Part 3c-The LCD unit

LCD unit

The last component of the first stage of my project is the LCD unit. This display unit will be used to display the distance the obstruction is from the moving vehicle. The part I will be using is a Serial Enabled 16x2 LCD.

The reason I chose this is because it has a serial input facility. It will enable me to use less connections to the Arduino. Unfortunately,using less pins does not make it any easier to use the LCD. There are a couple of library for the serial LCD and parallel LCD with the Arduino and to be honest, the parallel one is a lot easier to follow and understand. Researching the libraries, there seems to be a lot more software involved running the serial. If I can't get the serial working properly I can always revert back to the parallel. This product allows me to do both.

The data sheet on this LCD contains alot of addresses and commands to control it. For example, the back light brightness, clear display, scroll, cursor positions etc. These are controlled using different values like 0x01, 0x0C etc, and will have to be implemented into my software as needed.

When I get this piece of hardware, I plan to run small sample test to learn to understand it and how it works before I start implementing my own code.