This new Adafruit Pi Plate makes it easy to use an RGB 16x2 Character LCD. We really like the RGB Character LCDs we stock in the shop. (For RGB we have RGB negative and RGB positive.) Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 3 to control the RGB backlight for a total of 9 pins. That's nearly all the GPIO available on a Pi!With this in mind, we wanted to make it easier for people to get these LCD into their projects so we devised a Pi plate that lets you control a 16x2 Character LCD, up to 3 backlight pins AND 5 keypad pins using only the two I2C pins on the R-Pi! The best part is you don't really lose those two pins either, since you can stick i2c-based sensors, RTCs, etc and have them share the I2C bus. This is a super slick way to add a display without all the wiring hassle.New, we've updated this Pi plate so the buttons on on the right side, which makes it a little more mechanically stableThis pi plate is perfect for when you want to build a stand-alone project with its own user interface. The 4 directional buttons plus select button allows basic control without having to attach a bulky computer.The plate is designed for both Revision 1 and Revision 2 Raspberry Pi's. It uses the I2C (SDA/SCL) pins. We have a special xtra-tall 26-pin header so the plate sits above the USB and Ethernet jacks. For Pi Model B+ and Pi 2, the resistors sit right above the new set of USB ports. To keep them from shorting against the metal, a piece of electrical tape must be placed onto the USB ports.This product comes as a kit! Included is a high quality PCB and all the components (buttons, header etc). A 16x2 Character RGB positive LCD is included! Assembly is easy, even if you've never soldered before and the kit can be completed in 30 minutes. Check the product tutorial page for assembly instructions before purchasingWe also have some handy Python code to help you easily talk to the LCD and buttons You can also easily query the 5 keypad buttons to get input through the library, so you get extra buttons without using any more pins. The buttons are automatically de-bounced inside the library.At this time, the code and plate can control the RGB backlight of our character LCDs by turning each LED on or off. This means you can display the following colors: Red, Yellow, Green, Teal, Blue, Violet, White and all off. There is no support for PWM control of the backlight at this time, so if you need to have more granular control of the RGB backlight to display a larger range of colors, this plate can't do that (the I2C expander does not have PWM output).Product page with tutorials, documentation and assembly information

If you've been diggin' our monochome OLEDs but need something bigger, this display will delight you. These displays are 2.3" diagonal, and very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128x32 individual blue OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this graphic display for its crispness!

The driver chip, SSD1305 can communicate in three ways: 8-bit, I2C or SPI. Personally we think SPI is the way to go, only 4 or 5 wires are required and its very fast. The OLED itself requires a 3.3V power supply and 3.3V logic levels for communication. We include a breadboard-friendly level shifter that can convert 3V or 5V down to 3V, so it can be used with 5V-logic devices like Arduino.

The power requirements depend a little on how much of the display is lit but on average the display uses about 50mA from the 3.3V supply. Built into the OLED driver is a simple boost converter that turns 3.3V into a high voltage drive for the OLEDs. The boost converter which may make a squeaking/buzzing noise, which you can minimize by adding hot-glue or foam tape around the inductor but may not be completely removable.

Each order comes with one assembled OLED module with a nice bezel and 4 mounting holes. The display is 3V logic & power so we include a HC4050 level shifter. We also toss in a 220uF capacitor, as we noticed an Arduino may need a little more capacitance on the 3.3V power supply for this big display! This display does not come with header attached but we do toss in a stick of header you can solder on. Also, the display may come in 8-bit mode. You can change modes from 8-bit to SPI or I2C with a little soldering, check out the tutorial for how to do so.

Getting started is easy! We have a detailed tutorial and example code in the form of an Arduino library for text and graphics. You'll need a microcontroller with more than 512 bytes of RAM since the display must be buffered. The library can print text, bitmaps, pixels, rectangles, circles and lines. It uses 512 bytes of RAM since it needs to buffer the entire display but its very fast! The code is simple to adapt to any other microcontroller.

If you've been diggin' our monochome OLEDs but need something bigger, this display will delight you. These displays are 2.7" diagonal, and very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128x64 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this graphic display for its crispness!

The driver chip, SSD1325 can communicate in two ways: 8-bit or SPI. Personally we think SPI is the way to go, only 4 or 5 wires are required. The OLED itself requires a 3.3V power supply and 3.3V logic levels for communication. We include a breadboard-friendly level shifter that can convert 3V or 5V down to 3V, so it can be used with 5V-logic devices like Arduino.

The power requirements depend a little on how much of the display is lit but on average the display uses about 50-150mA from the 3.3V supply. Built into the OLED driver is a simple boost converter that turns 3.3V into a high voltage drive for the OLEDs. The boost converter which may make a squeaking/buzzing noise, which you can minimize by adding hot-glue or foam tape around the inductor but may not be completely removable.

Each order comes with one assembled OLED module with a nice bezel and 4 mounting holes. The display is 3V logic & power so we include a 74HC4050 (or compatible) level shifter. We also toss in a 220uF capacitor, as we noticed an Arduino may need a little more capacitance on the 3.3V power supply for this big display! This display does not come with header attached but we do toss in a stick of header you can solder on. Also, the display may come in 8-bit mode. You can change modes from 8-bit to SPI with a little soldering, check out the tutorial for how to do so.

Getting started is easy! We have a detailed tutorial and example code in the form of an Arduino library for text and graphics. You'll need a microcontroller with more than 1K of RAM since the display must be buffered. The library can print text, bitmaps, pixels, rectangles, circles and lines. It uses 1K of RAM since it needs to buffer the entire display but its very fast! The code is simple to adapt to any other microcontroller.

A stylish and super slim (7mm) 3x16 character display with 3 RGB backlights for flair from our friends at Pimoroni. On the PCB there's a handy 9-segment bar-graph for indicators and a 4-direction joystick with a push button for navigation. The Pimoroni Display-O-Tron 3000 also comes with full Pimoroni Python support so you can get it up and running easily.

The DoT3k works with model B+, model B, model A+, and model A Raspberry Pi's.

This is a fancy upgrade to standard 16x2 LCDs, instead of just having blue and white, or red and black, this LCD has full color RGB characters on a dark/black background! That means you can change the character display colors to anything you want - red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse. This LCD looks strikingly good in personWe had these custom made to our specification so that you can use them in existing LCD projects and they'll still work - just that only the red LED will be used (so it will appear red-on-black). The extra two pins (17 and 18) are for the green and blue LEDs. The LCD has resistors on board already so that you can drive it with 5V logic and the current draw will be ~20mA per LED. There's a single LED backlight for the entire display, the image above showing 3 colors at once is a composite!Comes with a single 16x2 RGB backlight LCD, 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header. Our tutorials and diagrams will have you up and running in no time! For more information, check out our detailed step-by-step tutorial for both Arduino & CircuitPython