The HD44780 is one of the first chips we learned about as a kid, and chances are good you’ve used one in your project at some point, and nearly certain that you’ve interacted with one in your life. The character LCD is ubiquitous, easy to interface, and very robust. They are available in sizes from 8 x 1 to 20 x 4 and even larger, but they nearly all have the same pinout, and there are libraries in lots of embedded environments for interacting with them. [The 8-Bit Guy] made a decision to interface with one using just switches and a button, (YouTube, embedded) with the intent of illustrating exactly how to use them, and how easy they are.
If you’ve never used a character LCD before and want a great introduction to them, this is the video for you. It turns out that there’s no clock to worry about, and the instruction set is easily discerned from a datasheet table. [The 8-Bit Guy] even gets fancy with additional commands.
These screens have featured quite frequently here at Hackaday. just a couple of lots of are this serial drive hack using a picture microcontroller, and exploiting the custom-made characters to create non-character graphics.
Thanks [emuboy] for the tip.