LCD display broken?

[Alex_Seed]

My display has stopped showing any info on the left hand third of the display.

Presumably I need a new display, or what else should I look for? (It may have got wet.)

If I do need a new display what's a compatible part, rather than ordering one from the states when I am in the UK.

 

[Bryan Mayland]

Oof yeah. If it gets really dim only on a portion of the LCD, then it is most likely that the display is shot like the one in the attached photo.

You can try twisting the little black tabs that hold the metal frame to the LCD circuit board and remove it, then gently push on the rubber strips that attach the LCD until they break free from the LCD's PCB (they are only really stuck by having been on there for a while). Check the golden pads on the PCB for any corrosion or give them a quick cleaning with a cotton swab and some rubbing alcohol. Then stack the rubber bits and LCD glass back on top, return the metal frame over the top, and bend the tabs back into place. If there was something in the way that was causing the glitch, then that will fix it, but more likely is wasn't the connection but the actual driver itself and you'll need to replace the whole LCD module.

Any 16x2 LCD that uses the "Hitachi parallel" or "hd44780" or "4-bit/8-bit" protocol will work, but it has to have the connections on the bottom of the display where most the cheap Chinese ones have them on the top. All the ones used in the store come from NewHaven Display, and you can get the part numbers for the various colors on the wiki LCD Color Gallery. The Black on White version in the store currently is NHD-0216K1Z-FSW-FBW-L

 

[Alex_Seed]

Thanks for that, having given it a try it looks like I need a new module