20. Arduino for Production! AVR Atmega32 - How to write our First LCD Program

Purchase my new book: Arm Microcontroller Programming and Circuit Building Volume 1

Please watch: "Buildyourcnc CNC Router on Love Yurts"
Patrick's Tip Jar:
bitcoin:1Gtawd29Sgu5CdvfUnkRg1YBfowCawjFdH
Ether:0xa962365100011B79097A7bb9DD51A53eE98266bb
If you have found this video to be helpful, consider making a tip. Thanks.
Official Page with More Information:

In this video, I introduce the #define statement for ease of code reuse and readability, and I go on to explain the construction of the first program to display information on the LCD. connecting an LCD to an Arduino or AVR atmega microcontroller is simple and I explain it in a way you can understand the low level Arduino programming concepts.

Equipment that I use to make videos:

[jiezhu]

Every new embedded software engineer should watch this series

[FilterStepp]

I've just started studying engineering, and there couldn't have been a better way to learn microcontrollers. Thank you so much for going through the effort of making these videos :D
It's helping countless people.

[zetkorp]

Mr Hood-Daniel, I would like to thank you for all these videos. I was looking for something comprehensible about beginning with atmega AVR and I definitely found it. It really got me started. Thank you again.

[stonail]

These series are best.Thank you Patrick for the effort and sharing your knowledge.

[classyjohn]

Thank you so much for making these videos. I've been trying to learn how to program an LCD on my own using datasheets and a different microcontroller but its been really confusing. I really appreciate the content made to cater to newbies or people who lack a technical background.

[arimnus_]

Ten years late to the party, but if you're a beginner like me and don't have a potentiometer on hand for the contrast you can set PD6 up for PWM and wire it to pin 3 on the display:

DDRD |= 1<<DDD6;
OCR0A = 81;
TCCR0A |= 1<<COM0A1;
TCCR0A |= 1<<WGM01 | 1<<WGM00;
TCCR0B |= 1<<CS01;

[PatrickHoodDaniel]

Sorry I couldn't get to you comment earlier. Great that you found them. You can also use the tables on the internet.

[PatrickHoodDaniel]

@eerereps You are very welcome and thanks for the kind words.

[kenlectron]

The best and easy tutorial ! This script is working very great on my 16x2 LCD .

[PatrickHoodDaniel]

Hey xelionizer,

You are quite right. Actually, the intention was to start out in the beginner form and move to intermediate quietly. It's like building up on the fundamentals. The fundamentals are in the first few videos and then those fundamentals are simply applied rather than explained. If there is information that is not understood, it's best to review the first videos. I plan to make the transcripts searchable on newbiehack, so the fundamentals can be found quickly.

[Bob]

Hi Patrick
I wanted to thank you for the excellent tutorials. They have been very helpful. I would like to offer something, if it hasn't been mentioned yet in your comments area. I realize some of these videos are starting to get a little "aged", though, they still work just fine. There is a deprecation issue with your "send string" libraries. As written, at least with Atmel Studio 7 (current release of GCC escapes me at the moment) there is a deprecation warning during the builds.

... deprecated conversion from string constant to 'char*' [-Wwrite-strings] ...
These functions need a slight conversion to char const *string rather than as they are currently char *string.

Just an FYI to help out those that are just now discovering your tutorials, or the ones coming soon.

thanks again.
Bob

[listner]

Hi, thank you for this tutorials you helped me clear up a lot of things. When I move to ARM and that should be soon I will most def. support you and buy breakout and programmer from your shop.

I have just one small suggestion since among other things I'm a programmer. Please do not name variables like light switch, or MRLCDsCrib and similar it's very hard to follow because mostly people are thinking (and should think) in terms as data direction register, port D on micro controller, enable pin on LCD and so on. It's much better for beginners also to learn in proper terms and it's so much more helpful when debugging because variables are named by what they are and not by abstract terms also it is very good and time honoured practice in programming to do so.

Thanks and keep up the awesome work!

[PatrickHoodDaniel]

@amtpdb1 Thanks. These videos are a starting point for beginners, so I encourage experimentation. Many people, like myself, enjoy learning through example. Generally, my initial videos will go into depth on various techniques, but, of course, I don't warn of possible issues of pitfalls. As more videos are developed, I will go into some of these in more explanation.

[sanjayrajatnahata]

Hi Patrick When are you starting next set of AVR Tutorial waiting For next set of AVR Tutorial and I must tell YOU that You are excellent Thank You I learn t that learning can be so easy just because of the way you teach again Thank You

[iftikharabid]

Dear Patrick Hood Daniel, Just to give you a feedback that you are doing a very good job. Keep it up. . . :)

[lanchanoinguyen]

the c language is familiar with bash wich i like its simple and clearly.every variations are all defined and we can view their values.

[PatrickHoodDaniel]

@eerereps I will be starting a UART tutorial that will cover communication through RS-232 using the MAX232 IC, and I will also provide a tutorial on RS-485, and a version that communicates on a single line that switches between RX and TX. Buffering the signal will be addressed.

[alurihariharan]

thanks for clear explanation sir rocking...

[nebe]

Hi, thanks for this tutorial, the time and effort put into these videos is greatly appreciated.

I had some strange behaviour where my LCD would only display a few of the characters; It was quite puzzling. I then realized my chip was set up to run at 8 MHz. When I changed the fuse bits and F_CPU to run at 1 MHz the code worked like a charm. So it seems the delays used in the code has to be adjusted when running at different clock speeds. Not quite sure why. Maybe I just had to add more assembler 'nop' statements...

I really enjoyed learning how a LCD works and I'm looking forward to watching the next videos. 

[oskarlarneby]

Thank you so much for these videos! They are very informative. I really look forward to the ones on PWM and serial communication. Keep up the good work!