I was looking to display special characters (like the <squared> symbol) on the LCD Display. Mike responded with the following: Go to our Downloads page, then grab the "HD44780 (LCD Controller)" PDF file. On page 17, you'll see a chart with the entire font pattern. The character can be displayed on the LCD screen using the " lcd_write_data (0x<insert hex number of char here>)". For example, to print the bar character in the soundmeter project the statement is:

lcd_write_data (oxff);

You can also create custom characters using the method described in the PDF document. I hope someone can use this!

Nice! It's always handy to read the datasheets. A lot of features can be discovered; the NerdKits guide is a great starting point but it shouldn't be your first and only resource.

The HD44780 datasheet shows two different character sets, one with Japanese characters (half-width katakana) and the other with a mix of cyrillic and other european characters. Mine is the japanese one. Do nerdkits always have that one?

Hi bretm,

Yes -- the LCDs we currently ship all use what's called the A00 character set / font map.

Mike