I'm asking the wider community for a little help please. I've picked up a 20x4 character display from a local electronics shop and I'm stuck on how to connect to it. The board has a reference C2042A on it with a piggy back board attached to the usual 16 pin mounts. The piggy back board has two sets of pins 4 off and 6 off, and the chip on board is a microchip 16F819. I would welcome any details or connection diagram / links to info as my searches so far are drawing a blank. Many thanks Degs

http://www.futurel.bg/datasheets/5/C2042A.pdf

So hard to ask google???

Hi Jorg, I have this data thanks but I don't understand it because it doesn't relate to the piggy back board that's connected to the main board? As mentioned in my post I have a 4 pin connection and a 6 pin connection not the 16 pin connection.

Than You have to look for the schematic of Your Board what the Pins are for....

I have really tried! The piggy back board reference just says LCD03 I suppose it must be a specific variant by the manufacturer. I might just end up soldering wires to it and see what combination works!

there must be a schematic of the board. witch board is it?

The board has a sticker on it NY-C2042H-YFSNDY-B0 201101B The board has an etch reference MT WD-6 E217290

Most of the searches I have tried have resulted only in Chinese references with no meaning.

thats the piggyback board for the mbed? when Yes ask the dealer for a data scheet or took a gauge to find out how the lines are connectet to your mbed

You are dealing with a custom made device. It consists of a regular 4x20 LCD display (type C2042H) and a separate add-on board that controls the display. The piggy-back was never part of the display. The microchip PIC16F819 is the controller on the add-on. It runs some dedicated software that you probably will not be able to re-use. If you want to try figure out was it is you will have to reverse engineer it by tracing the connections. Find out what the powerconnections are and try it out. Maybe something helpfull will show on the display (eg product or manufacturername).

I recommend not to waste any time on the add-on board. Just remove it carefully and use the display as a regular standard 4x20 LCD.

Note: you may want to try my new TextLCD lib on the display...

See https://mbed.org/cookbook/Text-LCD-Enhanced

Hi Wim, thanks for that I did try tracing the power pins and found it has a back light display, so I'll just remove the piggy back board as you suggest. I've tried your new library last night working brilliant Thanks for the time and effort you spent to put that library together, I never expected all this from my original first call for help :-)

I'm reading the notes on the website at the moment to correctly publish my library for the Magnevation board Motor Driver with comments and pictures hopefully.

Hi Derek,

the LCD03 is Devantech's serial driver board for the display. Have a look at http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/Lcd03tech.htm

The four pin connector is serial comms (+5V, Tx, Rx, and GND from top to bottom) and the 6 pin connection is for an optional keypad. The display is operated by serial communication with the daughterboard.

Ross

Thanks for that information Ross I knew someone would source it. Thanks for your efforts but I'd carefully removed it, might have a go at putting it back now :-)

Degs