LCD is not printing strings, only integers with Arduino

Question

As mentioned in the title I'm facing a problem in printing strings in the LCD. It's printing actually weird characters.

#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
LiquidCrystal lcd(7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12);
void setup() {
 lcd.begin(16, 2);
 Serial.begin(9600);
 lcd.print("hello, world!"); 
}
void loop() {
 lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
 lcd.print(millis()/500);
}

You can find the output of the LCD in the picture below:

LCD error !!

• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: You've goofed up the hardware side.
• Majenko: Agreed - it certainly hasn't initialized properly - it's in 16x1 mode not 16x2 mode, which means the 16x2 instruction never got through, so most likely you have your data lines in the wrong order.
• CharlieHanson: And that looks like some pretty shoddy soldering. That's a good example of go home and do it again.

Answer 1

Whenever I use an LCD display I make sure to use the I2C backpack. It takes actual effort to hook it up wrong if you use them. So if this were me, I would desolder all those pins and get one.

Here is a good description of how they work: https://learn.adafruit.com/i2c-spi-lcd-backpack/overview

• aaa: Exactly my thought. It is possible to do the wiring and protocol yourself, but it will require a lot of pins and probably cause you some headaches.