As you all may know, the LCD that is currently in the kit is a parallel LCD that must have wires soldered to it to be used. Also, this LCD requires 13 I/O pins to be used on the Arduino/Freeduino, which is a pretty hefty burden considering the Arduino Duemilanove only has 14 I/O pins. Here are the solutions I see:
1. Use the LCD as it is in the kit (must have a soldering iron & solder to use) and sacrifice 13 I/O pins
2. Buy a shift register and use only 8 I/O pins on the Arduino (still requires the soldering kit, but $1.50 shift register will get you 5 more I/O pins to play with)
3. Buy a serial LCD and use only 2 I/O pins on the Arduino (saves you the most I/O pins for use, does not require the soldering kit but is $15 more than the cost of the parallel LCD)
4. Build the serial backpack for the LCD yourself (same setup as #3, except you build the serial interface yourself and you still need to get the soldering kit, along with an ATmega168 and 16MHz resonator for $5).
EDIT: here's the ranking of solutions from "easiest" to "hardest" to perform (IMO):
3
1
2
4
1. Use the LCD as it is in the kit (must have a soldering iron & solder to use) and sacrifice 13 I/O pins
2. Buy a shift register and use only 8 I/O pins on the Arduino (still requires the soldering kit, but $1.50 shift register will get you 5 more I/O pins to play with)
3. Buy a serial LCD and use only 2 I/O pins on the Arduino (saves you the most I/O pins for use, does not require the soldering kit but is $15 more than the cost of the parallel LCD)
4. Build the serial backpack for the LCD yourself (same setup as #3, except you build the serial interface yourself and you still need to get the soldering kit, along with an ATmega168 and 16MHz resonator for $5).
EDIT: here's the ranking of solutions from "easiest" to "hardest" to perform (IMO):
3
1
2
4