RGB LCD Shield for Arduino 65K Color KIT

Great price. Got it the next day after ordering. Easily found the directions on line, but it was not clear which version I had. There are two versions; Amazon shipped me the newer one. The two versions differ physically: The old design has a "daughter board" which looks like it would take a few more minutes to assemble. The newer version has all the parts on one board. All the parts are clearly new and in perfect condition, not "some left over mishandled parts" as conjectured in another review. It went together easily, but I have a very good soldering station with a very pointed tip. Be aware the parts are small, as are most modern electronic components, and assembly challenged my 60-year-old eyes. The first step is to solder the LCD to the board using a tiny "adapter board". It was actually easier than I thought, but I did have to take it off and resolder it because I had created a solder bridge across two of the connections. If I built another one, it would not be a problem to get it right the first time; I just wasn't used to soldering such small parts. Now I'm back in practice! It's a very simple circuit -- not much to get wrong. Once I resoldered the LCD module, I downloaded the software library and the associated demo, and it came right up. The voltage on the backlight is a little low, so the brightness of the display is only acceptable, not bright. One could easily rig a separate power source for the backlight if you want it brighter. The colors are somewhat muted, but still clear, and resolution is fantastic. Speed of updating the display depends on how many pixels need to change. It takes a big fraction of a second to erase the full screen, but animating small objects is very fast.

I recently bought and built this board. It's good quality, and it works fine. Soldering the LCD to the board via that little bridge was easy enough for me (as an experienced builder), but I also have a pro-quality weller soldering station. I can imagine it would be a bit tough using an inexpensive, larger soldering iron. The assembly instructions were excellent. There were two problems getting the example code running, using arduino 1.0 platform. First, I had saved the name of the test file using a hyphen in the file name, which prevented arduino from even building the code. Second, the source code provided had the const "SDA" declared, which is a re-declaration of this const uner arduino 1.0 toolchain. I simply did a global replace of "SDA" with "SDApin" in the example code, and it built and ran just fine. Writing as an expert solderer, it took me a casual half-hour to build it. I'd rate it five-stars except the sample code should run exactly as downloaded.

1) Review the instructions online so that you can verify that the VReg is 2.9V as required by the LCD Module. I almost completely assembled mine before I found the instructs. 2) Solder the LCD first then the VReg parts as shown and test the voltage. 3) Solder the rest of the components and plug the Max 232 into it's socket (Yes it now includes the socket). 4) Run sketch and load up the test program(s). Took some patience to solder the adapter to the LCD panel but once I got that done the rest was typical soldering. I used a low cost iron to solder then checked for opens and bridges with a loop and magnifying (Dazor) light. Some of the pads on the board are small which require a good tip on your iron to get the solder to flow. After rechecking and stray solder and bridges I plugged it into the Ardo and plugged in the USB. Right away the backlight came on so I knew the LCD was operable so I proceeded to the code test. The code test kicked in without a hitch and the unit ran as expected. My only issue is the brightness of the LCD. Overall I rated it as a 5 because it is a great easy way to get usable color output to a screen. It's good enough to add to my Xmas light display this year as a control panel visual feedback showing what the controller is doing next in sequence.

I would consider myself fairly competent at soldering, but getting the LCD mounted onto the board was almost impossible. The little piece of circuit board is insufficient a a bridge, and one slip and the board is useless.

After putting the shield together per the instructions on the web site. Unfortunately it just doesn't work. The LCD just turns on with a blue color. The LCD will not respond to any programming. After visiting their site, apparently I'm not the only individual in the same dilemma. I suspect someone got a good deal on some mishandled old cell phone LCD's. Haven't been able to get a response from the company through email. Sadly though I was looking forward to using this LCD on a project.

I am a newcomer to hobby electronics, I've been into it for maybe 6 months now. My soldering skills are sub-par but I can get the job done whether it looks good or not (it usually ends up not looking too good). I easily soldered everything to the PCB but when I got to soldering the LCD.....well.....it is not as easy as you may think. It comes with a connector that is very hard for me to solder. Before I even tried the connector I tried soldering individual wires to the connectors which worked out horribly, it took me until the third day of trying to make it work I tried the LCD screen. Still no luck on getting this to work, but if I stick to it, I'll get it. Good luck to those purchasing this.