20x4 LCD monochrome display

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charles_platt

New member
I am in the US. Since PHAnderson isn't selling his easy-to-use display anymore, am I right in thinking it would be smarter for me to buy from an overseas supplier of Axe134Y than try to adapt a product designed for Arduino? I don't like to reinvent the wheel where device drivers are concerned.
 
lbenson

lbenson

Senior Member
Amazon in the U.S. has many 20x4 LCDs which use the standard pcf8574 I2C adaptor. The code is not trivial (because commands and data are sent in "nibble" mode), but there are working examples on this site--for instance, the last post here.
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
charles_platt said:
I am in the US. Since PHAnderson isn't selling his easy-to-use display anymore, am I right in thinking it would be smarter for me to buy from an overseas supplier of Axe134Y than try to adapt a product designed for Arduino?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately PHAnderson sadly passed away some time ago and the site is mostly a memorial repository for the fine and valuable work he contributed in supporting the PICAXE and other devices.

Our AXE134Y, along with the rest of our 'AXE13x' range, are designed to interface to PICAXE using a single signal wire plus power and can be controlled by simple SEROUT commands. This makes them much easier to use than other displays and modules which aren't specifically designed for PICAXE use, which is why we recommend them.

Direct driving of parallel displays, or those with I2C or SPI interfaces, is possible but is rather more complicated, in terms of connections and control, and figuring out how to control them. It's not impossible but, for 'an easy life', a serial driven display is best.
 
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inglewoodpete

Senior Member
Several years ago I posted some 'universal' PICAXE code that allowed any PICAXE with 14 or more pins to interface with any parallel-interface alphanumeric LCD display. The configuration requires a minimum of 6 I/O pins to connect the two devices together: 4 data, 1 enable and 1 register select (plus, of course, Ground/0v and Power/+5v. A 4.5v battery supply will also work). The structure of the code I provided simplifies the interconnection. Once you have mastered driving the LCD, the code can be ported to your project.

The code and documentation can be found here.
 
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