Standard HD44780 LCDs are useful for creating standalone projects. 20 characters wide, 4 rows White text on blue background Connection port is 0.1" pitch, single row for easy breadboarding and wiring Single LED backlight with a resistor included, you can power it directly from 5V. If its too bright for you, it can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM and uses much less power than LCD with EL (electroluminescent) backlights Can be fully controlled with only 6 digital lines! Built in character set supports English/Japanese text, see the HD44780 datasheet for the full character set Up to 8 extra characters can be created for custom glyphs or foreign language support (like special accents) Comes with necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header