PICAXE drives
Nokia LCD

This circuit and the accompanying BASIC program demonstrate how to interface an old Nokia mobile phone liquid crystal display to a PICAXE microcontroller. While the complete unit could be used as a stand-alone serial LCD module, the circuit and program could also be integrated into an existing PICAXE project – assuming that there are sufficient port pins and memory space available!

A Nokia 5110 mobile phone was used as the source for the LCD module. These are identified by type number LPH7366-1 and have nine connections. Displays from the 3210 and 3310 models may also be suitable, although these haven’t been tested with the program.

The LCD is an 84 x 48 pixel graphics type with an "SPI" type serial interface. Table 1 shows the pin assignments when looking at the back of the module and reading from left to right. Note that the 3210 & 3310 displays omit the "OSC" pin, which isn’t used for this application.