More Powerful LCD Commands

[DavidK]

Art
Interesting!!

I may need a little coaching. My goal is to print up a set of instructions, save them as a text file (formatted for screen width), convert to hex then burn to an EEPROM. Calls would be made to EEPROM strings by line number. Not sure this is all possible but nice idea. This could be used for either LCD, RS-232 or USB connections.
David

A routine very similar to mister_e's could easily be used to centre text to the LCD screen.
It's almost funny to see such a request of the language itself.

For a 16 character display, count the length of the message to display, divide that by 2,
and print the message that many spaces to the left of centre (or 8 minus that figure).

If you want to print it all to the right, start from 16 (or length of the LCD screen) minus the length of the message.

To use EEPROM, set a two byte qualifier recognised by your program, then you can count the bytes until
you reach the next qualifier to gain the length of the message.
You only need to use the LCDOUT command once in your whole program to send one single variable byte at a time.
Same with serout, sound, etc. as they can be called from other routines. any more is overkill.

PBP only includes these routines once in your program, no matter how many times you use them.
There's no reason why the programmer should do any different.

[alphahr]

OK, two things, 16F84 is rapidly becoming part of history and there is a lot of stock around to use yet. I have a lot of various types of LCD's of the standard 44780 type and it would be great to dedicate several 84's to becoming an 8 bit LCD driver with serial in essentially making it a serial display. Sure, serial displays are common now, but they are still $30 or more and basic 44780 displays are available in surplus outlets for $1. I'd rather save a couple of bytes of mem by using the display in 8 bit mode.

Second, is the LCDOUT modifiable so that a standardized PIC to LCD pin out can be used? There are about as many ways to wire an LCD as there pins. I like to use B0-B7 and A0-A2 for all 8 bit LCD configurations with 84, 627,628. And, what is the code standard for a serial in LCD module, it gets very confusing out there, everyone has an opinion.

Move along, these aren't the droids we are looking for

[Archangel]

Check the post 16 on this thread: http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=4972