Code to drive an LCD?

[beezlebot]

Looking for code to drive a character or graphics LCD from Labview.

[Jack_A.]

This a very open ended question. It all depends on how your LCD communicate to your PC (typically, through a serial port) and then your LabVIEW code would send the approriate commands through the serial port. These commands are also specific to your LCD. Search our support site (www.ni.com/support) for serial examples if that is how your LCD works.

Jack Arnold
Application Engineer
National Instruments

[Labviewguru]

Beexlebot,

As Jack has suggested, this is a very open question. However; I would like to add the following:

I don't believe that there is a piece of software out there that fits your needs, from what I can tell by your inquiry. I would also suggest, that if something does exist, that someone would not be willing to part with it for free.

I believe that this forum is more a discussion of methods, tips, tricks, support, etc, than it is a place of getting drivers for obscure instruments, although it can oft times be found.

To actually answer the question you have posted, as I interpret it, you need to get the manual for the LCD, and determine what you need to do. I would suggest determining what architecture you need, what communications method
is required, and then set about writing a driver.

To my knowledge, the drivers that exist for LCD ALL exist as standard, embedded drivers or packages. I am working with, on a high level basis, an LCD based test program. I believe that the bitmap portion of the embedded test software is a package obtained from the manufacturer, and then modified for their use.

I suspect you are going to have a tough time doing this in LabVIEW using a PC. You may have to go to Embedded Linux in order to use LabVIEW, or purchase a driver for the LCD with a serial interface, and drive the LCD that way.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out. Also, feel free to post your code on the exchange. I'm sure someone else out there wants your work for free...

[James Dorsey]

I have written an application in Labview to control a 2x16 character LCD through the PC parallel port. It's really cool and it works great! email me if you still need it jamie@megahits.com