Discover a New Frontier for .NET Development: Program an LCD Display

ne of the most fascinating aspects of programming is making things work. And that is not limited to just what you can do with your computer; a much more exciting world exists outside of the computer. In this article I will show you how to add a cool and interesting secondary display to your computer. In particular, you will learn how to connect to a LCD display and use .NET to display information on it.

For this article, I will use the 4x20 Serial LCD (model LK204-25; this LCD is manufactured by Matrix Orbital and sold by Parallax) with Keypad Interface from Parallax ($99.95; see Figure 1). LCD displays have been used in a wide variety of electronic devices. The next time you use your credit card at the shopping mall, take a good look at the terminal (see left of Figure 2); you'll almost certainly find that it is LCD. Besides being embedded in electronic devices, LCD screens are increasingly getting the attention of modders, who like to embed them in drive bays and use them to display system information (see right of Figure 2).