Surface Mount LCD117

Description

This is a surface mount version of the popular LCD117 serial LCD driver. It supports both 5V and 3.3V LCDs and signal inversion (for RS232) via a solder jumper. It speaks TTL serial (optionally RS232) on one end and HD44780, a common LCD control language, on the other.

It’s a great interface between, say, a BBB (or other Arduino) and any of our character displays.

The backlight brightness can be reduced by desoldering the RBL_SJ jumper and replacing it with a resistor of your choice, 10-50Ω is reasonable.

The kit comes with all the headers you need to connect to a liquid crystal display.

Peter Anderson’s command set is very robust and complete, with commands to control the backlight brightness and address the 8 custom characters.

Caveat: the kit will accommodate the vast majority of LCDs. There are a number of pinouts, which are thankfully very rare, that require remapping the pins. These are often backlight pins, which for some reason are (rarely) found on the pin 1 end of the data pins instead of the pin 14 end, which is vastly more common, and is the way that the kit is laid out. It is a good idea to confirm the pinout of your LCD with the pinout listed in the instructions before plugging it in. If you can’t get the datasheet however to the display however, just plug it in and try it, it will likely work fine.

Bitrates

We’ve made three bitrates available, 2400, 9600, or 19200.
For most users 9600 baud is a good default choice, 19200 baud chips will save some time on the sending (Arduino) side so might be useful for sketches that need a tight loop. 2400 baud chips will be useful for PICAXE and some Basic Stamp users.

Package Contents

• 1   SMDLCD 117 Serial to LCD populated printed circuit board
• 1   16 position male header pins
• 1   16 position female header pins
• 1   2 x 8 position female header pins
• 1   3 position right-angle male header pins
• 1   12″ three-wire cable with two female ends (servo cable)

Buying Options

• LCD117 Kit (requires soldering iron to connect headers)
• SMDLCD117 Kit (w/ LCD Screen): includes LCD117 Kit and LCD Character Display

Resources

• 5V 20×4 Character LCD Datasheet
• 5V 16×2 character LCD datasheet
  Note that the first 2 pins on the datasheet are labelled incorrectly.
  Pin 1 should be ground and pin 2 should be VCC. The manufacturer configures the same display differently in some cases.
• LCD117 Command Summary (pdf)
• LCD117 command summary (MS Word)
• LCD Demo for the Arduino language
• Schematic (CC-BY-SA)
• Board design (CC-BY-SA)