LCDOut Woes

[LetTheSmokeOut]

I see no LCD defines in your code... please put them in.

They are in the PICBASIC manual and tons of examples on this forum. Set them up for the way you've got your LCD wired.

Yes, contrast works on three different (brand new) LCD's. All LCD defines are now at default which is:

PORTA.0 =Data bit 4
PORTA.1=Data bit 5
PORTA.2=Data bit 6
PORTA.3=Data bit 7
PORTA.4=R/S
PORTB.3=Enable
R/W is grounded

I Disabled MCLR to eliminate the need for pull-up and hassle. I also tried TRISA=%00000000 and TRISB=%00000000. I will post anything you need. Pictures, or anything else. I can even switch to a breadboard and eliminate possibility of circuit board issues (proto board) although I have spent literally 20 hours soldering and de-soldering an looking at every little solder joint, then using PWM and other commands to make sure the chips are good and working properly.

Thanks for your help on this. Very, very much appreciated...

[mackrackit]

Melanie is asking to see the part of your code that looks something like this;

DEFINE LCD_DREG     PORTB
define LCD_DBIT     4
DEFINE LCD_RSREG    PORTB
DEFINE LCD_RSBIT    1
DEFINE LCD_EREG     PORTB
DEFINE LCD_EBIT     0
DEFINE LCD_BITS     4
DEFINE LCD_LINES    2
DEFINE LCD_COMMANDUS    2000
DEFINE LCD_DATAUS   50

[LetTheSmokeOut]

Melanie is asking to see the part of your code that looks something like this;

DEFINE LCD_DREG     PORTB
define LCD_DBIT     4
DEFINE LCD_RSREG    PORTB
DEFINE LCD_RSBIT    1
DEFINE LCD_EREG     PORTB
DEFINE LCD_EBIT     0
DEFINE LCD_BITS     4
DEFINE LCD_LINES    2
DEFINE LCD_COMMANDUS    2000
DEFINE LCD_DATAUS   50

Yes indeed. I am using the defaults explained in the PicBasicPro manual. It states that you don't need any defines if you are going to accept the defaults which are what I stated above. Is this not the case? I've used the program with LCD defines and without, but I can put them back into the program just to make sure. I have also used defines for a different pin setup that allowed PORTB.3 to be used as PWM output while the other pins ran the LCD.

[LetTheSmokeOut]

This should be what I have setup at the moment:

(CODE)
DEFINE LCD_DREG PORTA
define LCD_DBIT 4
DEFINE LCD_RSREG PORTA
DEFINE LCD_RSBIT 4
DEFINE LCD_EREG PORTB
DEFINE LCD_EBIT 3
DEFINE LCD_BITS 4
DEFINE LCD_LINES 1
DEFINE LCD_COMMANDUS 2000
DEFINE LCD_DATAUS 50
(/CODE)

[abidr]

try using with the configuration bits as watchdog timer off and brown out detect off, power up timer on and oscillator as XT

[LetTheSmokeOut]

try using with the configuration bits as watchdog timer off and brown out detect off, power up timer on and oscillator as XT

Ok thanks I will try that. I am still working on it. I wound one coil by keeping track of counts in memory and I already have problems, I missed about 30 turns out of 900 lol! My backpack LCD (Seetron) was purchased back in 1999 and I found it works but the 16C54 it uses is bad (sends out garbage on the 3rd character placement and further) so I will have to get back on the LCDout unit using 16F628.

I will try this tomorrow and get back to you. Thanks very much for the input it is very much appreciated.

[g-hoot]

Hey LetTheSmokeOut,
I'm still pretty newbie to this stuff, but I had 2 issues that drove me nuts for a while that you never kbnow, could be one of your problems. One was that, for some reason, no matter how many times I read the PBP manual for the LCDOUT command, my mind never saw the "Flags = 0" part. Some one here pointed that out to me and that fixed one issue. The other issue was that I was getting garbage displayed sometimes and I could not display a number ending in "0" or "P". It turns out that the voltage rating fro the LCD was a minimum of 4.7 V and with the resistor I was using, it was about 4.62 or so. I changed that resistor to get the voltage up in range and that solve my bizarre problems.
Gary