 When it comes to displaying information using Arduino you have a couple different options. One is to use a character display like this where you just have a couple LEDs per letter per number whatever this is per character and then using this you can display letters like H You can do A's you can do one to nine you do whatever you want It's a very simple display. You can't really show too much using this Your next option is to go with a dot matrix or I like to call it LED matrix Usually they're in a proportional manner. So in this case, it's a eight by eight and Then you can individually turn on each LED here allowing you to draw shapes smiley face circles Whatever you want the next step over is to use an actual character display Which kind of looks like a screen you'd see on a calculator cash register any kind of tech where it's not like an iPhone Screen, but it still displays information in this case. I've been building on stream for the past couple of streams a Smart clock that could display things like time date Temperature of the room may be temperature that outside just a bunch of different features that could play music It could do a bunch of things and LC display goes in there and then we're able to use buttons to navigate it This is definitely the one I would recommend everyone use the price difference between one of these and a dot matrix or something Like that isn't that big of a difference So I'd always say go for one of these you can get bigger ones This one is 16 by 2 so that lets you put 16 characters in the top row 16 in the bottom row You can get like a 20 by 4 or you can get like even a more complex one These are a little bit more complicated than just like an LED matrix like this one But just like our actual computer screens they work in a simple manner, but at a complex level So what you're gonna need to do this build is an actual character display You're gonna need a 220 ohm resistor that looks like this I'll put up the colors on the screen usually you just have to match the colors that are on this little blue piece that's out of focus and You'll know which one's the 220 ohm resistor you're gonna need a potentiometer which is just pretty much a screw knob It says on it 10k, which is the one we're gonna be using this is gonna be to change the brightness of the screen You're gonna need a bunch of cables in this case We're going to use mail to mail and then we're gonna throw everything on a breadboard So when we work we're gonna have our screen plugged into the breadboard. Let's say like this and Then we'll be able to plug in our ports here and then figure it out From here. Oh and also like always you're gonna need your Arduino on most sensors that we've used We've had a positive and negative and then a sensor cable And we've just used that sensor cable either as an input or as an output in this case It's a little bit more complicated We have a bunch of different pins here and we don't want me to use all of them Some we use for one kind of situation some we use for another so on the screen here I'm gonna put a picture of the actual pinout of the board the first one is our VSS That's our ground port the second one is our VDD that is our power ports Just like every sensor we've used then vo is going to be what we're gonna connect that potentiometer to so this is Just going to be a resistor so the more you turn it the stronger the light will get and then other way around It'll get weaker then you have a bunch of other ports like register read and write operation and then when it comes to our digital ports d0 to d7 is For 8-bit mode and d4 to d7 is for bit mode Don't worry if you don't understand I'm going to show you exactly what ports we're going to use when we actually build the project After that you have your power and your ground for your LCD backlight This is what lights up the screen because you light up the LEDs But then you also put a strong light behind the screen to make sure that it all shows If it's dark in the room or whatever kind of like when you put your computer into night mode and it gets a lot dimmer You're turning off that strong blue light that makes your screen brighter When you need it to be bright during the day on the screen I'm going to put another picture where I show the actual pinout and the whole system and how it connects It looks a little bit complicated So you're probably going to want to pause the video here and take your time But if you don't want to do that we'll do it together right now First thing I'm going to do is just unplug All my extra cables here And start ripping them apart So we have a lot of ports to plug in and I don't have enough cables to use red and black and let's say yellow Like on this example on the screen here. So we're just going to have to go with what we got First pin is our vss. This is our Ground pin for the Arduino now one thing we're going to do that We don't usually do in our videos is we're going to take One cable and dedicate it to ground and one cable and dedicate it to power So we're going to go onto our board onto our Arduino We're going to plug into the five volt this red cable And then we're going to plug into the breadboard on the red line Now that we plugged in here on this red line Let me zoom in a bit and what we plugged in here this whole row on top here The second row is all going to be power ports Then if we plug in the ground into the one right on top of that Now that whole first row Is going to be ground one thing you should know is when working on a breadboard These lines right here are vertical. These are horizontal. So when I plug something into vss here It's not activating the horizontal line. It's activating the vertical line So we got our ground cable here and we're just going to plug that into our ground Next one is our power. So we're going to plug that in there and plug it into our power Keep an eye out. Make sure you don't put anything into the wrong port You would really not want to burn your board or hurt yourself next up is our pretend geometer So one thing I'm going to do is just plug in straight to the board. So we're giving ourselves two ports on the top here Which will connect Two hour one port on the bottom there So we got one here two on top here and we're using that as a splitter and then on the top there We're going to get another two cables One will go in there One will go right next to that now that we got that plugged in We're going to want the bright one to be the power. So in this case our orange is going to be power And our blue is going to be another ground Make sure you got that all