Nokia 3310 PCD8544 Based Graphical LCD Demo
Ah. Happy New Year!! This is one cool graphical LCD. Not only it is easy to programme, the Nokia 3310 LCD also consumes low power. I manage to get hold of one of this from a friend of mine who is no longer wanting his Nokia 3310 cellphone. =)
Therefore, I decided to dismantle the cellphone and see what I could do with its individual parts. And, what really interest me was the LCD screen.

The Nokia 3310 is based on a PCD8544 Controller which is manufactured by Philips. With this controller, you can easily interface any PICs to it via SPI.
A simple text demo. Also a New Year's greeting. :)
Its pinout is as follows:-
1 - VDD ==> Input voltage.
2 - SCK  ==> Serial Clock.
3 - SDI   ==> Serial Data Input.
4 - D/C   ==> Data/Command Input.
5 - SCE   ==> Chip Select.
6 - GND  ==> Ground.
7 - VOUT ==> VLCD.
8 - RES    ==> Reset.
There are quite a few source codes available out there on how to control the LCD with a PIC. One good instance can be found in  Michel Bavin's website. His firmware was coded in CCS-C. He has done a great job by providing good explainations on the functions of his Nokia 3310 LCD codes. I do not have CCS-C, therefore I decided to translate some of his codes to  Hi-Tech C and add alittle features to it. Both codes uses 'bit-banging' SPI. =)
There, the picture to the left is another snapshot of it. Here, I added a function to plot a smooth continuous line and its plot time is surprisingly rather fast. There's also the typical bar plot as shown below. The firmware provided here runs a demo program at main( ) to generate random numbers and plotting them on the LCD using both bar and continuously line plot. Simply adjust the delay in the programme  to control the speed of the plot. It's cool to see animation, rather than a still picture. ;-)
Graphical animation of random number plots using both bar and continuous line plots.
Okay, I guess this should be it. Most of the explainations of the firmware are already provided in the C source file. Check it out. And as usual, here is the source code and the schematics. =)
Schematics : Nokia3310schem.jpg
Source codes :
Nokia_3310_LCD.zip
Last Updated : 14th March 2006, 3.26am Eastern Time.
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