This is an inexpensive way of providing visual output for a Raspberry Pi media centre. It lists the track title and artist when playing mp3′s for example, and could be used when the media centre is controlled by an android remote but no RCA or HDMI screen is connected.
AndyPi sells a complete kit of parts, including the LCD, wires & contrast adjustment potentiometer (on eBay, currently IN STOCK). The installation instructions below are given step-by-step, and requires no additional knowledge. Advanced users please note this replaces some XBMC configuration files, see part (5) for more information.
To setup your RASPMBC with the LCD:
1. Install RASPBMC to your Pi’s SD card. Look here for instructions http://www.raspbmc.com/download/ for installation from Windows / Mac / Linux.
2. Wire up you HD44780 LCD (obviously with the power off!)
On the LCD itself, wire K to VSS (This is done for you in AndyPi’s kit). Wire RW to K (using the single female-female wire in AndyPi’s kit), and fit a the contrast-control potentiometer between VO and VSS (Turn the potentiometer to change the contrast of the LCD screen to suit, once you have set everything up).
Then, connect the LCD to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins as follows. This works on Model A, Model B rev1 and Model B rev2. You can find diagrams for the GPIO pins here and here. If you can print of the “Raspberry Leaf” (supplied free with AndyPi’s new kits), you can put this over the pins to make identifying them simpler.
[NOTE: Updated 26/03/13 - Wiring instructions & software (LCDd.conf) have been updated swapping GPIO14 & GPIO18. I've swapped these pins so GPIO18 can control the backlight via PWM in Raspbian (watch out for a future post) so you wouldn't need to swap wires when switching between RASPBMC & Raspbian. If you've got a working system, you don't need to change it, and if you are starting from scratch, you can just ignore this note. Just don't use wiring from 24th March and software from 26th March or vice versa.]
LCD ========== GPIO
VSS —————- GND (pin 6)
VDD —————- +5V (pin 2)
A (Anode) ——— GPIO18 (pin 12) [previously GPIO14]
D7 —————— GPIO14 (pin 8) [previously GPIO18]
D6 —————— GPIO23 (pin 16)
D5 —————— GPIO24 (pin 18)
D4 —————— GPIO25 (pin 22)
E ——————– GPIO08 (pin 24)
RS —————— GPIO07 (pin 26)
3. Start up your RASPBMC, Go into the “System” menu on the far right, go into “System” and in “Video output” click the check box to “Enable LCD/VFD”
4. Click the power button, and from the menu, Click “Exit”. Keep tapping “ESC” and you should end up at the command line which will ask you for your login: “pi” and password: “raspberry”. (the first time you do this you will be asked to select your location and time zone). Then, download the installer file – simply type:
sudo wget http://andypi.co.uk/downloads/lcd-install
and then install by typing:
sudo bash lcd-install
This will install the necessary files, and finally restart into RASPBMC with:
sudo shutdown -r now
5. Tweaking for advanced users. Take a look at the lcd-install script, which references a number of XBMC configuration files (lcd.xml, advancedsettings.xml). You can edit these to customise what is displayed on the LCD. See the following links for background information:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Userdata/LCD.xml
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15967
http://www.tech-fruits.com/hardware/setting-up-lcd-via-gpio-on-raspi-part-2/