Modding the LCD4884 Arduino Shield to run on 3.3V

Officially, the LCD4884 Arduino shield is built to run on 5 Volt - however with new Arduinos running on 3.3 Volt. I have tested the modification with a clone from SainSmart: SainSmart Graphic LCD4884 Shield For Arduino. The original version of the shield comes from DFRobot Graphic LCD4884 Shield For Arduino (DFR0092) so your mileage with that one may vary...

Ok, here comes the shield itself:

The modification is rather simple: Looking from the edge with the little joystick, remove the third pin from the left with a sharp set of pliers. So the pin pattern on the underside changes from 6-6 to 2-3-6. This disconnects the display from the 5 Volt power supply.

Again counting from the left connect pins 2 and 3 on the upper side of the PCB with some solder. This connects the power lines on the shield with the 3.3 Volt supply from the Arduino board.

Looks like this is it! I haven't changed any of the initalization parameters for the display but the values appear to be working. The display illumination is slightly weaker than before but that makes it rather better to read.

The display works nicely with an Olimexino-32U4 (Arduino Leonardo clone) running at 3.3 Volt off a LiPo battery.

Just for the records, I als removed the LCD from the PCB to find it being a LPH7366-1 with a Phillips PCD8544 controller as e.g. used in Nokia 5110 mobile phones.

 PCB upper side with display removed:

 Display connection pads on the PCB with descriptions: