Interfacing 16×2 LCD with Arduino

The 16×2 LCD is a cheap display that can be used to display text output from an Arduino.

Below is the schematic

1. The VO is for setting the contrast (or readability) of the characters.
2. A and K are the LED pins (backlight of the LCD)

Arduino has libraries for interfacing with this type of LCDs. The library has various examples including for text scrolling.

Basic example – simple text print

// include the library code:
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>

// initialize the library with the numbers of the interface pins
LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2); // RS, Enable, D4, D5, D6, D7

void setup() 
{
  // set up the LCD's number of columns and rows:
  lcd.begin(16, 2);
  // Print a message to the LCD.
  lcd.print("hello, world!");
}