Posted February 13, 2012 by Chris

“Often the biggest stumbling block to using alphanumeric LCD displays is the number of pins required to control them. For the Hitachi 44780, twelve pins are required from the MCU to interface to the display for it to work in eight bit mode. For many smaller MCU, twelve pins are not available or will be better served in the application. To be fair, this can be reduced to six by using the 44780’s “Four Bit” mode, but this can still be more than acceptable for most applications.”