Hi I purchased a matrix orbital LCD, the LCD2041 (here's a link: http://www.bipom.com/lcd_lcd2041.php ), and I started to work with it but I'm not sure I have things correct. The tutorials weren't all that clear with something like this, the one I followed was Arduino Playground - SerialLCD . I'm pretty much a complete novice when it comes to stuff like this so I'm a bit lost.
Anyway, I got the backlight/screen to turn on using the arduino's power supply for it, and even got it to chat with the LCD. I left it in when I uploaded code and I saw a ton of garbage scroll up and then something would execute. The problem is, all my commands and character strings that I told it to print never worked correctly and gave me garbage.
Let me describe my setup to you:
(I'm basing most of this off this manual: http://www.matrixorbital.ca/manuals/LCDVFD_series/LCD2041/LCD2041_130.pdf since the back of my board says 1.30)
I have the 5v and GND going to the 4 pin connector from the Arduino power supply (all of this follows that tutorial). I connected the Arduino's TX pin to the RX pin in the DB-9F connector (pin 3) and the Arduino GND to the GND port in the DB-9F as well (pin 5).
I'm using simple hook-up wires for now to test this before soldering, this should work okay even though I'm using the DB-9F connector right?
Anyway, I wrote a simple program and uploaded it to the LCD. Like I said earlier, all I got was a lot of garbage during upload and then a constant steady stream of the same garbage characters for the program. I know it was working somewhat okay because when I programmed it to print "hi" it would print 2 characters over and over, and 2 different ones when I printed "lo". I think printing "12" gave me "g3" over and over, but I don't quite remember.
Any attempts to control the settings were met with the same results. I tried a simple test to turn off the backlight, and it just printed some sort of Epsilon character over and over. Here's the program I used:
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(19200);
}
void loop()
{
Serial.print(254, DEC);
Serial.print(70, DEC);
}
Is there something obvious that I'm doing wrong? None of the commands I've tried from the 1.30 manual seem to do anything but give my gibberish. Thanks for your help in advance.