I bought a few of these years ago. They are a small board that plugs into the back of a standard 1602 LCD board. They come with an ATMEGA88 which I changed out for an ATMEGA328P. They have a 74HC595 and a MAX232 to drive the LCD and RS-232 respectively. The LCD interface is SPI and it pulls all of the ports out to standard ETTEAM 10-pin box headers.

I find this form factor amusing and have tinkered with it but have never used this for a project.