• January
  • 30th
  • 2008

HD44780 FTDI USB LCD

Posted by MaEl in: Do-it-Yourself Comments (9)


Objective :

  • simple wiring usb lcd (less components=less work=less cost)
  • compatible with windows and linux
  • Plug n Play(USB – modern PC usually don’t have parallel port anymore)

Inspiration:

Simple USB LCD
SlugTerm – A Terminal for my Slug

Details

The FTDI chip support bit bang mode in 8 bits.Some chip even have dual controller so it doubles to 16 bits.The lcdproc-development(linux) already have the HD44780-ftdi driver for the dual controller based.The HD44780 is driven in 8 bits using the first channel and using the second channel for controlling the RS,RW,E and backlight.

However for this project,It requires only one channel of the bit bang mode.The HD44780 will be driven in 4 bits mode.4 bits of the bit bang mode are for data and other 3 will be used for RS,RW,E.The extra 1 bit can be use for controlling backlight,key..etc

Drivers

For windows, there is a driver for lcd smartie written by Nick_Shl.
For linux, I’ve modified the hd44780-ftdi drivers for lcdproc.Now, It worked for 4 bits wiring too.Later, I post it to the development.

Components:

  • HD44780 compatible display
  • FTDI chip that support bit-bang mode.
  • 2 resistors (10k for contrast and 100k for backlight)

Wiring example

This is a universal wiring diagram for connecting the HD44780 and the FTDI chip.Both lcdproc and lcd smartie driver use this wiring diagram by default.
Wiring
Both drivers support soft wiring.So no matter how you wire the terminal, you can always define it back in the driver.

Sample

Here are some pictures from the development
dev
dev
FTDI 245R
Casing

p1050322.jpg

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9 Responses to “HD44780 FTDI USB LCD”

  1. locki Says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 12:38 am

    hi a have lcd 20×4 chars connected witch USB – FTDI 245BL chip in windows i use lcdmartie. I have troubles on linux – ubuntu. Can you post some how to? how install drivers how configuje lcdproc ?

    thanks

    Locki from country where have best beer on the world :-)

  2. Anonymous Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 7:57 am

    hello i lost your email with your help to me :-( can you send me email again ?

    thanks

  3. locki Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 7:58 am

    hello i lost your email with your help to me can you send me email again ?

    thanks

  4. tab Says:
    September 14th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    Hi, thanks a lot for this page! I’ve used the design in a little hobby project of mine, together with lcdproc (I used the latest from CVS).

    (I found that it got much easier to set the backlight level using a 220ohm potentiometer instead of the of the 100kohm one to the right in the wiring diagram.)

  5. NIXIE Says:
    October 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Where is the C source file?

  6. USB’den Karakter LCD bağlamak « Yeni Nesil İnternet Portalı Says:
    August 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am

    [...] Englund: Simple USB LCD piXca.net HD44780 FTDI USB LCD LCD Smartie • View topic – Simply LCD USB connect based on FTDI [...]

  7. dagus Says:
    April 25th, 2011 at 9:29 am

    Hi need help with linux and driver for ftdi, how do you modify driver on 4-bit mode, for LCDproc? I have ftdi chip and 20×4 hd44780 compatible driver and i need help from you, how modify driver so he worked with linux. Thank you for your reply. Daniel Jaroš, from Czech Republic.

  8. Daniel Tok Says:
    June 8th, 2011 at 4:35 am

    HI, I was wondering where can i find the FTDI driver you modified for it to work with the 245R with LCDProc? Your help will be greatly appricated :)

  9. MaEl Says:
    June 20th, 2011 at 4:55 am

    The driver is already included in LCDproc. Specify driver to hd44780-ftdi with these parameters

    ftdi_mode == 4
    ftdi_line_RS=0×40
    ftdi_line_RW=0×20
    ftdi_line_EN=0×10

    * RS,RW,EN depends on your wiring setup

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