to control the contrast of the screen. The following picture shows the pinout of the LCD screen.

Also I added a table how to connect the LCD display with the Arduino Uno and the NodeMCU with a description of the LCD pin. To make it as easy as possible for you to connect your microcontroller to the display, you find the corresponding fritzing connection picture for the Arduino Uno and the NodeMCU in this chapter.

3VEEPotentiometerPotentiometerAdjusts the contrast of the display If this pin is grounded, you get the maximum contrast. We will connect the VEE pin to the potentiometer output to adjust the contrast by changing the resistance of the potentiometer.

4RSD12D2Select command register to low when we are sending commands to the LCD like set the cursor to a specific location, clear the display or turn off the display.

8Data Pin 1 (d1)Data pins 0 to 7 forms an 8-bit data line. The Data Pins are connection to the Digital I/O pins of the microcontroller to send 8-bit data. These LCD’s can also operate on 4-bit mode in such case Data pin 4,5,6 and 7 will be left free.

Of cause we want to try the connection between the microcontroller and the LCD display. Therefore you find an example sketch in the Arduino IDE. The following section shows the code for the sketch and a picture of the running example, more or less because it is hard to make a picture of the screen ;-). The example prints “hello, world!” in the first line of the display and counts every second in the second row. We use the connection we described before for this example.

Looks very complicated to print data onto the LCD screen. But don’t worry like in most cases if it starts to get complicated, there is a library to make the word for us. This is also the case for the LCD display without I2C connection.

Therefore the next step is to install the library “LiquidCrystal”. You find here an article how to install an external library via the Arduino IDE. After you installed the library successful you can include the library via: #include < LiquidCrystal.h>.

Like I told you, I would suggest the LCD modules with I2C because you only need 2 instead of 6 pins for the connection between display and microcontroller board. In the case you use the I2C communication between LCD and microcontroller, you need to know the I2C HEX address of the LCD. In this article I give you a step by step instruction how to find out the I2C HEX address of a device. There is also an article about the I2C communication protocol in detail.

The following picture shows how to connect an I2C LCD display with an Arduino Uno. We will use exact this connection for all of the examples in this article.

To use the I2C LCD display we have to install the required library “LiquidCrystal_I2C” by Frank de Brabander. You find here an article how to install an external library via the Arduino IDE. After you installed the library successful you can include the library via: #include < LiquidCrystal_I2C.h>.

The LiquidCrystal library has 20 build in functions which are very handy when you want to work with the LCD display. In the following part of this article we go over all functions with a description as well as an example sketch and a short video that you can see what the function is doing.

LiquidCrystal_I2C()This function creates a variable of the type LiquidCrystal. The parameters of the function define the connection between the LCD display and the Arduino. You can use any of the Arduino digital pins to control the display. The order of the parameters is the following: LiquidCrystal(RS, R/W, Enable, d0, d1, d2, d3, d4, d5, d6, d7)

If you are using an LCD display with the I2C connection you do not define the connected pins because you do not connected to single pins but you define the HEX address and the display size: LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x27, 20, 4);

xlcd.begin()The lcd.begin(cols, rows) function has to be called to define the kind of LCD display with the number of columns and rows. The function has to be called in the void setup() part of your sketch. For the 16x2 display you write lcd.begin(16,2) and for the 20x4 lcd.begin(20,4).

xxlcd.clear()The clear function clears any data on the LCD screen and positions the cursor in the upper-left corner. You can place this function in the setup function of your sketch to make sure that nothing is displayed on the display when you start your program.

xxlcd.setCursor()If you want to write text to your LCD display, you have to define the starting position of the character you want to print onto the LCD with function lcd.setCursor(col, row). Although you have to define the row the character should be displayed.

xxlcd.print()This function displays different data types: char, byte, int, long, or string. A string has to be in between quotation marks („“). Numbers can be printed without the quotation marks. Numbers can also be printed in different number systems lcd.print(data, BASE) with BIN for binary (base 2), DEC for decimal (base 10), OCT for octal (base 8), HEX for hexadecimal (base 16).

xlcd.println()This function displays also different data types: char, byte, int, long, or string like the function lcd.print() but lcd.println() prints always a newline to output stream.

xxlcd.display() / lcd.noDisplay()This function turn on and off any text or cursor on the display but does not delete the information from the memory. Therefore it is possible to turn the display on and off with this function.

xxlcd.scrollDisplayLeft() / lcd.scrollDisplayRight()This function scrolls the contents of the display (text and cursor) a one position to the left or to the right. After 40 spaces the function will loops back to the first character. With this function in the loop part of your sketch you can build a scrolling text function.

