LCD 16x2 HD44780 Tutorial 2 - Basic Commands and Displaying Text

In this post, I will explain how to send commands and characters data to LCD 16x2 HD44780. From the previous tutorial, we have finished building the circuit on the breadboard. When you power up this circuit, you will see a series of square only on line 1 of the display. This is the default pattern of an uninitialized LCD display. The LCD will always reset itself to this pattern when power is applied. If you not see this pattern, you can turn the resistor variable that controls the contrast of the LCD until see this pattern.

Using INI File for Storing Application Settings on .NET C#

In this post, I will explain INI file for storing application settings such as database connection settings. INI files are simple text file which have a basic structure of sections, properties, and values. INI file have filename extension .ini, which stands for "initialization". Every property has a value delimited by an equal sign.

property=value

Properties can be grouped into sections. The sections name appear inside square brackets. Sections is not necessary needed on every INI file.

[section]
property=value

Every line that started with a semicolon is a comment.

;This is a comment

LCD 16x2 HD44780 Tutorial 1 - Basic Circuit

In this tutorial, I will explain about LCD 16x2 basic operation. LCD 16x2 that I will use have a Hitachi HD44780 (or compatible) controller chip. In this tutorial I will not use any microcontroller for controlling the LCD, but just use a series of switches, because it will be useful to understand the working principle of HD44780 controller chip. When you use microcontroller to drive LCD effectively, this experiment can be a benefical step to have more knowledge about HD44780 chip rather than just use existing library.

First step of this experiment is make the circuit. I will make this circuit on a breadboard. This is the circuit that I use for this experiment.