Brick Labs

Well, as I mentioned here, I bought the Seeedstudio  Electronic brick – Starter kit.  It includes a handy shield for working with the various components included with the Starter kit.

One of the components is the 16×2 LCD display.

While this is kind of handy… it was a real nuisance to get sorted out and working with the Netduino.  I think it’s a combination of many factors… 1 being that  there aren’t a lot of libraries ready yet for the Netduino… and 2, I’m not that handy with all this stuff yet.

But… I finally did manage to make it work.  After much poking, prodding, downloading of projects, tweaking of code, and fortunately, no burnt offerings (in the way of fried components).  It works!

To make this work…

First, go here, and download the MicroLiquidCrystal_20100905.zip file.  You can find it at the bottom of the post (from Szymon, a forum member here… Thanks!)

Then, load up your project.  Use the GpioLiquidCrystalTransferProvider as your provider.

Finally, setup your provider code as follows:

GpioLiquidCrystalTransferProvider lcdProvider = new GpioLiquidCrystalTransferProvider(Pins.GPIO_PIN_D10,
                                Pins.GPIO_PIN_D11,
                                Pins.GPIO_PIN_D12,
                                Pins.GPIO_PIN_D13,
                                Pins.GPIO_PIN_A0,
                                Pins.GPIO_PIN_A1,
                                Pins.GPIO_PIN_A2
               ); 

      LiquidCrystal lcd = new LiquidCrystal(lcdProvider);

And, you’ll end up with a screen like the one above…

Please keep in mind.  Due to the way this LCD works, you can’t control certain features.  For instance, I don’t think you can control the Backlight, or the On/Off status of the LCD from code (there are hard switches on the LCD board).

And the library doesn’t have all the cool features yet of an aged library (scrolling text, or blinking text, etc).  But… considering the Netduino has only been out for a short time… I’m happy for now!