Out of boredom I figured out I'll write a library from scratch to interface the character LCD display which I got from ebay, quite cheap. Less than 7 pounds. However, I have written before a simple code to interface an LCD from scratch for 8051. So I have some experience and understanding how the character LCD works. The difference now will be, I' ll be using 4 bits, instead of 8 bits to communicate and read the busy flag. Essentially improving the previous code. I chose to write it for Arduino this time, because I have Sanguinololu bought for my 3D printer, and at some point I want to write a LCD user interface for it, from scratch. There won't be anything spectacular about this tutorial, there are already good articles about this stuff for all kinds of devices. Moreover, arduino has bunch of LCD libraries available for download for free. BUT... in this tutorial I'll describe problems I encountered and try to be as descriptive I can be so you can understand how the character LCD works, making you able to interface it with any micro-controller available, and even driving it by hand.