Nokia 3310 LCD

A Nokia 3310 LCD Screen is a graphical monochrome 84×84 pixel LCD screen, controlled by the Philips (NXP) PCD8544 IC. You can get them for very cheap. I picked a few up from eBay for about £3.00 each.

 

Nokia 3310 LCD Nokia 3310 LCD

Click an image to enlarge

The displays are very easy to use. They are interfaced with the SPI bus at 3.3 volts. This means with a simple potential divider, you can control them from a PC parallel port. On this page, I will use the Velleman K8055. It is probably simpler to use a parallel port but my new box doesn’t have one – such is progress!

 

Pin Signal Description Direction
1 VDD Logic Power Supply: VDD to GND – 2.7 to 3.3 V Power
2 SCLK Serial Clock: Input for the clock signal – 0.0 to 4.0 Mbits/s Input
3 SDIN Serial Data In: Input for the data line Input
4 D/C Mode Select: Selects either Data or Command/Address Input
5 /SCE Serial Chip Enable: The enable pin allows data to be clocked in – The signal is active LOW. Input
6 GND Ground Power
7 VOUT LCD Voltage: Add external 1-10 uF electrolytic capacitor from VOUT to GND Power
8 /RES Reset: Reset the device. Must be applied to initialise display. The signal is active LOW. Input

 

Connections

To interface the Nokia 3310 LCD to the Velleman K8055 requires some pull up resistors to compliment the open collector outputs. The diagram below shows how I set up the interfacing. The setup is pretty standard. I have used 100K\Omega resistors so that the pull ups draw less current. I am running the entire circuit from the K8055‘s DACs (with 1.5K\Omega source resistance). We need low current!

Nokia 3310 LCD Wiring

Talking to the Display

As I got here, I had some problems with my computer which I have not yet resolved. This will be while now, as I will be busy.

Faulty Display

The only Nokia 3310 LCD I had to play about with is faulty. I have tried extensively to get the display to work based on my own code to no avail. In a diagnostics attempt, I was unable to make the display function with a device known to drive this type of LCD. I therefore assume that the screen is faulty. When I get the chance to purchase another screen, I will do so.

Sources

An online scrapbook full of half-baked projects and silly ideas.