Ideas for the Graphic LCD Serial Backpack

Archive New Product Ideas
1

This is in regards to the:

Graphic LCD Serial Backpack

sku: LCD-09352

I just hooked mine up and two things came to mind.

There is a limitation on the power supply voltage to avoid overloading the voltage regulator. But 6-7 volts is kind of an awkward range. If the LED backlight was supplied directly from the external power then regulated using PWM (which is already used to control brightness). You don’t even need to monitor the average LED voltage, just monitor the incoming supply voltage and adjust the PWM accordingly.

The second idea was to add I2C support. It could be done by just connecting SDA and SCL to the existing TXD and RXD lines on the connector. It would require a way to configure it, either another solder jumper, a software approach or a different firmware version.

Using I2C would be a boon for AVR and other processors with only one serial port

2

I agree with the I2C support- but also PWM for RGB support too

3

Thanks for the feedback! I will make sure the engineers take a look at these suggestions for the next revision of the backpack. I know there is currently a major code revision going on, so I’m not sure how quickly any of this may be implemented, but again, I’ll make sure they are made aware.