LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)
Introduction:
A liquid crystal display or LCD draws its definition from its name itself. It is combination of two
states of matter, the solid and the liquid. LCD uses a liquid crystal to produce a visible image.
Liquid crystal displays are super-thin technology display screen that are generally used in laptop
computer screen, TVs, cell phones and portable video games. LCD’s technologies allow displays
to be much thinner when compared to cathode ray tube (CRT) technology
Liquid crystal display is composed of several layers which include two polarized panel filters
and electrodes. LCD technology is used for displaying the image in notebook or some other
electronic devices like mini computers. Light is projected from a lens on a layer of liquid crystal.
This combination of colored light with the grayscale image of the crystal (formed as electric
current flows through the crystal) forms the colored image. This image is then displayed on the
screen.
An LCD
An LCD is either made up of an active matrix display grid or a passive display grid. Most of the
Smartphone’s with LCD display technology uses active matrix display, but some of the older
displays still make use of the passive display grid designs. Most of the electronic devices mainly
depend on liquid crystal display technology for their display. The liquid has a unique advantage
of having low power consumption than the LED or cathode ray tube.
Liquid crystal display screen works on the principle of blocking light rather than emitting light.
LCD’s requires backlight as they do not emits light by them. We always use devices which are
made up of LCD’s displays which are replacing the use of cathode ray tube. Cathode ray tube
draws more power compared to LCD’s and are also heavier and bigger.
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen is an electronic display module and find a wide range of
applications. A 16x2 LCD display is very basic module and is very commonly used in various
devices and circuits. These modules are preferred over seven segments and other multi segment
LEDs. The reasons being: LCDs are economical; easily programmable; have no limitation of
displaying special & even custom characters (unlike in seven segments), animations and so on.
A 16x2 LCD means it can display 16 characters per line and there are 2 such lines. In this LCD
each character is displayed in 5x7 pixel matrix. This LCD has two registers, namely, Command
and Data. The command register stores the command instructions given to the LCD. A command
is an instruction given to LCD to do a predefined task like initializing it, clearing its screen,
setting the cursor position, controlling display etc. The data register stores the data to be
displayed on the LCD. The data is the ASCII value of the character to be displayed on the LCD.
LCD Pin Description:
Probably this very post should have come before the number of other posts related to 8051 LCD
interfacing, but its never too late. This post will describe you about the pins of LCD normally
available in the market. It looks almost like the one shown below. As you guys can see that there
are 8 data pins along with 3 control pins. One ground and two power pins are also there. Lets
study about these pins of LCD
Pin
Function Name
No
1 Ground (0V) Ground
2 Supply voltage; 5V (4.7V – 5.3V) Vcc
3 Contrast adjustment; through a variable resistor VEE
4 Selects command register when low; and data register Register Select
when high
5 Low to write to the register; High to read from the register Read/write
6 Sends data to data pins when a high to low pulse is given Enable
7 DB0
8 DB1
9 DB2
10 DB3
8-bit data pins
11 DB4
12 DB5
13 DB6
14 DB7
15 Backlight VCC (5V) Led+
16 Backlight Ground (0V) Led-
VSS, VDD and VEE:
Pin 1 (VSS) is a ground pin and it is certainly needed that this pin should be grounded for LCD
to work properly. VEE and VDD are given +5 volts normally. However VEE may have a
potentiometer voltage divider network to get the contrast adjusted. But VDD is always at +5V.
RS, R/W and E:
These three pins are numbered 4, 5 and 6 as shown above. RS is used to make the selection
between data and command register. For RS=0, command registers selected and for RS=1
data register is selected.
R/W gives you the choice between writing and reading. If set (R/W=1) reading is enabled.
R/W=0 when writing.
Enable pins is used by the LCD to latch information presented to its data pins. When data is
supplied to data pins, a high to low pulse must be applied to this pin in-order for the LCD
to latch in the data present at the data pins. It may be noted here that the pulse must be of
minimum 450ns wide.
D0-D7:
The 8-bit data pins, D0-D7, are used to send information to the LCD or read the contents of
LCD's internal register.
"To display letters and numbers, we send ASCII code for the letters A-Z, a-z and numbers 0-9
while making RS=1. We also use RS=0 to check the busy flag bit to see if the LCD is ready to
receive information. The busy flag is D-7 and can be read when R/W=1 and RS=0, as follows: if
R/W=1, RS=0. When D7=1 (busy flag=1), the LCD is busy taking care of internal operations
and will not accept any new information. When D7=0, the LCD is ready to receive new
information. It is recommended to check the busy flag before writing any data to LCD"
Advantages of an LCD’s:
LCD’s consumes less amount of power compared to CRT and LED
LCD’s are consist of some microwatts for display in comparison to some milli watts for
LED’s
LCDs are of low cost
Provides excellent contrast
LCD’s are thinner and lighter when compared to cathode ray tube and LED
Disadvantages of an LCD’s:
Require additional light sources
Range of temperature is limited for operation
Low reliability
Speed is very low
LCD’s need an AC drive
Applications of Liquid Crystal Display:
Liquid crystal technology has major applications in the field of science and engineering as well
on electronic devices.
Liquid crystal thermometer
Optical imaging
The liquid crystal display technique is also applicable in visualization of the radio frequency
waves in the waveguide
Used in the medical application
