AVR-Based Serial Enabled LCDs Hookup Guide

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Contributors: QCPete
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SparkFun SerLCD Library

Note: This example assumes you are using the latest version of the Arduino IDE on your desktop. If this is your first time using Arduino, please review our tutorial on installing the Arduino IDE. If you have not previously installed an Arduino library, please check out our installation guide.

The SparkFun SerLCD Arduino library demonstrates all the bells and whistles of the SerLCD. The SparkFun SerLCD Arduino library can be downloaded with the Arduino library manager by searching 'SparkFun SerLCD' or you can grab the zip here from the GitHub repository:

Once you have the library installed checkout the various examples.

  • Example1: Print text to the display over I2C. Want to use serial? Checkout the Serial subfolder.
  • Example2: Change the brightness of the RGB backlight.
  • Example3: Set the cursor to a specific position. This really increases the speed at which you can update the display because you only need to change the characters that are changing.
  • Example4: Move the cursor around the screen
  • Example5: Enable/disable the cursor
  • Example6: Make the cursor blink
  • Example7: Enable automatic scrolling
  • Example8: More scrolling with text
  • Example9: Load a custom character
  • Example10: Power down the display
  • Example11: Change the where the next character will be printed (left-to-right or right-to-left).
  • Example12: Read characters from serial and display them over I2C
  • Example13: Rapidly update the backlight color
  • Example14: Show the devices current firmware version
  • Example15: Enable/Disable the displaying of system messages
  • Example16: Create custom splash screen and enable/disable it.
  • Serial
    • Example1: Print to the display using serial instead of I2C

This SparkFun SerLCD Library really focuses on I2C because it's faster than serial and supports daisy-chaining. If you'd prefer serial, it's as simple as

lcd.begin(Serial); 

Checkout the various examples to see the available functions to call for all the features but any and all can be used over serial, I2C, or SPI.