LCD Interfacing

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)

Liquid Crystal Display also called as LCD is very helpful in providing user interface as well as for debugging purpose.

The most commonly used ALPHANUMERIC displays are 1x16 (Single Line & 16 characters), 2x16 (Double Line & 16 character per line) & 4x20 (four lines & Twenty characters per line). 8 lines X 80
cheap and easy way to display text

Integrated controller
Fortunately, a very popular standard exists which allows us to communicate with the vast majority of LCDs regardless of their manufacturer. The standard is referred to as HD44780U, which refers to the controller chip which receives data from an external source (in this case, the 8051) and communicates directly with the LCD.

These LCD's are very simple to interface with the controller as well as are cost effective.
Refreshing controller into the LCD will save time of cpu while led must be refreshd by cpu to keep displaying the data Ease of programming for characters and graphics

The display has two register command register data register By RS you can select register Data lines (DB7-DB0) used to transfer data and commands The LCD requires 3 control lines (RS, R/W & EN) 8 (or 4) data lines. The number on data lines depends on the mode of operation. If operated in 8-bit mode then 8 data lines + 3 control lines i.e. total 11 lines are required. And if operated in 4-bit mode then 4 data lines + 3 control lines i.e. 7 lines are required. How do we decide which mode to use? Its simple if you have sufficient data lines you can go for 8 bit mode & if there is a time constrain i.e. display should be faster then we have to use 8-bit mode because basically 4-bit mode takes twice as more time as compared to 8-bit mode.

LM018L

HITACHI 44780

For Contrast setting a 10K pot should be used as shown in the figure.

Pin 1 2 3 4 5 6 7-14 15 16

Symbol Vss Vdd Vo RS R/W En DB0-DB7 A/Vee K Vcc

Function Ground Supply Voltage Contrast Setting Register Select Read/Write Select Chip Enable Signal Data Lines Gnd for the backlight for backlight

CGRAM 64 bytes DDRAM 80 bytes

 When RS is low (0), the data is to be treated as a command. When RS is high (1), the data being sent is considered as text data which should be displayed on the screen. When R/W is low (0), the information on the data bus is being written to the LCD. When RW is high (1), the program is effectively reading from the LCD. Most of the times there is no need to read from the LCD so this line can directly be connected to Gnd thus saving one controller line. The ENABLE pin is used to latch the data present on the data pins. A HIGH - LOW signal is required to latch the data. The LCD interprets and executes our command at the instant the EN line is brought low. If you never bring EN low, your instruction will never be executed.

Additionally, when you bring EN low and the LCD executes your instruction, it requires a certain amount of time to execute the command. After writing to the LCD, it takes some time for it to complete its internal operations. During this time, it will not accept any new commands or data. We need to insert time delay between any two commands or data sent to LCDThe LCDs internal controller can accept several commands and modify the display accordingly. These commands would be things like Display clear, cursor home, display on/off, cursor on/off, display character blink, cursor shift, display shift The time it requires to execute an instruction depends on the command and the speed of the crystal which is attached to the 44780's oscillator input. Automatic reset circuit that initializes the controller/driver after power on Internal oscillator with external resistors Low power consumption

HD44780U Block Diagram

Data RAM DDRAM - Display

Display data RAM (DDRAM) stores display data represented in 8-bit character codes. Its extended capacity is 80 X 8 bits, or 80 characters. The area in display data RAM (DDRAM) that is not used for display can be used as general data RAM. So whatever you send on the DDRAM is actually displayed on the LCD. For LCDs like 1x16, only 16 characters are visible, so whatever you write after 16 chars is written in DDRAM but is not visible to the user. Figures below will show you the DDRAM addresses of 1 Line, 2 Line and 4 Line LCDs. For first line addresses for first 15 characters is from 00h to 0Fh. But for second line address of first character is 40h and so on up to 4Fh for the 16th character. So if you want to display the text at specific positions of LCD , we require to manipulate address and then to set cursor position accordingly

Character Generator ROM (CGROM

Character Generator ROM (CGROM) Now you might be thinking that when you send an ascii value to DDRAM, how the character is displayed on LCD? so the answer is CGROM. The character generator ROM generates 5 x 8 dot or 5 x 10 dot character patterns from 8-bit character code. It can generate 208 5 x 8 dot character patterns and 32 5 x 10 dot character patterns. User defined character patterns are also available by maskprogrammed ROM.

