Ok,
It sounds like you can wait a bit if it saves money.
Given that. I'd order a hd44780 display or two off ebay.
They are much cheaper than from Mouser.
Mouser also charges quite a bit for shipping.
You can get lcds off ebay for $3-$4 USD shipped.
Get the best deals for hd44780 at eBay.com. We have a great online selection at the lowest prices with Fast & Free shipping on many items!
For low cost components, I really like these guys:
http://www.taydaelectronics.com/
You can get 74HC595s for $0.20 USD. Less than half of Mouser.
Great prices on things like resonators, crystals, caps, leds, diodes,
1307 timer chips, ds18b20 temp sensors, transistors like 2n7000, 2n3904, 2n3906, strip boards, IC sockets, etc....
For even as low as $10 you can load up on all kinds of really nice goodies.
Their shipping is really low too, especially for small quantity low $ orders.
Using a shift register on the hd44780 type display is really easy.
(I think using 74LS164s are slightly easier but they are not always as easy to find and sometimes cost more)
I recommend using this library if you are going to wire up the shift register yourself.
https://bitbucket.org/fmalpartida/new-liquidcrystal/wiki/Home
Here is some additional background:
http://code.google.com/p/arduinoshiftreglcd/
An example of how to use a 74ls164 on a strip board:
http://www.3guys1laser.com/blog-cheap-arduino-2-wire-lcd-display-0
Not that you can use 74HC595s instead of the 164 but obviously the strip board
wiring will be different.
But I wanted you to see how you can use strip board for stuff like this.
I'd change it a bit to allow the strip board to be plugged directly into the lcd
by using 16 rows on the left side of the components.
With the exception of a 16 pin female header, you can get
all the other other the other parts you need to make a 2 wire lcd backpack
for about $1 if you get all the parts from Tayda.
(You could solder the lcd directly to the backpack or just use wires)
Which brings the total cost of a 2 wire LCD including the LCD
to about $5 if you get the LCD off ebay.
$0.70 strip board (can make more than one backpack)
$0.20 74HC595
$0.15 40 pin header (can make more than one backpack)
$0.01 1/4 watt resistor (for shift register AND gate)
$0.01 diode (for shift register AND gate)
$0.01 1/4 watt resistor for backlight
$0.06 10k trim pot
Have fun!
--- bill
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Hey, electronics people: A few months ago, I cleaned a spot on an LCD flat screen. Whatever it was, it was stuck on there pretty good and I guess I pushed down on it too hard (actually wasn't hard at all, to be honest). Anyway, next time I turned it on there was a huge blob of dead pixels in and above that spot. It's taken a few months, but the size of the blob has significantly reduced in size and continues to fade.
Here are two images taken less than 24 hours apart. It doesn't usually happen so quickly; I think it was just a lucky coincidence that I happened to take the first photo at the right time. It's still only marginally noticeable, but when it first happened (I'll try to find an older image) all three dead spots were all bridged together as one and the outside edge has gradually receded. First (if you look closely), they tend to go from black, to blue, to cyan (sometimes?), before fading back to normal.
Can anyone explain this? I actually expected the dead spot to do the opposite; slowly grow bigger until the display was rendered useless.