There are many types of LCDs flowing in market, and if you feel safe only with 16×2 line LCD than its the time to convert your devices to Graphical LCD.

The Graphical LCD is called graphical because of its pixel nature. The line LCDs only possess the ability to display pixels in rectangular area and pixels are discontinuous. While in GLCD the pixels are spread all over. You can use it to display characters, as well as graphics. And with some programming you can also show bitmap(.bmp) images.

They take data from controller in parallel fashion. Pin configuration are as follows,

DB0-DB7: Data Pins
CS1 – CS2: Chip Select
RST: Reset GLCD
E: Enable
R/W: Read-Write Selection
RS: Register Select

These are the data and control pins which are connected to the processing device such as microcontroller. Other than these are;

VCC: Power Input
GND: Ground
VO: Contrast Input
-Vout: -ve Voltage for Contrast
LED+: Backlight +ve Power Input
LED-: Ground

This makes 14 pins for controller, which means alot if you are aiming for cheaper product. Later in our blog we will present a Serial Module which takes out the hassle of 14 pins and needs only 1 pin for data .

Following are some applications where GLCDs are used;

Temperature Display

Oscilloscope using PIC

Information Display

Real-Time Plots

Video: GLCD and PIC based Oscilloscope

In next post we learn how to interface the GLCD with PIC16F876 Microcontroller. Its code and hardware will be thoroughly analyzed and how it can be make more efficient with reducing the number of pins used.

Buy GLCD

128 x 64 Pixels GLCD with Yellow backlight is available in Karachi (Cooperative Market) for Rs 1200/- and with White backlight is of Rs 1400/-

You can also purchase it from SparkFun .