Project Overview
The purpose of this project is to control an LCD with the HD44780 controller chip, one of the most popular controllers for text LCD's, through the parallel port of a computer. I decided to write it in C++ rather than Java, because accessing hardward such as the parallel port is much simpler from C++, however writing the user interface will be much more difficult.
- Create a class in C++ to interface with the parallel port. Since under Windows NT, 2k, and XP programs cannot usually access the parallel port, I used Inpout32.dll which is a library written which gives the user the ability to access hardware on the machine easily.
- Create a class in C++ which implements the instruction set of the HD44780 LCD using the parallel port class. This is very straightforward, probably the easiest section to write.
- Create a user interface which lets somebody do cool things with an HD44780 connected to the parallel port. This will be challenging to write since I know squat about doing GUI in C++, plus it's the only part that really requires any creativity.
Project Status
Here are the current source files for the Parallel port class and LCD instruction classes:
- Parallel port class. This has been tested and found to work fine.
- LCD instructions. This has only been partially tested with a status indicator on the data bus, I haven't yet tested in on an LCD.
References
