Hi im trying the 'hello world' sketch from adafruits library and the backlight changes but i cant see any text.
you can see photos here:
so you see there are only blocks showing. does anyone know what this is? i can give more information if needed
i can give more information if needed
More information is not needed unless you want real solutions as opposed to conjecture.
That's the second Adafruit RGB LCD Shield that's shown up here this week (or maybe it's the same one) . Why haven't you sought out help at the Adafruit forum?
You haven't specified what type of interface the shield has for the connections to the Arduino but you certainly don't have enough wires for a conventional parallel interface.
You haven't specified which 'hello world' sketch you are using but the one from the Arduino tutorial certainly won't work without more wires.
Don