General description

The PCA2117 is a low-power Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)1 controller and driver. It is

specifically designed to drive LCD dot-matrix displays of 2-lines by 20 characters or 1-line

by 40 characters with 5  8 dot format. In addition 200 icons can be displayed. The chip

contains a character generator and displays alphanumeric characters. The PCA2117

features an internal charge pump with internal capacitors for on-chip generation of the

LCD driving voltage. To ensure an optimal and stable contrast over the full temperature

range, the PCA2117 offers a programmable temperature compensation of the LCD supply

voltage. The PCA2117 can be easily connected to a microcontroller by either the two-line

I2C-bus or a four-line bidirectional SPI-bus.

Various character sets can be manufactured on request. In addition up to 48 user-defined

symbols (5  8 dot format) can be stored in three selectable RAM columns with 16

characters each.

For a selection of NXP LCD character drivers, see Table 58 on page 97.

Features and benefits

 AEC Q100 grade 2 compliant for automotive applications

 Single-chip LCD controller and driver

 Extended operating temperature range from 40 C to +105 C

 2-line display of up to 20 characters plus 200 icons or 1-line display of up to 40

characters plus 200 icons

 5  7 character format plus cursor and user-defined symbols

 Icon blink function

 On-chip:

 Programmable 4, 3, or 2 times voltage multiplier generating LCD supply voltage

(external supply also possible)

 Integrated temperature sensor with temperature readout

 Selectable linear temperature compensation of on-chip generated VLCD

 Generation of intermediate LCD bias voltages

 Oscillator requires no external components (external clock also possible)

 Readout of RAM, CGROM, and all registers possible

 Diagnostic features:

 Checksum on I2C and SPI bus

 Frame frequency: programmable from 45 Hz to 360 Hz

 Display Data RAM (DDRAM): 80 characters

 Character Generator ROM (CGROM): 240, 224, or 208 characters (5  8) depending

on the selected RAM size

 Character Generator RAM (CGRAM): 16, 32, or 48 characters (5  8); ICON-RAM:

400 bit

 Two-line I2C-bus interface or four-line SPI bus selectable through input pin

 Inversion modes

 n-line (n = 1 to 7) inversion

 Frame inversion

 Large supply voltage range: VDD1: 2.5 V to 5.5 V (chip can be driven with battery cells)

 Analog supply voltage VDD2: 2.5 V to 5.5 V

 LCD supply voltage VLCD: 4 V to 16 V

 Direct mode to save current consumption for icon mode and multiplex drive mode 1:9

(depending on VDD2 value and LCD properties)

 Power-down mode pin

 Very low current consumption (20 A to 200 A):

 Power-down mode: < 2 A

 Icon mode: < 25 A

 Icon mode is used to save current. When only icons are displayed, a much lower LCD

operating voltage can be used and the switching frequency of the LCD driver outputs

is reduced. In this case, for most applications it is possible to use VDD as LCD supply

voltage

Applications

 Automotive

 Instrument clusters

 Climate control display

 Car entertainment

 Car radio

 Industrial

 Medical and health care

 Measuring equipment

 Machine control systems

 Information boards

 General-purpose display modules

 Consumer

 White goods

 Home entertainment