Scrolling text if you want to print more than 16 or 20 characters in one line, than the scrolling text function is very handy. First the substring with the maximum of characters per line is printed, moving the start column from the right to the left on the LCD screen. Than the first character is dropped and the next character is printed to the substring. This process repeats until the full string is displayed onto the screen.

xxlcd.autoscroll() / lcd.noAutoscroll()The autoscroll function turn on or off the functionality that each character is shifted by one position. The function can be used like the scrollDisplayLeft / scrollDisplayRight function.

xxlcd. leftToRight() / lcd.rightToLeft()The leftToRight and rightToLeft functions changes the direction for text written to the LCD. The default mode is from left to right which you do not have to define at the start of the sketch.

xxlcd.createChar()There is the possibility to create custom characters with the createChar function. How to create the custom characters is described in the following chapter of this article as well as an example.

xlcd.backlight()The backlight function is useful if you do not want to turn off the whole display (see lcd.display()) and therefore only switch on and off the backlight. But before you can use this function you have to define the backlight pin with the function setBacklightPin(pin, polarity).

xlcd.moveCursorLeft() / lcd.moveCursorRight()This function let you move the curser to the left and to the right. To use this function useful you have to combine it with lcd.setCursor() because otherwise there is not cursor to move left or right. For our example we also use the function lcd.cursor() to make the cursor visible.

xlcd.on() / lcd.off()This function switches the LCD display on and off. It will switch on/off the LCD controller and the backlight. This method has the same effect of calling display/noDisplay and backlight/noBacklight.

Show or hide a cursor (“_”) that is useful when you create a menu as navigation bar from the left to the right or from the top to the bottom, depending on a horizontal of vertical menu bar. If you are interested how to create a basic menu with the ESP or Arduino microcontroller in combination with the display, you find here a tutorial.

The following code shows you the Arduino program to use all three LCD display functions of the library divided into three separate functions. Also the video after the program shows the functions in action.

The creation of custom characters is very easy if you use the previous mentioned libraries. The LiquidCrystal and also the LiquidCrystal_I2C library have the function “lcd.createChar()” to create a custom character out of the 5×8 pixels of one character. To design your own characters, you need to make a binary matrix of your custom character from an LCD character generator or map it yourself. This code creates a wiggling man.

In the section of the LCD display pinout without I2C we saw that if we set the RS pin to how, that we are able to send commands to the LCD. These commands are send by the data pins and represented by the following table as HEX code.

In a number of applications there is need to display text or characters, for example in calculators, digital clocks and other devices. This is where a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) comes in handy. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to interface a 16×2 LCD with Arduino.

LCD is short for Liquid Crystal Display which means this display uses liquid crystals to produce a visible image. When current is applied to these crystals, they turn opaque and block the backlight behind the screen and as a result that particular area will become dark compared to other. And that’s how characters are displayed on the screen.

Most of the common LCDs with 16 pins use the Hitachi HD44780 driver which is a parallel interface LCD controller chip. In this case we are using a 16×2 LCD which means it has 2 rows and 16 columns. Therefore this LCD can display 32 ASCII characters although more characters can be displayed by scrolling.

The LCDs come in other sizes like 16×1, 16×4, 20×4 but the code for running these screens remains the same. The LCD screen is made of pixel rectangles for displaying the characters. Each of these rectangles is made up of grids of 5×8 pixels as illustrated in the diagram below.

V0: controls the contrast and brightness of the LCD. Using a simple voltage divider with a potentiometer, we can make fine adjustments to the contrast.

RS(Register Select): this pin is used to differentiate commands from data. When RS pin is set to LOW, then we are sending commands to the LCD and when RS pin is set on HIGH we are sending data/characters to the LCD.

RW(Read/Write): This pin is for determining whether you are reading or writing data from the LCD. In this case the LCD is being used as an OUTPUT device therefore we need to keep this pin LOW to keep it in the WRITE mode.

