16x2 Character LCD without Backlight (Parallel Interface)

Overview

This 16-character, 2-line parallel liquid crystal display achieves a large viewing area in a compact package. It uses the common HD44780 interface (330k pdf), so sample interface code is widely available for a variety of microcontrollers.

The DDRAM address 0x00 corresponds to the first character of the top line, address 0x0F corresponds to the last character of the top line, address 0x40 corresponds to the first character of the second line, and address 0x4F corresponds to the last character of the second line.

Sample code for some AVRs (e.g. ATmega168, ATmega328, ATmega324, and ATmega1284) can be found as part of the open-source Orangutan-lib package.

Pin-Out

Note: No cables or connectors are included with this product. You can break a 7x2 segment from the header strip and solder it to the 14 through-holes on the left side of the LCD PCB; the ribbon cable will then plug into the header pins (leaving two holes empty). The header pins won’t enforce proper orientation of the cable, so you will need to take care to plug it in to the correct pins. The 8x2 shrouded box header will not work with this LCD.

File downloads

HD44780 interface datasheet (330k pdf)

This document details the HD44780 parallel interface that is an industry standard for dot-matrix LCDs.