How to Interface the 8051 MCU with an LCD Display

In this tutorial, we’ll interface the 8051 microcontroller with an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and display a blinking “Hello World” message.

Table of contents

· Table of contents
· Introduction
· Hardware setup
∘ Components
· Understanding the LCD
∘ LCD pins
∘ LCD registers
∘ LCD memory
∘ Other
· Using the control pins
∘ Timing of the write cycle
∘ Putting it all together
· Assembly refresher
∘ For loops
∘ Infinite loops
∘ Subroutines
· Code breakdown
∘ Assigning symbolic names
∘ Define data and commands
∘ Define delay subroutine
∘ Define subroutines to send data and commands to LCD
∘ Define byte-looping subroutine
∘ Define main program
∘ Full code
· About the author
· Sources cited and further reading

Introduction

Several months ago I knew nothing about electronics. Now I’m an electrical engineering major. Why? you might ask. If you’ve read any of my articles on Medium, you may know I’m a neuroscience and brain-computer interface enthusiast. While I headed into university thinking I’d study physics, I realized engineering would be more practical. Plus it’s super fun!

As I’m now delving into the world of computer engineering, I thought I’d take you along in a series of tutorials on programming the 8051 microcontroller using Assembly.

You can view my complete compilation of tutorials in this Github repository, and the code for this tutorial in this folder. Since I’m on break from…