How to Use a Nokia 5110 84X48 LCD Display With Your Arduino (It's Easy and Cheap!)

It's cheap and easy to add an 84X48 LCD to your Arduino project.  These Nokia 5110 displays are surplus from the Nokia phones of the late 90's.  While the tech is old, it makes a fantastic backlit display for your Arduino projects.  There is a ton of library support too.  

The cost - cheap!  You can buy these displays from Adafruit and Sparkfun for $10.  If you are really a cheapskate, these LCD's can be found on eBay for $3 apiece, shipped direct from China.

Watch the video to learn all about the LCD, libraries, hooking up the LCD to your Arduino, and writing the code to make it work.

Comments

[emallon]

You can save ~500 bytes of program space with these screens by storing the font def in the Arduino's internal eeprom:
https://thecavepearlproject.org/2018/08/24/tutoria...

That post has links to a helper utility on Github which will show you how ot load both the fonts & extra header data in that eeprom.

[PhantomLAX]

is there any reason you cant use a nokia 6500 screen

[thegrendel]

I've worked with quite a number of these 5110 displays, and like you, have mostly
gotten them cheap from China via eBay. One thing to be aware of -- some of these
displays will *not* work with Vcc at 3.3 volts. Some require approximately 2.8 volts,
and this is okay with 3.3v Vcc, using a voltage-divider pot. The ones that are problematic need 4 volts or more, which can be dropped from 5v Vcc, but from 3.3v you need a booster. Running these problem children at 3.3v gets you a very dim display.

[migsantiago]

Yup! This LCD is so awesome and easy to use. I have a C library for the raspberry pi :D

http://www.migsantiago.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26:libreria-nokia-5110-para-raspberry-pi-y-otras-plataformas&catid=1:tutorial&Itemid=23