LCD Shield for Arduino

Basic Info

This LCD shield, with the JHD202C display, is the first shield I have ever made. It took me about a working day to complete.

It uses pins 2 to 7 (RS, Enable, 4 data pins) to work with the LCD library available. The digital pins 8-13 can still be used thanks to a cut-out (for some reason, maybe backward compatibility, the distance between pin 7 and 8 on the Arduino is too small).

At the bottom we have connections to voltage and ground among others.

Since I used what I had in terms of PCBs (small) and also wanted to use a switch for the background light and a contrast pot, I came up with a design where the center of gravity of the LCD is outside the PCB. In the pictures below the shield slightly tilts, but in my last updated design (soldering stabilisation pin to analog 5) it is now flat.

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Design

Upper side

The picture below shows what the upper side looks like before the display is mounted. At top, connectors to pins 2-7. The upper brown wire is the ground connection for the backlight. The other two brown wires goes from ground to the trimpot, as well as from trimpot to the contrast of the LCD (LCD pin 3). Green wire links RS (pin 4) to Arduino pin 2. Blue wire links Enable (pin 6) to Arduino pin 3.

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Lower side

This is the "solder side". The connections are:

  • Pin 1 to ground (GND)
  • Pin 2 to 5 volts (5V)
  • Pin 3 to contrast (trimpot)
  • Pin 4 (RS) to Arduino digital pin 2
  • Pin 5 to GND (this is RW)
  • Pin 6 (Enable) to Arduino digital pin 3
  • Pin 7 to 10 not used
  • Pin 11 to Arduino digital pin 4
  • Pin 12 to Arduino digital pin 5
  • Pin 13 to Arduino digital pin 6
  • Pin 14 to Arduino digital pin 7
  • Pin 15 to GND (for backlight)
  • Pin 16 to 5 volts via the switch on upper side (for backlight)

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The picture below shows the lower side with the upper side semi-transparently overlayed.

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Created August 2010.
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