nextion 4.3 tft lcd free sample

After two theory-loaded blog posts about handling data array-like in strings (Strings, arrays, and the less known sp(lit)str(ing) function and Strings & arrays - continued) which you are highly recommended to read before continuing here, if you haven"t already, it"s big time to see how things work in practice! We"ll use a string variable as a lookup lookup table containing data of one single wave period and add this repeatedly to a waveform component until it"s full.A few weeks ago, I wrote this article about using a text variable as an array, either an array of strings or an array of numbers, using the covx conversion function in addition for the latter, to extract single elements with the help of the spstr function. It"s a convenient and almost a "one fits all" solution for most use cases and many of the demo projects or the sample code attached to the Nextion Sunday Blog articles made use of it, sometimes even without mentioning it explicitly since it"s almost self-explaining. Then, I got a message from a reader, writing: "... Why then didn"t you use it for the combined sine / cosine lookup table in the flicker free turbo gauge project?"105 editions of the Nextion Sunday blog in a little over two years - time to look back and forth at the same time. Was all the stuff I wrote about interesting for my readers? Is it possible at all to satisfy everybody - hobbyists, makers, and professionals - at the same time? Are people (re-)using the many many HMI demo projects and code snippets? Is anybody interested in the explanation of all the underlying basics like the algorithms for calculating square roots and trigonometric functions with Nextion"s purely integer based language? Are optimized code snippets which allow to save a few milliseconds here and there helpful to other developers?Looking through the different Nextion user groups on social networks, the Nextion user forum and a few not so official but Nextion related forums can be surprising. Sometimes, Nextion newbies ask questions or have issues although the required function is well (in a condensed manner for the experienced developer, I admit) documented on the Nextion Instruction Set page, accessible through the menu of this website. On top of that, there is for sure one of my more than 100 Sunday blog articles which deals not only with that function, but goes often even beyond the usual usage of it. Apparently, I should sometimes move away from always trying to push the limits and listen to the "back to the roots!" calls by my potential readers...Do you remember the (almost) full screen sized flicker free and ultra rapid gauge we designed in June? And this without using the built-in Gauge component? If not, it"s time to read this article first, to understand today"s improvements. The June 2022 version does its job perfectly, the needle movement is quick and smooth, and other components can be added close to the outer circle without flickering since there is no background which needs constantly to be redrawn. But there was a minor and only esthetic weak point: The needle was a 1px thin line, sometimes difficult to see. Thus, already a short time after publishing, some readers contacted me and asked if there were a way to make the needle thicker, at least 2 pixels.Recently, when playing with a ESP32 based NodeMCU 32S and especially with its WiFi configuration, I did as (I guess) everybody does: I loaded an example sketch to learn more about the Wifi library. When you set up the ESP32 as an access point, creating its own wireless network, everything is pretty straightforward. You can easily hard code the Wifi name (SSID) and the password. But what about the client mode ? Perhaps one needs to use it in different environments. And then, a hard coded network name and password are definitively not the best solution. Thus, I thought, why not use a Nextion HMI for a dynamic WiFi setup functionality?

This post is an introduction to the Nextion display with the Arduino. We’re going to show you how to configure the display for the first time, download the needed resources, and how to integrate it with the Arduino UNO board. We’ll also make a simple graphical user interface to control the Arduino pins.

Nextion is a Human Machine Interface (HMI) solution. Nextion displays are resistive touchscreens that makes it easy to build a Graphical User Interface (GUI). It is a great solution to monitor and control processes, being mainly applied to IoT applications.

The Nextion has a built-in ARM microcontroller that controls the display, for example it takes care of generating the buttons, creating text, store images or change the background. The Nextion communicates with any microcontroller using serial communication at a 9600 baud rate.

To design the GUI, you use the Nextion Editor, in which you can add buttons, gauges, progress bars, text labels, and more to the user interface in an easy way. We have the 2.8” Nextion display basic model, that is shown in the following figure.

The best model for you, will depend on your needs. If you’re just getting started with Nextion, we recommend getting the 3.2” size which is the one used in the Nextion Editor examples (the examples also work with other sizes, but you need to make some changes). Additionally, this is the most used size, which means more open-source examples and resources for this size.

