looks like I have a bad LCD display

[segrest]

Greetings Adafruit Support,

I received my RGB LCD Shield Kit w/ 16x2 Character Display kit today (https://www.adafruit.com/products/714) and assembled it without any difficulty.

My intent is to mount it in a plastic enclosue and use it in a detached configuration so I left all of the headers off except for the on that interfaces the LCD panel to the interface board. I also elected to mount the contrast pot on the back side of the interface board to facilitate a better fit to the cut out in my enclosure.

I applied power and immediately noticed that there was no backlight. I adjusted the contrast pot as instructed. At one extream The display is a solid black field. At the other extream each cell in the upper row of the display is a clear rectangle.

I have tried alternate power leads with no change in symptom. I checked the supply voltages with an osciliscope and it reads 5v.

LCD Shield.jpg (94.67 KiB) Viewed 195 times

Any ideas?

How do I get this fixed?

Bob

[adafruit_support_bill]

That looks normal for an initial power-up. The backlight is under software control and does not come on until the command is sent. Connect to your microprocessor and run one the example code to complete the test.

[segrest]

Code is required to turn the backlight on?

Really?

Bob

[adafruit_support_bill]

Really!

[segrest]

Thank you,

That got me where I need to be!

Bob