Introduction
Sometimes it may be necessary to use a display while making a hardware project, but the size and the type of the display may vary according to the application. In a previous project, we used a 0.96″ I2C OLED display, and in this project we will have an I2C 20×4 character display.
Project Parts
This tutorial will describe how to use 20 x 4 LCD display with Arduino to print a real-time clock and date.
This liquid crystal display has 4 lines, 20 character in each line and cannot be used to display graphics. The main feature of this display that it uses I2C interface, which means that you will need only two wires to connect with Arduino. At the back side of the screen there is a small PCB soldered in the display, this circuit is a serial LCD 20 x 4 module and it also has a small trimpot to adjust the contrast of the LCD.
Display’s backlight is blue and the text is white. It is fully compatible with Arduino and has 5V input voltage. Its I2C address could be 0x27 or 0x3F. You can get it for about $7 from Bangood store.
DS3231 is a low-cost, accurate I2C real-time clock (RTC), with an integrated temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) and crystal. The device incorporates a battery input, so that if power is disconnected it maintains accurate time.
RTC maintains seconds, minutes, hours, day, date, month, and year information. Less than 31 days of the month, the end date will be automatically adjusted, including corrections for leap year. The clock operates in either the 24 hours or band / AM / PM indication of the 12-hour format. Provides two configurable alarm clock and a calendar can be set to a square wave output. Address and data are transferred serially through an I2C bidirectional bus.
This RTC module operates at input voltage range between 3.3V and 5.5V, so it can be connected with 3.3V or 5V pins. It is available on Banggood store for about $2.
Connecting the LCD with Arduino UNO
At first we will connect the LCD with Arduino to display some text and to learn how it works.
Read more: Real Time Clock On 20×4 I2C LCD Display with Arduino
