It's not terribly complicated, but either way you'll pretty much need to use
a microcontroller. Check out www.maximic.com for LCD display driver chips,
and look at www.atmel.com or www.microchip.com for microcontroller info. You
could save some hardware time by using a ready-made LCD display, 16
character x 2 line displays are relatively common, cheap, and not overly
complex to drive. To save some time coding you can skip the assembly
language and look into one of the compilers out there, RVK Basic, Bascom
Basic, PICBasic, C, etc. Another advantage of this approach is that if you
don't like the way it works or think of a new feature you want, you simply
tweak the code until it works the way you want it to.

Unfortunately, since I know nothing about microcontrollers, driver
chips, or programming, can anyone advise me on how I can find someone
who could do this?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.