No longer supported. It might or might not work for your use case.

Elsidi

Elsidi allows any data sent on 5V UART to be displayed on any Hitachi HD44780 compatible LCD. On board you will find connectors for 16-pin (both 2-row and straight) and 18-pin interface (for driving 40x4 displays).

Any 5V LED display can make use of software-controlled contrast and backlight (u to 450 mA).