To get started with Nextion, first you need to install Nextion Editor. Go to https://nextion.itead.cc/, select the Resources tab, Download > Nextion Editor and install Nextion Editor. You can either download the .zip file or the .exe file.

Connecting the Nextion display to the Arduino is very straightforward. You just need to make four connections: GND, RX, TX, and +5V. These pins are labeled at the back of your display, as shown in the figure below.

You can power up the Nextion display directly from the Arduino 5V pin, but it is not recommended. Working with insufficient power supply may damage the display. So, you should use an external power source. You should use a 5V/1A power adaptor with a micro USB cable. Along with your Nextion display, you’ll also receive a USB to 2 pin connector, useful to connect the power adaptor to the display.

The best way to get familiar with a new software and a new device is to make a project example. Here we’re going to create a user interface in the Nextion display to control the Arduino pins, and display data.

We won’t cover step-by-step how to build the GUI in the Nextion display. But we’ll show you how to build the most important parts, so that you can learn how to actually build the user interface. After following the instructions, you should be able to complete the user interface yourself.

Open Nextion Editor and go to File > New to create a new file. Give it a name and save it. Then, a window pops up to chose your Nextion model, as show in the figure below.

We’ll start by adding a background image. To use an image as a background, it should have the exact same dimensions as your Nextion display. We’re using the 2.8” display, so the background image needs to be 240×320 pixels. Check your display dimensions and edit your background image accordingly. As an example, we’re using the following image:

Once the GUI is ready, you need to write the Arduino code so that the Nextion can interact with the Arduino and vice-versa. Writing code to interact with the Nextion display is not straightforward for beginners, but it also isn’t as complicated as it may seem.

A good way to learn how to write code for the Arduino to interact with the Nextion display is to go to the examples folder in the Nextion library folder and explore. You should be able to copy and paste code to make the Arduino do what you want.

In this post we’ve introduced you to the Nextion display. We’ve also created a simple application user interface in the Nextion display to control the Arduino pins. The application built is just an example for you to understand how to interface different components with the Arduino – we hope you’ve found the instructions as well as the example provided useful.

In our opinion, Nextion is a great display that makes the process of creating user interfaces simple and easy. Although the Nextion Editor has some issues and limitations it is a great choice for building interfaces for your electronics projects. We have a project on how to create a Node-RED physical interface with the Nextion display and an ESP8266 to control outputs. Feel free to take a look.

Nextion is a Seamless Human Machine Interface (HMI) solution that provides a control and visualisation interface between a human and a process, machine, application or appliance. Nextion is mainly applied to IoT or consumer electronics field. It is the best solution to replace the traditional LCD and LED Nixie tube. Available from 2.4″ to 7″ models, Nextion provides an analog touch screen operator interface with programmable function buttons, gauges, progress bars…etc., Nextion is an interface solution designed to complement your application needs.

Nextion Display has so many goods, you may not have a thorough understanding for it. In following blog series, I will give a comprehensive introduction for Nextion. If you are a green hand, these blogs are just the things to help you get started.

There are 6 sizes of Nextion available for your selection: 2.4″, 2.8″, 3.2″, 4.3″, 5.0″ and 7.0″. Users can see the overall detailed parameters from the below table:

Nextion TFT display uses only one serial port to do communication which helps users get rid of the wiring trouble. We notice that most engineers spend a lot of time in application development but get unsatisfactory results. In this case, Nextion editor has provided mass components, such as button, text, progress bar, slider, instrument panel etc. to enrich your interface design. And the drag-and-drop function ensures that users will spend less time in programming, which will reduce your 99% development workloads. With the help of this WYSIWYG editor, GUI designing is a piece of cake.

Nextion display is just the choice to solve your programming problems with the minimum of time and effort. Nextion is a better solution than ever, as users can see its competitive edges as below, not to mention its good price:

3. Objective-oriented controlling method. Nextion supports the commands not only to draw points or lines, but also to control most attributes of the components and materials.

4. Users can control the objects in a demo through serial port commands by external MCU even the demo has already been downloaded and demonstrated on Nextion screen.

