Flutterby™! : LCD successes 2007-11-17 23:45:58.270203+00

LCD successes

2007-11-17 23:45:58.270203+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

A while back I ended up with a shelf full of devices that had displays and stepper motors and buttons. They were prototypes, and I got them with the condition that they not go to anyone else in their semi-recognizable condition. This week I was down in the basement and realized that no matter what I was going to have to disassemble them and get rid of the cases, so I did, and since I've been playing with microcontrollers recently I grabbed a display and wired it up so that I could see if I could talk to it.

The only number on the back of the display was ACM-1601E, the datasheet that brought up wasn't too useful, but I guessed, based on the pin names, that it'd be roughly compatible with the Hitachi 44780 controller, and after a bit of digging through this LCD interfacing page I finally figured out that it may look to me like 1 line of 16 characters, but to the controller it was two lines of 8 characters.

Haven't had the guts to hook up the backlight to anything to see if it smokes yet...

As I start hacking hardware again, I start to realize I need much more space to lay stuff out and have it stay -exactly- like I need it. Cats don't know not to walk across the bus-bars, and co-habitants, even ones as wonderful as Nancy, feel compelled to move things around and stack things... and as I'm not playing with just micro-electronics and low voltage.. this could be bad.

OK, I don't move things around. Well, unless you're talking about my moving (your) things from 'my side' of the desk to your side? I do REmove dirty dishes and nasty paper towels. And I do stack mail up on your keyboard.

It was interesting to me how our take on this differed. ;0) But I'm certainly all for avoiding death by electrocution!

Maybe the sewing room needs to become the electronics room? I can always use the dining room for sewing...I'm gonna make a quilt during my break between semesters.

Nancy, one interesting little bit that happened here was that I went looking for a device I had, and I couldn't figure out where it went. Finally, I realized that the last time I'd seen it was when I was working on a project with Charlene.

When I asked Charlene where that box was, we opened it up and lo and behold not only was my device there, but there were a few other things that I'd wondered where they'd disappeared to.

So sometimes it's just the function of attempting to distribute that cognitive load over more than one person, and sometimes it's stuff that would happen even worse with only one person involved in the loop, but because there'd be no external process there'd be no one to blame but myself.

And THAT is why you should always have a pet! Our cat has been known to do ALL KINDS OF STUFF. After finding a twist tie (one of her favorite toys) on the shoulder of a suit jacket hanging in my closet this morning, I am more of a believer in her abilities than ever!

I expect a lot of malicious behavior from her, but if our cat ever starts hiding multi-meters and development boards from me I'm going to be very very afraid.