hello my name is Rodney , and i just got my kits last week , i tried to setup the lcd and the only thing it is doing background is blinking faintly no characters, I have checked everything as far a i can see its hooked up correctly, any suggestions on what i may have done wrong ? thanks for your help in advance.

Hello Rodney,

1st thing to check is the contrast resistor. That is the resistor behind the voltage regulator. It should be a 1K resistor and the colors should be brown black RED. It is very easy to mix this up with a 10K resistor which has similar colors of brown black ORANGE. This is a common problem that will prevent the LCD from working.

If that isn't your issue, please some good close photo's of your setup including the LCD wiring and post them for us to see. Then we can tell if the wiring is correct or not.

Instructions for posting photo's are at the bottom of this page and in THIS THREAD.

Rick

1. ! http://i.imgur.com/ZUMV6.jpg
2. ! http://i.imgur.com/HyLEa.jpg
3. ! http://i.imgur.com/7Icdg.jpg

here are three pics i hope you can tell what i have made a mistake, i checked the resistor and the third color is red. thanks for your help.

1 2 3

woohoo i got it right this time i do believe

Hi Rodney -

Hope you like your new kit. It looks like some of the wires going into the LCD board are pretty loose...or they have been stripped at uneven lengths, I can't be sure. The wires need to be snugly fit into the sockets. Also, now that you've mastered imgur, a photo showing both the breadboard and the LCD would be more informative (basically the same photo you have just zoomed out at 2x distance).

Rodney...

Sorry I didn't see photo # 1. No need to re-post a photo.

Rodney,

It appears your data lines are in the wrong positions. There should be two empty spots at the end of the LCD connector. These are for the backlight.

Maybe this will help:

Notitce how the last two (Pins 15 & 16 are backlight)

Rick

gotcha thanks that solved the problem i appreciate your help :)

No problem... That's why photo's help so much.