Users might get a headache on which size to choose. But we have prepared you very detailed products specification that covering every model of Nextion Display. Have a look, you will know which one to choose according to your project requirements.

Nextion Editor is a free human-machine interface (HMI) GUI development software for Nextion Basic Series, Discovery Series, Enhanced Series, and Intelligent Series. The software offers an easy way to create an intuitive and superb touch user interface even for beginners. Add a static picture as a background, define functions by components, you can make a simple GUI in minutes. The easy Drag-and-Drop components and simple ASCll text-based instructions will dramatically reduce your HMI project development workloads and develop projects rapidly in a cost-effective way. The Nextion product is the best balance HMI solution between cost and benefit with a low and decreased learning curve.

Debug the HMI project at any time even without the Nextion Display.The instruction input area allows you to send any Nextion commands to check the feedback and interactions.

Nextion displays include either a resistive touch panel (RTP) or capacitive touch panel (CTP) and provide an easy way to create a touch screen interface, or human machine interface (HMI) for your project. The displays require a spare serial port to communicate with them. To get the best from them requires an understanding of how to drive them, and what works and doesn"t work. The advice here is based on my work with multiple projects using Nextion displays with both PIC and Arduino hosts. I don"t claim the ideas here are the best way or the only way to control one with an Arduino, just what I have found to work well in my projects. The sample code has been written by me and tested on an Elegoo Mega2560, and you are free to use it, modify or improve as much as you like. My methods and the examples shown here do not use any libraries as I never found them necessary, the displays are easy enough to drive without a library.

If you prefer to use a library have a look at Easy Nextion Library by Seithan, his methods are different to mine, choose which works best for you (I cannot help you with Seithan"s methods).

The displays have their own instruction set which can be found here.The instructions provide the means to control the displays either through messages sent to the serial port or from using the touch screen. This tutorial and sample code uses some of the Nextion instructions and assumes you have made yourself familiar with them from the Nextion web site.

I have used the basic 4.3" RTP version (NX4827T043) and the enhanced 7" CPT version (NX8048K070) with a WeMos M0, MKR WiFi 1010, Nano Every and Elegoo Mega2560 without problems. There are problems using one with an ESP8266, see "using Nextion displays with Arduino part 4" further down this tutorial. If you have a Uno then you could try John Harrison"s SerialWing, which allows the single serial port on the Uno to be shared with the display, and provides a separate serial port to configure the display. I have not tried other versions or other Arduinos. As the only requirement is a spare serial port on the Arduino to connect the display to, I would expect that any Arduino with a spare serial port would work with any Nextion display, but I"ve not tried combinations other than those mentioned here.

Note, Arduinios use one serial port for communication with your PC, do not use this serial port for connection to your Nextion display, use a spare one.

To connect a Nextion to an Arduino you need one free serial port on the Arduino. Connect the TX from the Arduino to the yellow wire and the RX to the Arduino to the blue wire. You will also need 0v to the black wire and +5v to the red wire. The current drawn by the display depends on the model and how bright the back light is. The 7" CPT display NX8048K070 requires up to 550mA, the smaller ones less. The 4.3" NX4827T043 used for this tutorial draws 235mA. In my experience they generate quite a bit of noise on the supply and, although not essential, I recommend a 470μF (or larger) capacitor across the supply soldered to the connector on the back (see reply #68 for more about this).

This demonstration was created for the basic 4.3" RTP version, NX4827T043. You can adapt my configuration for a different display using the Nextion editor.

Open the attached file "Arduino Nextion demo 43V1.HMI" with the Nextion editor. If you are using a smaller display move the position of any objects that are outside the display area of the smaller display by changing X and Y for each object to a value that puts the object inside the boundaries of your display. Once you have done this select DEVICE ID from the menu and select your display from the list. If you have a bigger display you don"t need to move anything around, just select the correct device ID.

In this Arduino touch screen tutorial we will learn how to use TFT LCD Touch Screen with Arduino. You can watch the following video or read the written tutorial below.

