This circuit serves as an ultra-low power replacement for multiple LED on-off indicators. It also has the advantage of being easy to read in full daylight. With the parts shown, it is possible to display four bits of information.This circuit use three digits and 2 decimal points for a total of 23 segments. Different groupings of segments can be used for the four indicators.source

If you are developing applications for the PIC, and miss the costly debugging tools, or can’t afford a parallel LCD interface in your design, this serial interface can help printing debug messages and/or reduce the pin count. This version uses a Hitachi HD44780 compatible LCD module in 4-bit mode. The interface is based on the idea of Myke Predko.source