We’ve had RGB LCD displays in the Maker Shed for a while now and while they are really cool, they take up a bunch of pins on an Arduino. This new Positive RGB LCD Display Shield fixes that problem by using I2C for communication. Using I2C, what once took 9 pins now takes only 2! Since the shield uses the I2C bus, you can add other I2C sensors to the same pins driving the LCD. It’s a great way to incorporate an LCD into your Arduino projects without the messy wiring! It even includes 5 input buttons for building projects that require a user interface. Very nice!

Features:

• Dimensions: 2.1″ x 3.2″
• Comes with a 16×2 RGB backlight LCD, positive display
• Plug and play with any Arduino ‘classic’ – UNO, duemilanove, diecimilla, etc as well as Arduino Mega R3.
• Uses only the I2C pins – Analog 4 & 5 on classic Arduinos, Digital 20 and 21 on Arduino Mega R3
• Note: The shield comes as a kit and requires soldering!

Larry Ogrodnek, creator of the LED NameTag kit, figured out a great way to use an RGB backlight LCD to display temperature data.

This is a really simple ambient display for temperature using an Arduino, an RGB backlight LCD, and a temperature sensor.

The LCD displays the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius and adjusts the color of the backlight depending on the reading. An ideal range is set at 61F to 67F. If the temperature is in this range the backlight will change green. Above this range and the color will change red, below the range it will change blue.

The great thing about these kinds of displays is that you can immediately get some rough information from across the room.

This is just a quick project. An obvious improvement is to have more variations in color depending on how far you are from your ideal range. I.e. as the temperature increases out of the ideal range, move along the color wheel and use shades of yellow, then orange before hitting red. There’s also a lot of empty room on that LCD. Possibly room for data from other sensors, or maybe just a larger (2-line) font.

This is perfect for someone like me who only needs 5 different temperature increments; really cold, cold, nice, hot, and really hot. Most of these parts and (Larry’s NameTag kit) are available in the Maker Shed.

[via Analog Machines]