Character Generator RAM (CGRAM)

As clear from the name, CGRAM area is used to create custom characters in LCD. In the character generator RAM, the user can rewrite character patterns by program. For 5 * 8 dots, eight character patterns can be written, and for 5 *10 dots, four character patterns can be written. Areas that are not used for display can be used as general data RAM.

LCD characters code map for 5x8 dots

Registers
The HD44780 has two 8-bit registers, an instruction register (IR) and a data register (DR). The IR stores instruction codes. The DR temporarily stores data to be written into DDRAM or CGRAM and temporarily stores data to be read from DDRAM or CGRAM. Data written into the DR is automatically written into DDRAM or CGRAM by an internal operation. . These two registers can be selected by the register selector (RS) signal. See the table :

RS

R/W Operation

0 0 1

0 1 0

IR write as an internal operation (display clear, etc.) Read busy flag (DB7) and address counter (DB0 to DB6) DR write as an internal operation (DR to DDRAM or CGRAM) DR read as an internal operation (DDRAM or CGRAM to DR)

Time Delay

As previously mentioned, it takes a certain amount of time for each instruction to be executed by the LCD. The delay varies depending on the frequency of the crystal attached to the oscillator input of the 44780 as well as the instruction which is being executed. While it is possible to write code that waits for a specific amount of time to allow the LCD to execute instructions, this method of "waiting" is not very flexible. If the crystal frequency is changed, the software will need to be modified. Additionally, if the LCD itself is changed for another LCD which, although 44780 compatible, requires more time to perform its operations, the program will not work until it is properly modified. A more robust method of programming is to use the "Get LCD Status" command to determine whether the LCD is still busy executing the last instruction received

Busy Flag (BF)

When the busy flag is 1, the LCD is in the internal operation mode, and the next instruction will not be accepted. When RS = 0 and R/W = 1 (see the table above), the busy flag is output to DB7 (MSB of LCD data bus). The next instruction must be written after ensuring that the busy flag is 0. Checking the Busy Flag You can use subroutine for checking busy flag or just a big (and safe) delay. Set R/W Pin of the LCD HIGH(read from the LCD) Select the instruction register by setting RS pin LOW Enable the LCD by Setting the enable pin HIGH The most significant bit of the LCD data bus is the state of the busy flag(1=Busy,0=ready to accept instructions/data). The other bits hold the current value of the address counter. If the LCD never come out from "busy" status because of some problems ,The program will "hang," waiting for DB7 to go low. So in a real applications it would be wise to put some kind of time limit on the delay-for example, a maximum of 100 attempts to wait for the busy signal to go low. This would guarantee that even if the LCD hardware fails, the program would not lock up.

Address Counter (AC)

The address counter (AC) assigns addresses to both DDRAM and CGRAM. When an address of an instruction is written into the IR, the address information is sent from the IR to the AC. Selection of either DDRAM or CGRAM is also determined concurrently by the instruction. After writing into (reading from) DDRAM or CGRAM, the AC is automatically incremented by 1 (decremented by 1). The AC contents are then output to DB0 to DB6 when RS = 0 and R/W= 1

Commands and Instruction set

Only the instruction register (IR) and the data register (DR) of the LCD can be controlled by the MCU. Before starting the internal operation of the LCD, control information is temporarily stored into these registers to allow interfacing with various MCUs, which operate at different speeds, or various peripheral control devices. The internal operation of the LCD is determined by signals sent from the MCU. These signals, which include register selection signal (RS), read/write signal (R/W), and the data bus (DB0 to DB7), make up the LCD instructions There are four categories of instructions that: Designate LCD functions, such as display format, data length, etc. Set internal RAM addresses Perform data transfer with internal RAM Perform miscellaneous functions

Command Codes

LCD Addressing

LCD TIMING FOR WRITE OPERATION

tD= data output delay time