SparkFun Electronics - Serial Enabled 16x2 LCD

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Product Info

Serial Enabled 16x2 LCD - White on Black 5V

sku: LCD-09395

Description: This is the latest evolution of our serial LCD. Included on a single board is a 16x2 LCD and an embedded circuit based around a PIC 16F88. The on-board PIC takes a TTL serial input and prints the characters it receives onto the LCD. The installed firmware also allows for a number of special commands so you can clear the screen, adjust the backlight brightness, turn the display on/off, and more.

Communication with SerLCD requires 5V TTL serial at a default baud rate of 9600bps (8-N-1). You can adjust the baud to any standard rate between 2400 and 38400bps. The power (VDD), ground (GND) and RX pins are all broken out to both a 0.1" pitch header as well as a 3-pin JST connector.

SerLCD has the ability to dim the backlight to conserve power if needed. There is also a potentiometer on the back of the display to adjust the contrast.

This LCD makes for a great gift, because it can be used for so many different projects! For more gift ideas check out the SparkFun Gift Guide!

Features:

Embedded PIC 16F88 utilizes onboard UART for greater communication accuracy
Adjustable baud rates of 2400, 4800, 9600 (default), 14400, 19200 and 38400
Operational Backspace
Greater processing speed at 10MHz
Incoming buffer stores up to 80 characters
Backlight transistor can handle up to 1A
Pulse width modulation of backlight allows direct control of backlight brightness and current consumption
All surface mount design allows a backpack that is half the size of the original
Faster boot-up time
Boot-up display can be turned on/off via firmware
User definable splash screen

Dimensions:

PCB: 103x36mm
LCD: 71.4x26.4mm

Documents:

Pricing

	86 in stock backorder allowed

$24.95	price
$22.46	10-99 (10% off)
$19.96	100+ (20% off)

	quantity

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Comments

15 comments

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	by Tycho Vhargon +4.4 \| November 11, 2009 at 4:57 PM 0
I'm using this with an ioBridge. All the commands I send end up looking like \|\|\|SO="whatever". It happens with everything I write, including the clear screen commands and such. Any tips?

	by Jimb0 \| November 12, 2009 at 9:47 AM
Hi there, Hmm, we'd be happy to help. Can you send us an email detailing your setup? If characters aren't being received/printed correctly, my first suggestion is usually to try other 'standard' (2400, 4800, 9600, etc.) baud rates. -techsupport at sparkfun dot com

	by Tycho Vhargon +4.4 \| January 9, 2010 at 10:08 AM 0
It turned out to be the ioBridge that was formatting the serial outputs weird. The Arduino works fine with it.

	by Striker121 +2.6 \| November 22, 2009 at 6:18 PM 0
Wait, so I get the 3 pins for power and control, but whats with all the other pins on the sides? Can it be used to control another LCD besides the one built in?

Tycho Vhargon

+4.4

| January 9, 2010 at 10:06 AM

The other pins are used if you want to control the LCD without using the serial standard. There's some tutorials on how to do that with the arduino below. You have more control over what you can do with it, but it takes up more pins on the arduino. If you want to wire it up this way, don't spend the money on the serial interface, they have cheaper LCD's that allow you to do it this way, without the serial.

http://www.hacktronics.com/Tutorials/arduino-character-lcd-tutorial.html

	by Scotty +1.2 \| December 8, 2009 at 11:05 PM 0
does anyone know if reversed polarity will kill this? That's the only reason I can think of as to why mine will not work! I've tried everything!

Doogie

+3.4

| December 18, 2009 at 11:14 AM

I received mine just yesterday and hooked it up. It definitely works, but it occasionally "wigs out" in various ways. I set my own splash screen, which worked fine the first couple of times. The third time I powered it on I got a screen with one line of white blocks and one blank line. It has lost the baud rate setting on me several times. Sometimes I get reverse video garbage characters for some reason.

Doogie

+3.4

| December 18, 2009 at 11:21 AM

I have a couple of suggestions for a future version: On the PCB layout, please add a thermal to the ground pin for the user connectors to make it easier to hand solder. Please change the firmware to make it more difficult for a random serial stream to stumble upon a configuration sequence. Maybe pick a non-printable prefix character like ESC instead of the vertical bar. Please make the brightness values more user friendly, like 1, 2, 3, etc. Maybe have an option to make the display scroll when it gets full, instead of resetting the cursor to home and overwriting. All-in-all, a fun little platform. Thanks for using a PIC on this one! I think I may try my hand at writing some new firmware for it. Cheers!

	by Doogie +3.4 \| December 18, 2009 at 11:26 AM 0
The data stream I tapped into once inadvertently changed the backlight level to something less than 100%, and I noticed that the dimmed display had a noticeable flicker.

	by Rob +1.7 \| December 24, 2009 at 10:41 PM 0
Just got this guy and it's working great! I put together a sketch for using this with an Arduino: http://github.com/cannikin/arduino_serial_lcd

AMCDawes

+1.3

| January 3, 2010 at 7:43 AM

+0.15

I've put together some python code for sending serial data to these LCD screens. In particular, the code pulls my twitter status and writes it to the LCD. To work with the extra characters, I wrote functions to page the text (vertical scroll) or scroll the text (horizontal scroll). Details are available here: http://dawes.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/twitter-to-lcd/

Thanks for this great module, I've really enjoyed tinkering and actually had the first version working in under an hour!

	by TMC4242 +1.1 \| January 14, 2010 at 11:05 AM 0
Hi, I notice that the datasheet is lacking environmental specifications for this device. It would nice to have that information. Temperature limits especially.

	by JWerner +5.8 \| January 23, 2010 at 2:22 PM 0
I'm having trouble setting the second line of the splash screen. I can set the first line to whatever I'd like. But no matter what I put on the second line, it isn't saved when I send in the 0x7C, 0x0A sequence. Just to be clear, I do set both lines before sending the sequence.

	by JWerner +5.8 \| January 24, 2010 at 10:30 AM 0
Nevermind, my own fault. I calculated the wrong offset to the start of the second line when I repositioned the cursor. Although the second line was displayed correctly, the offset was wrong by -32.

	by hafiz +1 \| February 6, 2010 at 9:22 PM 0
Hi...noob question. how do i send data on the fly via arduino? it only has 1 connection to tx. i tried using the serial monitor to send something, but it doesnt work...im looking for something which i guess is similar to liquidCrystal->SerialDisplay example. Thanks for the help.