TinyAdafruitPCD8544

by Tyler Bletsch (Tyler.Bletsch AT gmail.com)

TinyAdafruitPCD8544 is an Arduino library; it is a drastically simplified version of the Adafruit library for Monochrome Nokia 5110 LCD Displays designed to work on ATTINY microcontrollers with as little as 4kB of flash and 512 bytes of RAM.

It's configured like the original Adafruit library, but it is TEXT ONLY, substituting a text buffer for a full frame buffer.

Interface-wise, it implements the Arduino standard print() and println() functions.

Download TinyAdafruitPCD8544 v0.1

• Arduino-compatible microcontroller
• If using an ATtiny, you need an Arduino specification file and programmer that can get to it (details).

• Extract to the 'libraries' directory under your sketchbook directory.

ATtiny chips don't have enough RAM to hold a framebuffer for the LCD, but they can hold a text buffer. So this library stores a 14x6 character buffer which is rendered into pixels in realtime based on a 5x7 font read directly from flash.

I've been able to use it to build a serial port monitor out of an ATtiny85 (8-pin chip), even going so far as to line up most of the pins on the LCD directly with the chip to minimize wires.

• How to use ATtiny MCUs with Arduino
  • Note: instead of the capacitor they show, you can just jam a wire between RESET and 5V.
• Adafruit PCD8544 Nokia 5110 LCD library – the original, with full graphics support on larger ATmega chips.

See the .h file and the included example.