Hooking up an LCD to the Arduino

The LCD screen that we will be using is an I2C LCD1602.

This display screen can be programmed to display whatever you want in a 16x2 matrix. This means that the screen (as you will soon find out) has two rows capable of fitting 16 characters in each row.

Before setting up the complete circuit, look at the back of the LCD. Plug in four wires, as follows:

And then set up the circuit, as follows:

Now you will have to trust me on this next step. We are going to manually install a library that the LCD requires to run. You will be using this same method in future, so be patient and try to understand what we are doing here.

Download the LiquidCrystal_I2C.zip file from http://www.wentztech.com/filevault/Electronics/Arduino/.

Now, in the Arduino IDE, go to Sketch | Include Library | Add ZIP library and browse to the downloaded ZIP file. You are good to go.

If this doesn't work, you can manually extract the contents to: C:\Users\<Username>\Documents\Arduino\libraries...