I need a 5 X 20 or so LCD. I am building a project that had a select menu. I need to have the selected one in the middle (1 line) and 2 on both top and bottom (4 lines). So I need a 5 line LCD by a decent size... Either 20 or 40.
I also want it to be blue on white. If there isn't a character LCD, I might need a graphic LCD. If I need one of those, please point me to one with a more rectangular size with blue and white.
I've never seen a 5x20 character LCD (doesn't mean they don't exist). Your best bet might be to go with a KS0108 128x64 GLCD, which is common and comes in the blue/white look you are looking for. Plus there is already a library for it...
according to a google search and via another forum someone else agrees, 5 line LCDs don't exist. This according to someone who has searched for and bought about 20 different styles.
You best bet may be to employ a Graphical LCD and use appropriate
font sizes to accomplish your task.
So if I use a 64 by 128, I need a lot of pins. Is there a library that supports like a SparkFun serial adapter or something?
I can't do the normal pin setup, because I need:
3 PWM (RGB)
10 Digital (2 Digit 7 Segment)
6 Digital (6 Pushbuttons)
You know what, I either need multiplexers, or my MEGA for this anyways, so I'll just use that...
However, this seems hard... I can't just serial print. On the other hand, now I can highlight the one that is in the middle. Does this mean that i have to have a big long string of 1's and 0's to do a single screen? so that's a lot... Is there anything similar to the Serial Print function for those?
Yes, the GLCD library, that uses every function that the serial uses, like print, write, and things like those, you dont send 0 and 1's via serial to make one char, why would you do it to control one lcd?
Well, I thought you had to do it in rows and columns... Didn't know.
Is there any easy way to do it so that the letters are normally white, and the highlighted one is blue with white background?
You know what, I either need multiplexers, or my MEGA for this anyways
Another alternative is to use a cheap "non-shield" Arduino like the RBBB and use it as a "backpack" on the GLCD. Then you could talk to it via either serial or I2C.
If you're going to emulate a character LCD, you could use one of the protocols supported by the various serial-to-LCD adapters on the market.
If you want it to be graphic, you could use an idea I've been kicking around for a while: implement a lightweight version of RPC over I2C. You'd put a "stub" version of the GLCD library on the "master" Arduino that just sends function parameters over the I2C link to the slave, where the function actually executes.
But either way, I'll still need a MEGA or multiplexers... It's supposed to be a simple project, so I would rather do the MEGA.
6 Digital (6 Pushbuttons)
You could chain them up to the same pin.
I believe grumpy mike has shown how you can do this and still read multiple buttons at once (apologies if it's someone else).