Makers, developers and hobbyists in search of USB and serial LCD backpack board complete with cable, may be interested to know that the awesome online Adafruit store now has them in stock.
Priced at $12.95 the new add-on board is also available with a range of different LCD displays to suit your exact requirements. Adafruit explains a little more about the new addition to their range.
Adding a character display to your project or computer has never been easier with the new Adafruit USB or TTL serial backpack! This custom-designed PCB can connect to the back of any 16×2 or 20×4 character LCD and does everything you could want: printing text, automatic scrolling, setting the backlight, adjusting contrast, making custom characters, turning on and off the cursor, etc. It can even handle our RGB backlight LCDs with full 8-bit PWM control of the backlight. That means you can change the background color to anything you want – red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse, or just leave it off for a neutral background. On non-RGB backlights you’ll be able to dim the backlight (it’s on the same pin as the ‘Red’ LED)
Inside this backpack is an USB-capable AT90USB162 chip that listens for commands both a mini-B USB port and a TTL serial input wire. The USB interface shows up as a COM/serial port on Windows/Mac/Linux. The backpack will automatically select data from whichever input is being used. For the USB connection, it will work at any baud rate. For the TTL connection, the default baud rate is 9600 but you can send it a command to set the baud rate to 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 28800, or 57600 baud. (The baud rate is flashed on the LCD during powerup). Any customizations such as baud rate, backlight color, brightness, splash screen, etc. are stored permanently EEPROM.
Jump over to the Adafruit online store for full specifications and to purchase via the link below.
Source: Adafruit
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