lcd display pic microcontroller pricelist

In this article, let us discuss how to interface WIFI module ESP8266 with a PIC microcontroller. So far you might have been using the ESP8266 module as a standalone microcontroller or might have been using it with the Arduino library. But, when it comes to hardcore embedded system projects we should know how to use it with PIC microcontrollers as well. This will help you to customize your projects in design perspective and at the same time also making it cheap.

The ESP8266 modules comes with a default firmware loaded into it, hence we can program the module using AT commands. These commands have to be sent through a serial communication channel. This channel is established between the PIC and the ESP8266 module by using the USART module in the PIC microcontroller. The whole working will be monitored and reported to the user by using a 16x2 LCD display. Hence, this tutorial assumes that you have some basic knowledge about the USART module in PIC, Interfacing LCD with PIC and using AT commands in ESP8266. If you do not then you can fall back to the linked tutorials to learn them beforehand.

The schematics consists of two voltage regulator circuits, one is a +5V regulator which is used to power the PIC microcontroller and the other is a 3.3V regulator which powers the ESP8266 module. The +5V is regulated by using a 7805(Linear Voltage Regulator IC). The 3.3V is regulated by using LM317 (Variable Voltage Regulator). The ESP8266 module consumes a lot of current (~800mA) hence if you are designing your own power supply make sure it can source such high current. Also make sure that the ground pins of the PIC and the ESP8266 module is connected together.

So now we know that the PIC operates on +5V and the ESP8266 operates at 3.3V volts. In order to establish a USART communication between these two modules we need have a 5V - 3.3V logic converter circuit as shown in the above figure. This circuit is nothing but a potential divider which simply converts the incoming +5V to 3.3V. This will prevent the 3.3V tolerable RX pin of ESP8266 from getting +5V.

I have made the PIC and ESP modules on two separate perf boards, as shown in these tutorials. This way I can use them universally for more similar projects

In order to program the PIC microcontroller to send “AT commands” serially using USART to the ESP8266 module we have to use a library. This library will save you a lot of hassle, like using the ESP8266 instruction modules to check for each and every AT command and then find a way to transmit them to the ESP module. This library is free software originally developed by Camil Staps and later it was improved and modified by Circuit Digest so that it can be used with our PIC16F877A   Microcontroller. You can download it here

Initialize_ESP8266(): This function will Initialize the USART module of the PIC to communicate with the ESP8266 module. It sets the baud rate at 115200 and prepares the Rx and Tx pin of PIC for USART communication.

esp8266_isStarted(): It is used to check if the PIC can communicate with the ESP module. It send the command “AT” and waits for “OK” if received it returns true else it returns false.

Now that we have understood the functions of each and every command in the library let us look into a small sample program. In this program we will check if the connection between ESP8266 and PIC is successful and then create a WIFI network (SoftAP) with a preferred name and password. The complete program and the simulation of the same will be explained for your understanding.

Again if you have not read our PIC interfacing with LCD and PIC USART tutorial please read the, before proceeding because only then it will make sense to you.

When we send the “AT” to the ESP8266 module it replies back with a “OK”. This ensures us that the ESP8266 module is connected successfully. The function esp8266_isStarted() is used for the same. We send the signal AT from the PIC and we wait till the ESP module to get alive and send us an OK. If we get an OK we display that the “ESP is connected” on the LCD.

This segment of the code is used to configure the softAP. Here we have named the SSID as “CircuitDigest” and the password as “619007123”. To indicate that the process is complete we will wait for the module to respond with “OK” and then print AP configured onto the LCD screen.

That is it now we have interfaced the ESP8266 module with the PIC MCU and have configured the softAP with a name and password of our choice. As usual lets simulate this code and see how it works.

Since we do not have an ESP8266 module in Proteus library we have use the Serial terminal and respond back as a user to the PIC module. The simulation once completed screen will look like below

Once the program is verified using the simulation, dump it into your PIC microcontroller. Make the connections as shown in the schematics above (Hardware section). You should be able to track your progress through the LCD display.

Once the LCD says that the AP is configured we can check that out using the WIFI settings in Phone or Laptop. My laptop shows the following signal as per our program.

That is it guys we have successfully interfaced the ESP8266 module with the PIC Microcontroller. This is a very basic interface and if you want to do any complicated projects using the ESP8266 you might have to add your own libraries or at least add your own functions. Trust me it is very much easy to do so, I will give a brief insight for the same.

PIC18F PIC Microcontrollers are 8 bit Microcontrollers available from 18 pin onwards upto 100 PINS.They are available in various package such as DIP, SOIC, SSOP, TQFP and QFN/ UQFN Package etc.

Offering the largest pin count and memory size, PIC18 microcontrollers combine the maximum level of performance and integration with the ease-of-use of an 8-bit architecture. With up to 16 MIPS of processing power, PIC18 microcontrollers feature

Temperature Range-40 to 85 deg CWe are offering PIC18F44J10-I/P PIC Microcontrollerto our clients. Ideal for customers that require low cost, high speed, and enhanced serial communication peripherals. The PIC18F44J10 runs at 40MHz at 3V and has an enhanced USART with LIN capability and two synchronous serial ports with address masking for the I2C. It is a low cost general purpose solution for designs with 1k Flash endurance, emulated EEPROM, and external crystal or clock source, for cost-sensitive applications.

