Hi all,
I’m a complete newbie and do hope I’m not in the wrong forum. I’ve just bought a FEZ Panda II and complimented it with a 16x2 LCD shield originaly made for Arduino (LCD Shield Kit w/ 16x2 Character Display - Only 2 pins used! [BLUE AND WHITE] : ID 772 : $19.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits). Unfortunately I started maybe too hard for a beginner like me because once the kit soldered and connected on my FEZ, I tried to use I2C to display something on the screen…but the LCD does not even light up.
I tried many libraries gathered on the internet, got burried under thousands lines of codes but with no success so far.
I’m even wondering if this shield can work with the FEZ Panda II orif it’s connections are only Arduino compatible.
What would be a good start (honestly, at this stage even seeing only the LCD backlighted would be amazing…) to make this kit work in this configuration ?
Thank you for your advices and sorry if my question sounds stupid, I’m really eager to learn but maybe set the target to high for a beginning…
You need to download the manual and check the pins. There’s a section which describes the pinout - and it’s not the same as the Panda II. The I2C pins for that board are on Analof pins, not D2, D3. You will have to rewire - or better - connect the boards with wires and not just plug them together.
http://learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/rgb-lcd-shield.pdf
Hi, the first step is to ensure that you can successfully write to and read from the I2C port expander. Could you already verify this?
Hi, thank you very much for your advices !
I’ll check with the schema and will unplug the shield and start with straps…I need to find a breadboard first and then I’ll start from the beginning by wiring everything properly. 
I’ll post my progress here as soon as I get the breadboard, I guess I’ll probably need more help with the I2c transactions at this time… Thanks again !