Hey Andrew,
Just to confirm, this was the display you’re referring to?
There’s a brilliant video by Electronoobs explaining the basics of Serial communication protocols and conveniently, this SerLCD can actually use any one of the three.
The main takeaway that we’re concerned with is that I2C and SPI are synchronized protocols, meaning that there’s a line used as a clock that is shared between the two so you don’t need to worry most of the time what the bit-rate is.
9600 baud is the typical bit rate for UART which stands for Universal Asynchronous Reciever-Transmitter which as can be guessed, is asynchronous, meaning that both the transmitter and reciever have their own separate clocks which must both be close enough to precise so that you don’t get misreads.
QWIIC is Sparkfun’s version of the 4-pin JST-SH (Japan’s Solderless Terminal, SH provides the size and keying) connection, it’ll look similar to this:
Usually, this is used for I2C, so you’ve got shared power and ground, then a shared clock and data line. You can basically ignore this if you’re not using I2C
When you’re connected to pins 8 and 10 I suspect you’re using UART at a 9600 baud rate and hooked up to these pins. Can you send us through a photo of how you’ve got it rigged up, post the code you’re using some ``` above and below it so it looks like this:
# This is example Python
print("Hello World!")
Personally, if you’re getting started with it I’d suggest following the examples where you use I2C with t
the Raspberry Pi in order to communicate with the board. Sparkfun has all their drivers/libraries available on their Repos as well as clear instructions and demo code for how to get it running using I2C:
If you’re set on using UART Serial you may be able to read through the demo code provided for the Arduino boards and then determine which libraries as well as how to compile and run them on your Pi to communicate with this board appropriately, although I2C will almost certainly be much easier to use:
All the best with the project!