MakersMicrochip TechnologyWe are offering PIC18F26K22-I/SO Microcontroller to our clients. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future.

MakersMicrochip TechnologyWe are offering PIC18F4620-I/P Microcontroller to our clients. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future.

MakersMicrochip TechnologyWe are offering PIC18f97J60-I/PT Ethernet Microcontroller to our clients. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future.

Bit Support8-bitWe are offering PIC18F46K22-I/P Microcontroller to our clients. Prices are for the indicative purpose for single quantity & subject to change without notice. For higher quantity prices please mail us for the quote. The given image is for representation purpose, actual image may differ. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future.

Temperature Range-40 to 85 deg CWe are offering PIC18F46K22-I/PT Microcontrollerto our clients. The PIC18F is one of the families of PIC Microcontrollers and PIC18F4550 is its member. PIC18F4550 is one many of the advanced microcontrollers from the microchip era. This microcontroller is very famous in between hobbyist and beginners due it functionalities and functions along with ADC and USB integration.

RAM768 kBWe are offering PIC18F4431-I/P Microcontroller to our clients. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future. Prices are for the indicative purpose for single quantity & subject to change without notice. For higher quantity prices please mail us for the quote.

MakersMicrochip TechnologyWe are offering PIC18F45K22-I/PT Microcontroller to our clients. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future.

MakersMicrochip TechnologyWe are offering PIC18F23K22-I/SO Microcontroller to our clients. We provide high-quality products to our clients. A favorable factory price offer will be quoted on the basis of parameters which you provide to us, hope it could show you our sincerity and bring a good long-term business relationship with your esteemed firm in near future.

In this tutorial we will see How to Interface a 16×2 character LCD module with PIC 16F877A Microcontroller using MPLAB X IDE and MPLAB XC8 C Compiler. 16×2 Character LCD is a very basic and low cost LCD module which is commonly used in electronic products and projects. 16×2 means it contains 2 rows that can display 16 characters. Its other variants such as 16×1 and 16×4 are also available in the market. In these displays, each character is displayed using 5×8 or 5×10 dot matrix.

For controlling LCD using MPLAB XC8 compiler we need to know the hardware of LCD. These LCDs commonly uses HD44780 compliant controllers. So we need to learn HD44780 Dot Matrix LCD Controller Datasheet. Don’t worry we already developed an LCD library including commonly used functions, so you can use it without any hardware knowledge of LCD.

First two pins GND and VCC (VSS and VDD) are for providing power to LCD display. 3ed pin VEE is used to control the contrast of the LCD display. A 10KΩ preset whose fixed ends connected to VDD, VSS and variable end connected to VEE can be used to control contrast of the LCD. A microcontroller or microprocessor need to send 2 types of information for operating this LCD Module, Data Information and Command Information. Data Information is the ASCII value of the characters to be displayed in the LCD screen and Command Information determines other operations such as position to be displayed, clear screen, shift etc. Data and Command Information are send to LCD through same data lines (DB0 – DB7) which are multiplexed using RS (Register Select) pin of LCD. When RS is HIGH LCD treats DB0 – DB7 data pins information as Data to be displayed and when it is LOW LCD treats it as Command Information. Enable (E) input of the LCD is used to give Data Strobe. HIGH (5V) Voltage Level in the Enable (E) pin tells the LCD that DB0 – DB7 contains valid information. The input signal R/W (Read or Write) determines whether data is written to or read from the LCD. In normal cases we need only writing hence it is tied to GROUND in circuit shown below.

The interface between this LCD and Microcontroller can be 8 bit or 4 bit and the difference between them is in how the data or commands are send to LCD. In the 8 bit mode, 8 bit data and commands are send through the data lines DB0 – DB7 and data strobe is given through E input of the LCD. But 4 bit mode uses only 4 data lines. In this 8 bit data and commands are splitted into 2 parts (4 bits each) and are sent sequentially through data lines DB4 – DB7 with its own data strobe through E input. The idea of 4 bit communication is introduced to save pins of a microcontroller. You may think that 4 bit mode will be slower than 8 bit. But the speed difference is only minimal. As LCDs are slow speed devices, the tiny speed difference between these modes is not significant. Just remember that microcontroller is operating at high speed in the range of MHz and we are viewing LCD with our eyes. Due to Persistence of Vision of our eyes we will not even feel the speed difference.

Hope that you got rough idea about how this LCD Module works. Actually you need to read the datasheet of HD44780 LCD driver used in this LCD Module to write a MPLAB XC8 program for PIC. But we solved this problem by creating a header file lcd.h which includes all the commonly used functions using 4 bit mode. Just include it and enjoy.

Lcd_Set_Cursor(int row, int column) : This function is used to set row and column of the cursor on the LCD screen. By using this function we can change the position of the character or string displayed by following functions.

sprintf() can be used to write formatted string to a variable. It can be used with this LCD library to format displayed texts. This enables us to display integers and floating point numbers on the LCD very easily. You should include the header file stdio.h for using sprintf().