My teacher let me borrow one of his old 16x2 LCD display kits. I wanted to use it to work with arduino rather than with the kit components. I went on arduinos website and found the “hello world” tutorial. I wired everything on a breadboard and used the example program but the only thing that happens is the backlight comes on but no words. The kit even says it’s arduino compatible and I re-wired about 5 times to make sure I had it right and got the same result every time. Any ideas?
Moar INFOS.
What is the driver chip on the display? HD44780? Compatible? How did you wire it? Do you have a diagram that you followed? Can you post a clear, useful picture of your setup? I would “guess” your problem is the contrast. There should probably be a pot on pin3(?). My guess is you have too much resistance, or not enough. Mind you, without more info from you, I am really just guessing at your issue.
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LiquidCrystal
Here’s the link to the tutorial I followed. I wired it many times so I’m positive the wiring was right. Also I used a trimpot that was in the kit. Don’t have a picture of my set up on me but I can load that later.
Most of the times…
The problem occurs with the wire.Make sure all your breadboard wires are firmly inserted in the board.(Make sure you connected the wires corresponding to the comments in the example definition).
Also I sometimes lose track of the pin positions while I’m wiring up the circuit as I rotate the breadboard to connect wiring.
You may want to mark pin 1 and 16 on your LCD.
Also try swapping your potentiometer with a new one.They have given me some trouble a couple of times.
Otherwise you may as well try with another arduino lcd libraries available on the net :
http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/LibraryList
Trimpot issue?
What was the value of the trimpot and did you actually try turning it while the screen was on? The trim pot controls the contrast of the screen and there is a chance that if you just had it in the full on or off position and didn’t turn it, then the text on the screen wouldn’t be able to be seen.