I'd like to have some feedback (power, status, voltage, etc) on my current Robotics project, and another project that's on hold. Rather than a bunch of LED's, I'd like to use an LCD display with a few lines of text. I'd like a product that I buy to be well supported and I don't want to spend any more money than I have to. For my purposes, it would be better if the product was not an actual shield or if it was that it had a remote wire kit/diagram, so I can mount it away from the Arduino. The Arduino I am using in these projects is the Arduino Mega ADK, and on one of the projects, most of the first 12 pins are already in use, so something that doesn't use those pins, or can be moved easily, would be best.
I've seen LCD displays at Radio Shack and Micro Center and Fry's go for $35, yet I see other ones online for less than $10. I've heard that some are a pain and some are really easy to use.
What is your opinion on a well supported LCD display that meets those above criteria?
If you don't mind waiting up to a month for shipping, these super cheap ones from china are perfectly sufficient. Just look up the wiring for a HD44780 and adjust your pot and it's good to go, pretty simple. I've gotten two from two different sellers and both were slightly different but same pinout and both work great.
those HD44780 are pretty much the most generic LCD display available and surely the most docummented.
you can always use them with those i2c or similar interfaces to save pins.
The cheap ones from china work out at about £1.50 each. I've had a fair few of these without problems and they take a couple of weeks to arrive, on average.
If you want I2C then you can either buy a backpack for about £4 on eBay OR get yourself some PCF8574 expanders and wire it yourself. There are plenty of examples if you Googke.
Finally, use the New LiquidCrystal Library and it will support various methods of connecting the display, all using the same common methods. You simply declare which type at the beginning of the sketch.