As an example I am using a 3.2” TFT Touch Screen in a combination with a TFT LCD Arduino Mega Shield. We need a shield because the TFT Touch screen works at 3.3V and the Arduino Mega outputs are 5 V. For the first example I have the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, then for the second example an RGB LED with three resistors and a push button for the game example. Also I had to make a custom made pin header like this, by soldering pin headers and bend on of them so I could insert them in between the Arduino Board and the TFT Shield.

Here’s the circuit schematic. We will use the GND pin, the digital pins from 8 to 13, as well as the pin number 14. As the 5V pins are already used by the TFT Screen I will use the pin number 13 as VCC, by setting it right away high in the setup section of code.

I will use the UTFT and URTouch libraries made by Henning Karlsen. Here I would like to say thanks to him for the incredible work he has done. The libraries enable really easy use of the TFT Screens, and they work with many different TFT screens sizes, shields and controllers. You can download these libraries from his website, RinkyDinkElectronics.com and also find a lot of demo examples and detailed documentation of how to use them.

After we include the libraries we need to create UTFT and URTouch objects. The parameters of these objects depends on the model of the TFT Screen and Shield and these details can be also found in the documentation of the libraries.

So now I will explain how we can make the home screen of the program. With the setBackColor() function we need to set the background color of the text, black one in our case. Then we need to set the color to white, set the big font and using the print() function, we will print the string “Arduino TFT Tutorial” at the center of the screen and 10 pixels  down the Y – Axis of the screen. Next we will set the color to red and draw the red line below the text. After that we need to set the color back to white, and print the two other strings, “by HowToMechatronics.com” using the small font and “Select Example” using the big font.

Nextion is a Chinese company which build, in my opinion, the best HMI (Human-Machine-Interface) displays for DIY microcontroller projects. All of their displays have a touch panel and an onboard processor (MCU) combined with onboard memory. That is why the functions of the Nextion display far exceed that of a normal display. Also the displays has an UART connection, that enables the displays to communicate with all microcontrollers (e.g. Arduino, ESP8266) or single-board computers (e.g. Raspberry Pi).

The following table shows the different technical specifications of the Nextion display compared to the ESP8266 NodeMCU V2 and the Arduino Uno regarding computation power and memory size.

Nextion builds 3 different display series: Basic, Enhanced and Intelligent. All three series have the touch function as well as integrated flash, RAM and a MCU. If you order a display, no matter what series, a power supply board (Micro-USB to 5V GPIO) and cables to connect the display are included.

The enhanced models not only have the connection to your microcontroller, but also 8 additional digital pins, of which 4 are PWM capable. These additional pins are used with an Nextion expansion board that includes 6 buttons, 1 LED and 1 piezo buzzer. With the combination of enhanced display and expansion board, you can make basic projects without a microcontroller. In this case you have to program the logic in the display MCU which I also show you in this tutorial. The following picture shows you the difference if you use the expansion board or a microcontroller. The picture is only a schematic sketch and the wiring is not correct.

In each series there are different display sizes available. The following table shows the three different series of displays and the technical specifications. In this tutorial I use the NX4832T035 from the basic series, that have a 3.5” display.

Now we want to know how to build a HMI with the Nextion display. This is done by the Nextion Editor, a free GUI (graphical user interface) development software. You can download the latest version of the software on the Nextion website.

A new window opens and you have to select your display. First you select the series: Basic, Enhanced or Intelligent and then the size of the display. Hint: On the site of the package where the display was in, you find the corresponding number like: NX4832T035 in my case.

After we create the project you have to know the basic functions of the Nextion Editor. From the picture above you see that there are 8 planes that are described in the following section:

Page Plane: With the Nextion displays you can create virtual pages where you can show different information. You HMI needs at least one page that is added when you create a new project. Also you can export and import pages so save time and reuse different kind of pages.

The short answer would be via a micro SD card, but in reality it was a little bit trickier. The basic requirement for the Nextion display is that the SD card has to be in FAT32 format. First I tried to use a 64 GB micro SD card but unfortunately when I tried to format the card in Windows 10 there was no option to format the 64 GB micro SD card to FAT32.

After the SD card is ready we have to compile our code to make sure that the compiler does not find any errors. You find the compile button ins the Toolbox and the output of the compiler in the output box at the bottom left in the Nextion Editor.

