Help with Graphic LCD

Hey all,

I've just recently been getting into electronics, and have pretty much just been doing theory in my spare time for the last month or two. I finally bought a bread board, and Arduino Duemilanove, and some other fun little things.

I managed to get an LED to blink; awesome. I got 5 LED's to blink in a few different patterns; even better. I've gotta a 16x2 LCD to work. I'm on to something a bit more advanced now.

I purchase a Graphic LCD from Sparkfun. I got my breadboard wired up according to the tutorial on the Arduino website, and used the sample code that they supplied.

I'm having a few issues, to say the least. First off, I'll state what is working. The backlight comes on as soon as the Arduino is plugged in, so it is getting power. The pot for the contrast does indeed change the contrast, so that's working. However, nothing is apearing on the screen.

I'm just looking for some input about how I should go about troubleshooting this.

Thanks,

  • Jesse

Which Graphic LCD is it? Also which tutorial are you working with? The library used in the tutorial may not be compatible with the controller on the LCD.

If i'm not mistaking this is the one that is most commonly used and uses this library.

Screen:

Library:
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/GLCDks0108

Just when i had decided to buy one they go out of stock. :frowning:

Yeah, those are both the correct links. It wouldn't let me post links for some reason.

  • Jesse

Yep thats a limitation set so spammers can't come in and throw up a single post full of there links.

Well all i could recommend is going over all your connections. With so many wires and all coming out of a relatively small area its easy to get them mixed up. Like i said i don't have one of these yet. But will be getting one as soon as they are back in stock. When i do i'll be soldering some ribbon cable to them and soldering the ends to headers. That way i know that the wires that go with pins next to each other are always in the right place and in the right order.

Alright that makes sense.

I'll just do my best to go over all the connections. Thanks for the help.

  • Jesse

I got it working. Silly novice mistake ;D I err, had some of the digital pins mixed up :-[

  • Jesse

Alright, well everything is working, as previously mentioned. Just been fooling around trying to get used to writing the code; I've programmed before, but nothing like this. So this has been an excellent (and fun!) learning experience so far.

Anyways, I'm wondering something for this project I'm working on. From what I understand, you need to write a *.h file to display a Bitmap image on the screen; this is all fine and dandy, except one thing. How do you convert a Bitmap to the Array I've seen used in other *.h files? I've done some brief searching, but couldn't find anything conclusive.

Thanks,

  • Jesse

This will mabie not help you on the way but:
http://www.edaboard.com/ftopic49565.html

http://www.acscontrol.com/Index_LcdTerminal.asp?Page=/Pages/Products/Lcd/128x64%20LCD_Display_Terminal_SOH_Protocol.htm

david