lined up make sure your pretend geometer is sitting good And you're actually trying to twist it left and right seems to be working for us Now one over from that is going to be our 12th cable. So we're going to plug in one over And we're going to send this to the 12th On the Arduino. Now the next one over is a ground cable So plug this in right next to that first yellow one and send it to the ground Now we're going to go to the next one over from that black one And go and plug that into 11 on the Arduino So we go yellow to 12 black to ground yellow to 11 So now we're going to skip four dots one two three four And this is going to plug into Five and then the next one's going to go into four This one goes to five Next one goes to four And the next one over that get some more cables in here It's going to go to three This one's going to go to two So just five to two is what you want to plug in the next one's in Definitely recommend looking at the diagram and coming back to your Arduino and making sure that everything's lined up and good Then we're going to use our resistor finally and recommend you take pliers And use the pliers to shove in that metal pin because it bends super easily So our resistor is going to be plugging into the second to last port here Not the most beautiful setup, but it's going to work We're going to plug into that same resistor line And that is going to be going to power Then the next one, which is another ground is going to be plugging in to the absolute last plug Which is k and that's going to be our ground. Oh Look at that. We have power on the screen So what we did there is give power to the back light There's nothing displayed on the screen because there do we know isn't outputting anything but we know that we're actually outputting power to our board and if you pull it over and look at the side here that super bright light That is the back light leaking out from the side. Let's go over it one more time First pin goes to ground second pin goes to power third pin goes to potentiometer and gets split into two pins One going to power one going to ground Then we got a yellow cable going to 12 on the board A black cable going to ground A yellow cable going to 11 Then we skip over four dots one two three four And we go over to our green cable here, which goes to five The next one goes to four the next one goes to three the last one goes to two Then we put our resistor from a into power line And then we put our blue cable from k into ground Now what we want to do is go and open up our Arduino editor and actually write some code so we could display something on the screen When you program if you've never programmed before and there's something that you need that someone else has done Usually it's called a library or a framework and you can import that into your project instead And you can import that into your project and save yourself a bunch of time Instead of you doing it yourself from scratch. So we're going to go into our tools here We're going to go into manage libraries And then you guys are going to find liquid crystal and you're going to install it Built by Arduino Adafruit. I'm using version 107 and that shouldn't really matter All you got to do is select the version just use the Latest version and install now that you have the liquid crystal library Installed and downloaded you can go and actually include it into your project So all you got to do is hashtag include liquid crystal dot h and put it inside those Arrows and it's going to include that library and now we can use it So we could right away go. I'm lazy. So I'm just going to copy paste the word here Call the library and we're going to use the lcd command and we're going to put in the pins that we use on the board So we went on 12 11 and then 5 all the way down to 2 Then that's pretty much all we got to do the screen is now activated so we can actually go and Tell it to begin and tell it what kind of screen we're using we're using a 16 by 2 And then right away after that we can call let's say print and say refresh that project compile it and upload it to our board And it should be working. Let's go and change the contrast here. Maybe we're just on a bad contrast Oh, and there we go now we have a written text on the screen And if you keep pushing this at one point, you'll probably just blow it out. Yeah Now it's too bright. So we're just going to go and lower a little bit There we go So you can technically do anything you want one thing I want to know that I actually keep forgetting about when I'm working on projects with this is if you were to print two things Let's say we print the same thing twice It's not going to erase the first one and And write over it with the second one. It's going to try and squeeze them both on so as you can see it Goes like subscribe. I don't know and then it starts to try the work the next like And it falls off the screen. So if you wanted to write the same thing on the second line, you have to set the cursor So if we go lcd dot set cursor And we tell it go to The first box on the second line So between zero and 15 and zero and one So we're going onto the first box on the second line because computers count from zero And then we write that we run this It should print the same thing on two different lines. Boom. There we go Now here's another problem we're going to run into I put the word count in the loop But I didn't clear before the print. So when I actually try and print this is going to just say the word count a thousand times I was going to freak out on the screen. So we have to go here and lcd Clear again like earlier And now every time it loops it's going to clear the screen and then put the word count Now it's kind of freaking out because i'm asking it to do it in an insane speed So we're just going to throw a little delay here until it's a do every second Let's refresh that and do it one more time Now every second it's clearing the screen and it's rewriting onto it the word count If you have any questions or want to learn more about how to use this screen How to use arduinos how to use certain sensors Or you just want to watch cool videos where I build really dumb projects that endanger my life Like this one right here where I shocked myself on twitch stream Can no one shock me for a second? I'm holding a knife You're trying to sell me? One of you dicks fucking shocked me Like the video maybe subscribe to the channel and let me know if there's anything you want to see or anything You want to learn i'm always open to it. Thanks everyone for watching and we'll see you in the next one