The next step in the Nextion Editor is to export the TFT file to the micro SD card. Click on File in the main menu and select TFT file output. Now you choose your FAT32 formatted micro SD card and export the file to the card. If you wish, you could check if the TFT file is on the SD card.

The last step is to place the SD cart into the SD card slot of your Nextion display. After powering the display up, you see that the display recognizes the SD card and loads the file in the internal memory of the display.

Good news: the Nextion developers created a library for Arduino and Raspberry Pi that makes the coding much easier. The bad thing is, that this library is not included in the Arduino IDE library search. Therefore we install the library manually in 4 steps:Download the Arduino library for Nextion Display as ZIP file from the official github repository to a local folder of your choice.

Move the ITEADLIB_Arduino_Nextion folder to your Arduino IDE installation libraries folder. If you do not know how your library folder is located you can search for Arduino/libraries and will find the folder, see the following picture.

The Nextion library is configured for the Arduino Mega. If you use the Arduino Mega for this project, you can skip the next step. But if you use for example an Arduino Uno, like me, we have to change the configurations of the library because the Arduino Mega has two hardware serials and the Arduino Uno for example only one.

Now everything is setup and we can create our first basic example. After the basic example I show you a more advanced example where we also use the program function of the Nextion display itself.

The first example is an easy basic example where you learn how to add buttons and use a number field to make a counter with a reset button. This example has only one page to keep it simple. If you are new to the Nextion display, this tutorial is right for you, but if you are already advanced, you can jump to the next example where I show you a more complex example.

You can download every file I use in this example with the following download button. You download a zip file that includes the Nextion Editor TFT file, the used fonts, a picture and the Arduino script.

If you have not already started your Nextion Editor, you can open it now. Like in the video I showed you at the beginning of this tutorial, the first step in a new project is to select your Nextion display and select the horizontal or vertical display direction. In the second step you can create one or more fonts for this project. I created two fonts, one with a height of 16 and the second with a height of 32 to display text a little bit bigger.

The following picture shows the UART connection between the Nextion display and the Arduino Uno which I use for this example. In this project the power supply is provided via micro USB and the Power Supply Test Board which is part of the Nextion package.

Like in every other script, the first thing we have to do is to include all the libraries we need. For this example we only need the Nextion library. Then we define the Nextion objects based on the added components in the editor. The logic to add an object is the same every time, which shows the following table.

Object: The object is the library name of the Nextion component that you added to your editor. For example the button component of the editor is the NexButton object. You simply add “Nex” in front of the component.

The function is called for the b0 object and in the Nextion Editor we defined that the component should have a touch press event and not a touch release event. The touch press event is the push callback and the touch release event would be a pop callback.

After the two functions are defined, we create the setup function in the Arduino IDE. Because we use the UART communication between the Nextion display and the microcontroller, the baud rate is set to 9600 which is recommended by Nextion. Also the Nextion library is initialized in the setup function. The last part of the setup function is to register the push or pop event callback functions. The callback function asks: When do I have to executed the predefined functions? Therefore we attach the push event to both objects and define that if the event occurs, the predefined functions should be called.

This advanced example shows how to use the internal programming capabilities of the Nextion displays and also how to control lights and visualize the temperature and humidity of a DHT11 sensor module.

First we create the interface in the Nextion Editor. Therefore create a new project and select your display model. For this advanced example I use the landscape orientation of the display. You can use the already created font from the basic example or create a new one. The following two pictures show the interface we want to build with two pages.

Now every site and component is set up and you can test if everything is working with the debug function of the Nextion Editor. After everything is working you can compile the project and export the TFT file to the micro SD card.

At the beginning of the Arduino script we include the Nextion and DHT libraries and define the pins where the DHT11 module and the LED is connected. With the DHT11 model type and the pin, we create a dht11module object.

I hope you learned a lot about the Nextion display in this tutorial. If you have any question regarding the Nextion displays in general or the examples in this article, use the following comment section to ask your question. I will answer the question as soon as possible.

To host the TFT file you can use Home Assistant itself or any other web server. HTTPS, while always recommended on any network, will greatly reduce the upload speed.