As I added various things to my HCS System, I wanted to be able to display data in various locations and I wanted the enclosure to be no bigger than the display I’m using. I also wanted to use displays other than 20×4 character displays. Adding a few custom characters like arrows, a lightning bolt, etc. would make the displays more informative in less space (like to indicate a temp trend with an arrow, etc.). To meet these needs, I designed the PIC-LCD.
The PIC-LCD can support 5 different LCD display sizes, allows the creation and use of custom characters which are stored in EEPROM, supports numerous ANSI and non-ANSI control commands, and also has a beeper/backlight control pin. It does NOT support a keypad to allow for its small size. I used a serial EEPROM chip since Microchip hadn’t released Flash versions of their micro-controllers when I designed this. Now that they have, I could use a flash based PIC to store the custom characters.
For complete information about the PIC-LCD, consult the instruction manual. I never made a circuit board for this design. However, if you wish to roll your own, you can download the firmware hex file for programming and build on on breadboard using the schematic and instruction manual.
