> **Source:** Core Electronics is an Australian maker-electronics retailer and manufacturer based in Newcastle, NSW, run by a team of makers and educators. We design and manufacture our own product lines (PiicoDev, CE originals) and are official retailers for iconic maker and industrial brands including Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Adafruit, SparkFun and DFRobot. Orders ship Australia-wide from our Newcastle warehouse. Prices are in AUD and include GST. Pricing, stock and dispatch on this page are generated from the store's live catalog. Full machine-readable index: https://core-electronics.com.au/llms.txt

# RGB backlight negative LCD 16x2 + extras - RGB on black

**Type:** Product page · **SKU:** ADA399 · **Brand:** [Adafruit](https://core-electronics.com.au/brands/adafruit-australia)
**Page:** https://core-electronics.com.au/rgb-backlight-negative-lcd-16x2-extras-rgb-on-black.html ([markdown](https://core-electronics.com.au/rgb-backlight-negative-lcd-16x2-extras-rgb-on-black.html.md))

## Retired product

This product is retired and no longer available for purchase. Search the catalogue for an alternative.

## How to buy

- **Search the catalogue:** `https://core-electronics.com.au/search/{query}.md` (URL-encode the query; pages 2-3 at `search/{query}/{page}.md`; `search.md?q=` also works)
- **Payment methods, purchase orders, policies and contact details:** https://core-electronics.com.au/llms.txt
## Description

This is a fancy upgrade to standard 16x2 LCDs, instead of just having blue and white, or red and black, this LCD has full color RGB characters on a dark/black background! That means you can change the character display colors to anything you want - red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse. This LCD looks strikingly good in person
 
 Adafruit had these custom made to Adafruit's specification so that you can use them in existing LCD projects and they'll still work - just that only the red LED will be used (so it will appear red-on-black). The extra two pins (17 and 18) are for the green and blue LEDs. The LCD has resistors on board already so that you can drive it with 5V logic and the current draw will be ~20mA per LED. There's a single LED backlight for the entire display, the image above showing 3 colors at once is a composite!
 
 Comes with a single 16x2 RGB backlight LCD, 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header. Adafruit's tutorials and diagrams will have you up and running in no time!

## Technical Details

**Note: As of Tuesday, April 5th 2016, Adafruit are shipping the revised version of this product. The 4 mounting holes are now 3.2mm (.125") instead of 3mm (.118")**

- Specifications
- 16 characters wide, 2 rows
- Multi-color text on dark background
- Connection port is 0.1" pitch, single row for easy breadboarding and wiring
- Pins are documented on the back of the LCD to assist in wiring it up
- Single RGB LED backlight included can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM and uses much less power than LCD with EL (electroluminescent) backlights
- Each R, G, & B LED has a 200 ohm resistor in series so you can power the backlight from 3V or 5VDC. R forward voltage is ~2.2V, G & B are ~3.4V
- Can be fully controlled with only 6 digital lines! (Any analog/digital pins can be used) and 3 PWM pins for the backlight
- Built in character set supports English/Japanese text, see the HD44780 datasheet for the full character set
- Up to 8 extra characters can be created for custom glyphs or 'foreign' language support
- Comes with 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header
- Screen Dimensions: 27mm x 71mm / 1.1" x 2.8"

The controller will be a HD44780-compatible, see the [HD44780 datasheet with the detailed commands for control](https://core-electronics.com.au/datasheets/HD44780.pdf)

Check out Adafruit's detailed step-by-step Arduino LCD tutorial

 ![](https://core-electronics.com.au/media/wysiwyg/resources/rohs_icon.jpg)

## Images

- [Product image 1](https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/3/9/399-06.jpg)