To establish good communication between the human world and the machine world, display units play an important role. And so they are an important part of embedded systems. Display units - big or small, work on the same basic principle. Besides complex display units like graphic displays and 3D displays, one must know to work with simple displays like 16x1 and 16x2 units. The 16x1 display unit will have 16 characters and are in one line. The 16x2 LCD will have 32 characters in total 16 in 1st line and another 16 in 2nd line. Here one must understand that in each character there are 5x10=50 pixels so to display one character all 50 pixels must work together.

Supplies

Seeed Studio - Grove RGB LCD

Step 1: Intro

Besides complex display units like graphic displays and 3D displays, one must know to work with simple displays like 16x1 and 16x2 units. The 16x1 display unit will have 16 characters and are in one line. The 16x2 LCD will have 32 characters in total 16 in 1st line and another 16 in 2nd line. Here one must understand that in each character there are 5x10=50 pixels so to display one character all 50 pixels must work together.

Grove - LCD RGB Backlight is a full-color backlight 16x2 LCD. High contrast and ease of use make it a perfect I2C LCD display for Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

Step 2: Circuit Diagram

Unlike other 16x2 LCDs, Grove LCD works on the I2C connections. This eases the hassle of connecting the screen with the Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Along with the VCC and GND lines, this LCD just requires SDA(Serial Data) and SCL(Serial Clock). It means we just need 4 wires to make this LCD work rather than 14 pins of other LCDs.

Step 3: How I2C Works?

Here is the detailed explanation for the same:

SDA(SerialData) – The line for the master and slave to send and receive data.
SCL (Serial Clock) – The line that carries the clock signal.

I2C is a serial communication protocol, so data is transferred bit by bit along a single wire (the SDA line). Like SPI, I2C is synchronous, so the output of bits is synchronized to the sampling of bits by a clock signal shared between the master and the slave. The clock signal is always controlled by the master.

You can learn more about the I2C communication protocol here.
Now, if you want to create a project where you need to use the specific functions, you can easily do this by going through the examples from the repository in the attachments.

Check out other products from Seeed Studio are Raspberry Pi 4 and Seeeduino Nano.