E(Enable): Used for enabling the display. When this pin is set to LOW, the LCD does not care what is happening with R/W, RS, and the data bus lines. When this pin is set to HIGH, the LCD is processing the incoming data. When we need to execute an instruction, this pin is set as HIGH for a few milliseconds then back to LOW.

This display can be wired in either 4 bit mode or 8 bit mode. In most cases we use the 4 bit mode since it uses less I/O pins than the 8 bit mode. However the 8-bit mode is faster in transmitting data because all the data is written at once unlike the 4-bit mode where the data is split into two packets before writing hence needing 2 write operations thereby taking more time.

We will use just 6 digital input pins from the Arduino Board. The LCD’s registers from D4 to D7 will be connected to Arduino’s digital pins from 4 to 7. The Enable pin will be connected to pin number 2 and the RS pin will be connected to pin number 1.

To control the LCD with Arduino we need to install the LiquidCrystal.h library which contains all the functions for controlling data transmission to the display. This library usually comes pre-installed in the Arduino IDE but can also be got from the Arduino community website.

LiquidCrystal(): Used for creating an LCD object and the parameters of this object should be the numbers of the digital input pins for controlling the LCD. The syntax is LiquidCrystal(RS, Enable, D4, D5, D6, D7).

lcd.begin(): For setting the dimensions of the LCD. The number of rows and columns are specified as lcd.begin(columns, rows). For a 16×2 LCD, you would use lcd.begin(16,2)

lcd.Cursor(): This function creates a visible cursor. The cursor is a horizontal line placed below the next character to be printed to the LCD. To turn the cursor off we use the lcd.noCursor() function.

lcd.blink(): This function is used for displaying a blinking cursor. Use it in the void loop() section. The lcd.noBlink() functions disables the blinking cursor.

lcd.setCursor(): Place the cursor or any printed text at any position on the screen. This function’s syntax is lcd.setCursor(column, row) where the column and row coordinates are in the range 0 to 15 and 0 to 1 respectively.

lcd.print(): For printing text on the LCD. To print letters and words, place quotation marks (” “) around the text. For example, to print hello, world!, use lcd.print(“hello, world!”). To print numbers, no quotation marks are necessary. For example, to print 123456789, use lcd.print(123456789).

Sometimes there is a need to display messages with more than 16 characters on the LCD screen and in that case we need to apply some form of scrolling effect to be able to display the whole text message. The LiquidCrystal library has functions to necessitate this and these include:

lcd.noAutoscroll(): This is the opposite of the lcd.autoscroll() function and is normally used before or after lcd.autoscroll() to create sequences of scrolling text or animations.

lcd.scrollDisplayLeft(): This function moves the text printed on the LCD to the left. It is should be followed by a delay command to control the speed of scrolling. The function will move the text 40 spaces to the left before it loops back to the first character. Text strings longer than 40 spaces will be printed to line 1 after the 40th position, while the start of the string will continue printing to line 0.

The code below is for scrolling the text “Hello World” in the left and right directions using the scrollDisplayLeft() and scrollDisplayRight() functions. The scrolling is done by incrementing the position of the text by one in the respective direction.

The major part of this code occurs in the loop section which includes counters made using for loops. In this case, the first counter scrolls the text left by 13 positions, which is enough to move it off the display to the left.

The last counter moves the text 16 positions to the left again, which will restore it back to the center of the display. The loop then repeats itself.

In case you need specific qualities in the way the text is scrolled on the LCD or if you want to display messages which are longer than 40 characters , then you can achieve this using custom functions. For example the code below shows how we can use custom functions to display a scrolling message on the display.

I have created a function scrollText() for scrolling text. This function accepts four arguments; the row on which to display the scrolling text, the text to be displayed, the delay time between the shifting of characters, and the number of columns of the LCD.

If you need to display a character that is not part of the standard 127-character ASCII character set then you might need to create your own characters .The Hitach HD44780 controller contains two types of memory:

CGROM: This is the Character Generator ROM which is the type of memory used for storing the permanent ASCII code fonts. These fonts are the ones we normally use for displaying messages on the LCD.

CGRAM: This is where the user defined characters are stored. This memory space can be modified and is limited to 64 bytes. This means that for a 5×8 based LCD, a maximum of eight custom characters can be stored in the CGRAM.

I have discussed more on how to display custom characters on the LCD in my other tutorial involving the use of an i2C adapter attached to the LCD to further reduce on the number of connections needed to run this display. You can check it out using this link: