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Connecting a 5v TTL device?

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Connecting a 5v TTL device?

Posted by Jesse at September 30. 2008
While digging through some old bits of hardware, I found a serial LCD from Matrix Orbital that I had connected to my PC several years ago. I thought to myself "Great! I've been wanting to hook up an LCD to my MC!". So I scrounge up the docs for the LCD. By default it is setup for RS232, but that would require a device/circuit I don't currently have to interface it to the MC. The LCD can be setup for TTL communication by soldering some jumpers which is easy enough. The problem I have is that the LCD docs say that it is 0v-5v TTL, where as the MC is 0v-3.3v. I looked around on this site and couldn't find any mention of it, Google turned up a discussion where the guy said it *might* work to hook it up directly. I'd rather not fry either device obviously, does anyone out there know if there is a danger to hooking them up directly? Or will I need some intermediary hardware to change the levels?

Re: Connecting a 5v TTL device?

Posted by Liam Staskawicz at October 02. 2008
The IO pins are 5V tolerant so you should be all good on that front. I say go for it!

Re: Connecting a 5v TTL device?

Posted by Jesse at October 04. 2008
Was able to get it connected and mostly working this evening. I wired the serial port's Gnd, TX, and RX pins on the MC to the corresponding pins on the LCD. Since the LCD wanted 5V for power, I connected it to the 5V pin on the selector for VIn1 as it was so close to the serial header. The OSC serial commands worked fine for sending text and chars to the LCD. The text appeared on screen and the chars let me control other features like contrast, back light, and graphics. This LCD (GLK-12232-25SM) also offers a keypad interface and a pair of GPOs. Testing those will have to wait for now. I am trying to write some code to work with the LCD, but am having some trouble. That's for another topic and is just my lack of programming knowledge, hardware-wise it's working fine. Thanks for the help.
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