Once I’ve got several HQM1286404 graphical LCD displays around so I decided to build a prototyping board where I could easily plug LCD to it, read data via ADC and display graphs, plug keypad if needed for some menu functions. Earlier I was testing graphical LCD on prototype breadboard, but dealing with multiple wires (GLCD needs 20 of them) resulted in many failures. It is OK to do simple tasks, but more serious applications require more stable platform. So here it is:

This type of GLCD is standard 128×64 pixel matrix controlled by KS0108 LCD controller. Ones I have comes with smaller non common pin-header where pins have 2mm step, so I had to draw it for Eagle library which you will find in project files. I decided to make very simple circuit so it could fit in 100×50mm single sided PCB. As base MCU I used Atmega16 which can be replaced with Atmega32 which is pin compatible with Atmega16 just have more data memory.

The main features list:

• Atmega16 or ATmega32 microcontroller;

• High speed with 16MHz quartz;

• Can be programmed ISP;

• RS232 Communication with on-board MAX232;

• Adjustable AREF;

• Voltage regulator on board with power LED;

• Graphical LCD connector;

• 3 ADC inputs;

• 10 I/O pins for custom use;

• 100×50mm easy to build single sided PCB;

• Reset button.

PCB overlay for quick pin finding:

Working with graphical LCD is really simple. Just find suitable KS0108 library and you can output information with few commands. If you work with WinAVR tool-set, I recommend to download KS0108 Library which was written by Fabian Maximilian Thiele some time ago. As his site link is dead you can download it from here.

It is easy to add new characters in this library. Just download GLCDFontCreator2 and with this java program you can fetch fonts from you windows system and automatically convert them to character arrays and save them in .h format ready to include to project.

Download Eagle schematic, PCB and sample WinAVR project.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 10:16 pm and is filed under AVR Microcontrollers, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.