During the building of your projects for Arduino, you’ll often need to read the output data directly from a LCD display. In this lesson we will show how to mount a LCD display on your Arduino using the I2C communication. Finally you will see how to program it with a simple example showing how to display text on the display.
Preparations
Hardware
OSOYOO UNO Board (Fully compatible with Arduino UNO rev.3) x 1
The integration of an LCD display greatly facilitates the interactivity of the project you are developing, allowing the user to directly read some output parameters. These values can be either a simple text or numerical values read by the sensors, such as temperature or pressure, or even the number of cycles that the Arduino is performing.
However, these displays have a small problem. When they are connected to a microcontroller (such as Arduino for example), these displays require virtually many connection PINs occupying practically almost all available IO and leaving the multiprocessor few outputs for any other devices and sensors. This problem has been solved thanks to the communication on the I2C bus.
The LCD1602 display has an integrated microchip that manages this type of communication, and then all of the input and output information are limited to only two PINs (excluding power supply). I2C is a type of serial bus developed by Philips, which uses two bidirectional lines, called SDA (Serial Data Line) and SCL (Serial Clock Line). Both must be connected via pulled-up resistors. The usage voltages are standard as 5V and 3.3V.
The blue potentiometer on the I2C LCD1602 (see the figure below) is used to adjust the backlight for better display.And there is a jumper on the board, if you take away this jumper , the backlight will aways be off.
For the usagage of other functions, pleae refer to the “LiquidCrystal_I2C.h” in the sourcecode of I2C LCD library.
Connection
First, please plug Osoyoo Magic I/O shield into UNO board:
Then connect the I2C LCD 1602 Display module to the I2C port of the Magic I/O shield (please move the switch on the board to 5V) with a 4-pin PNP cable as below:
Find the I2C address
Each device has an I2C address that it uses to accept commands or send messages. For Uno board, this address usually is 0x27. But sometimes the address might be changed 0x37,0x24 …., So let’s go and look for the one on your device.
Download ic2 scanner sketch zip file , then unzip and load it into Arduino IDE. By opening up the serial monitor in the upright corner, Arduino will scan the address range looking for a reply. Most Arduino board will show 0x27, however it be other number.
Write down the Address that you have found, you’ll need it in the next step.
Upload Sketch
After above operations are completed, connect the Arduino board to your computer using the USB cable. The green power LED (labelled PWR) should go on.
Install Library
To use the I2C protocol with an LCD display and Arduino, there is a special library to be downloaded and included in the code. The name of this library is Liquid Crystal I2C. Download the library, a zip file (you can download it from here) and extract the contents in the libraries folder of the Arduino IDE. You can do directly from the Arduino IDE, select Sketch > include Library > Add .ZIP library from the menu.
Library Support Functions
LiquidCrystal_I2C() //set the LCD address for a 16 chars and 2 line display
init() //Initialization for the LCD
clear() //clear display, set cursor position to zero
home() //set cursor position to zero
createChar() //Fill the first 8 CGRAM locations with custom characters
setCursor() //set the position of the cursor
cursor() //Turns the underline cursor on
noCursor() //Turns the underline cursor off
blink() //Turn on the blinking cursor
noBlink() //Turn off the blinking cursor
display() //Turn the display on(quickly)
noDisplay() //Turn the display 0ff(quickly)
backlight() //Turn the backlight on
noBacklight() //Turn the backlight off
scrollDisplayLeft() //Make the display scroll left without changing the RAM
scrollDisplayRight() //Make the display scroll right without changing the RAM
autoscroll() //This will ‘right justify’ text from the cursor
noAutoscroll() //This will ‘left justify’ text from the cursor
leftToRight() //This is for text that flows Left to Right
rightToLeft() //This is for text that flows Right to Left
#include<Wire.h>#include<LiquidCrystal_I2C.h>LiquidCrystal_I2Clcd(0x27,16,2);// set the LCD address to 0x27 for a 16 chars and 2 line displayvoidsetup(){lcd.init();// initialize the lcd // Print a message to the LCD.lcd.backlight();lcd.print("Hello, world!");}voidloop(){}
Compile and upload
Open the Arduino IDE and select corresponding board type and port type for your Arduino board.
After compile this sketch, simply click the “Upload” button in the environment. Wait a few seconds – you should see the RX and TX leds on the board flashing. If the upload is successful, the message “Done uploading.” will appear in the status bar.
Running Result
In this experiment, the sketch will make a connection between Arduino and I2C LCD display and then print a text on two lines. The first line will display “Hello all !” and second the “Welcome to www.osoyoo.com !” message.The circuit and the board / port type settings are same as above example.
#include "Wire.h"
#include "LiquidCrystal_I2C.h"
char array1[]=" Hello all ! "; //the string to print on the LCD
char array2[]="Welcome to www.osoyoo.com "; //the string to print on the LCD
int tim = 500; //the value of delay time
// initialize the library with the numbers of the interface pins
LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x3F,16,2); // set the LCD address to 0x27 for a 16 chars and 2 line display
void setup()
{
lcd.init(); //initialize the lcd
lcd.backlight(); //open the backlight
}
void loop()
{
lcd.setCursor(15,0); // set the cursor to column 15, line 0
for (int positionCounter1 = 0; positionCounter1 < 26; positionCounter1++)
{
lcd.scrollDisplayLeft(); //Scrolls the contents of the display one space to the left.
lcd.print(array1[positionCounter1]); // Print a message to the LCD.
delay(tim); //wait for 250 microseconds
}
lcd.clear(); //Clears the LCD screen and positions the cursor in the upper-left corner.
lcd.setCursor(15,1); // set the cursor to column 15, line 1
for (int positionCounter = 0; positionCounter < 26; positionCounter++)
{
lcd.scrollDisplayLeft(); //Scrolls the contents of the display one space to the left.
lcd.print(array2[positionCounter]); // Print a message to the LCD.
delay(tim); //wait for 250 microseconds
}
lcd.clear(); //Clears the LCD screen and positions the cursor in the upper-left corner.
}
Compile and upload this sketch to the Osoyoo UNO board, you should now see your I2C LCD1602 display the flowing characters: “Hello all !” and “Welcome to www.osoyoo.com”
