Have I fried my Nokia 3310 LCD?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

I recently took the LCD out of my old Nokia 3310 for use with an Arduino (Type 1 as shown here). I've soldered wires directly onto the contact pads and wired it up as per the schematic for the shield using the same LCD (here, schematic is under Programming Notes).
I've tried to test it using their example program, with the changes in this thread applied, along with taking out all the keypad related stuff.
So far it doesn't seem to do anything.

I was wondering if there is any way to test whether the LCD is fried, or if I have a short somewhere in my soldering (fairly hard to see even with a magnifying glass) or if I'm just failing at connecting it correctly?

Any help is appreciated.

2

Try this

3

Cheers for your quick response, but no luck. :frowning:
The screen doesn't seem to respond in any way I can see.

4

Hmm, what Arduino are you basing this off mate?

5

Freeduino SB 2.2 ( http://www.solarbotics.com/products/28920/ ).
I'm pretty sure I've got the board soldered together properly at least...

6

That's really odd mate. I have the same shield you've mentioned (i took the easy way out!).

... I must admit it worked first time for me. Maybe you could plug it back into your Nokia? Failing that, assuming your connections are correct - it should work. (probably not what you wanted to hear)

7

I'll have a go at putting it back in the phone, it will mean unsoldering all the wires but it's pretty useless to me at the moment anyway.

8

At least it'll rule it out for sure.

9

I'm curious, you say you took the screen out of an old cell phone..
What about an LCD driver? I checked the schematic for the shield you pointed out, but I couldn't tell if it was using a separate chip to drive the LCD, but it seems like there would be. ( I have no idea if it would be built in under the actual screen, or just on the board)

10

I'm fairly sure that it doesn't need one, there are several accounts (here, here and here) of people using them directly with a programmable chip.

11

Good point :smiley:
But I have to point out, it still uses a LCD controller, just built in. The LCD controller it uses is the PCD8544. (found that at the bottom of your third link)

But in that case, I'm not very useful here! Only thing I can suggest is stealing some of the code people've used the LCD with, and either code-down from that, or just test the code to test your LCD, and build your own code later.

Best of luck, and do let us know how this comes! ( I have 2 old Nokia cell phones, no idea what LCD, but omg.. if I could find a use, how exciting!)
:smiley:

12

Well, victory of a sort:
I noticed that the phone would refuse to turn on when the screen was plugged in, and when it was already on and I plugged the screen in it beeped until I pulled the battery out. Being curious I tried shorting the connectors with a screwdriver and found this produced the same behaviour so I scratched away as much solder as possible from the screen contact pads (I don't have any soldering wick :() and then the screen worked once again.

Now to have another go at soldering wires on again. :-/

13

ha, it's all a learning experience mate. Pick your battles :wink:

14

I managed to lift one of the contacts on the LCD this time, which I don't think is easily repairable. :frowning:
I think I'm just going to buy one of the shields, as much as I would prefer to make my own, the shields are so cheap that it would cost almost as much to buy another screen alone.