Raspberry Pi to Serial LCD

History

When I bought my first Raspberry Pi, I had all kinds of great plans for it. There was so much I could do if I could just figure it out and think of some good projects. The first R-Pi I bought was the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+. It cost me a mere $30 for an SBC (Single-Board Computer) that runs a Linux O/S and could connect directly to USB keyboards and HDMI monitors.

I quickly created a list of projects that could make use of the power here, especially since this SBC has an I/O header that allows you to interface to many different types of accessories and sensors. The problem was that, in all the research and trying different accessories and operating systems, by the time I got to this project, the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 came out!

I purchased the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B when it came out and the list of possible projects moved to that, leaving the older unit aside. By the time I purchased a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, I had all but forgotten about some of the projects and got side-tracked with setting up and running RetroPie. In fact, I bought a second unit so that I could dedicate one to RetroPie.

Looking Back at the Raspberry Pi Model B+

My original Raspberry Pi Model B+ was not being used. In fact it was gathering dust! In a panic I took it back out and decided to experiment with the I/O interface on this unit, figuring that, if I damaged it, no big deal.

So, I took the cover off the enclosure and connected three F-F pluggable wires between the R-Pi I/O header and a Parallax 4×40 Serial LCD. You can see the GPIO pinout diagram I used to make the following connections:

• R-Pi GPIO pin 4 (5V Power) to LCD 5V pin
• R-Pi GPIO pin 6 (Ground) to LCD GND pin
• R-Pi GPIO pin 8 (UART0_TXD) to LCD RX pin

Here is the GPIO pinout diagram for this model, for your reference. As you can see, the three pins we need, 4, 6 and 8, are side-by-side in one corner, making it easy to connect some F-F pluggable wires.

Once the connections were made I used Scratch (installed on ******) to write code to communicate with the serial LCD. Scratch is an interesting language because you don’t need to write any code. Instead, you connect blocks that resemble puzzle pieces. Each block has a function and many have adjustable parameters.

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Resources

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