LC Display with I2C Bus

Okay, your microcontroller program is finished and now you want to see some text and other stuff on a display. Unfortunately, the LCD you happen to have available seems to take up rather a lot of precious port pins. Even worse, the driver you’ve been able to unearth from a software archive seems to rely on other port pins than the ones you had in mind…Usually, a lot of hard work has been done, including the mental digestion of piles of datasheets, before the first ‘Hello World’ message appears on your microcontroller system display. We propose an end to this rather wasteful process by describing a universally applicable LC display with a nice set of features, employing the I2C bus which translates in the use of just 2 (say, two) of the precious port pins on your microcontroller. Admittedly the small printed circuit needed for the universal LCD board represents extra hardware, but you’ll soon find that it’s well worth the investment.