can a arduino nano run a tft display made in china

Still waiting for the 3.3V powered micro controllers to be delivered, I am using the "3.3V USB cable" described above for weeks now. And everything works fine, with it I was able to investigate how to create a screentsot and store it on SD card, see this (long) thread:

Because I had removed the plastic threads of screws, I sealed the box with super glue (I always use superglue for everything). Sealing was really necessary because I had to press very hard to keep all pieces and cables inside the box.

With "3.3V USB cable"++ the voltage on Vin was only 2.45V, not enough. So I connected to pin D3 and set digital pin 3 to HIGH, the 2.97V I measured were enough to make display work (I like #breadboardless Arduino female-female wirings).

I2C is okay for a character based LCD but it is waaayyy too slow to drive a TFT, it"s by far the worst choice, even with the 400khz high speed version. SPI is a reasonable choice if I/O pins are in short supply, SPI with DMA is even better.

A display shield is the fastest and easiest way to get a TFT LCD up and running on an Arduino. There is an undefined "standard" for this, ultilizing a 20x2 header pin connection to the LCD, a typical example:

The graphics drivers are on the LCD board, common types are the SSD1963 and RA8875. Buydisplay sells both driver types with the standard 20x2 connector and shields as well. It"s probably worth a mention that there are far more driver choices in smaller displays but when you get to the higher pixel counts, the field narrows rapidly.

Parallel I/O, 16 bits wide, is usually the fastest way to drive a screen but the Due presents a conundrum in that regard as the designers mapped the physical ports to the digital pins rather poorly, the result being you have to bit twiddle and write to multiple hardware ports to achieve parallel I/O, thereby decreasing the overall efficiency. This is really not a concern if you"re using an exsisting library, only if you"re writing your own code but I mention this as you said you would be making your own board - and so you could address this deficiency.

testdrawtext("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur adipiscing ante sed nibh tincidunt feugiat. Maecenas enim massa, fringilla sed malesuada et, malesuada sit amet turpis. Sed porttitor neque ut ante pretium vitae malesuada nunc bibendum. Nullam aliquet ultrices massa eu hendrerit. Ut sed nisi lorem. In vestibulum purus a tortor imperdiet posuere. ", ST77XX_WHITE);

In this article, you will learn how to use TFT LCDs by Arduino boards. From basic commands to professional designs and technics are all explained here.

In electronic’s projects, creating an interface between user and system is very important. This interface could be created by displaying useful data, a menu, and ease of access. A beautiful design is also very important.

There are several components to achieve this. LEDs,  7-segments, Character and Graphic displays, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, type of user interaction, and processor capacity.

TFT LCD is a variant of a liquid-crystal display (LCD) that uses thin-film-transistor (TFT) technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven LCDs with a few segments.

In Arduino-based projects, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex, high definition images and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-color TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands.

In this article, we have used libraries and advanced technics to display data, charts, menu, etc. with a professional design. This can move your project presentation to a higher level.

In electronic’s projects, creating an interface between user and system is very important. This interface could be created by displaying useful data, a menu, and ease of access. A beautiful design is also very important.

There are several components to achieve this. LEDs,  7-segments, Character and Graphic displays, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, type of user interaction, and processor capacity.

TFT LCD is a variant of a liquid-crystal display (LCD) that uses thin-film-transistor (TFT) technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven LCDs with a few segments.

In Arduino-based projects, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex, high definition images and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-color TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands.

In this article, we have used libraries and advanced technics to display data, charts, menu, etc. with a professional design. This can move your project presentation to a higher level.

Size of displays affects your project parameters. Bigger Display is not always better. if you want to display high-resolution images and signs, you should choose a big size display with higher resolution. But it decreases the speed of your processing, needs more space and also needs more current to run.

After choosing the right display, It’s time to choose the right controller. If you want to display characters, tests, numbers and static images and the speed of display is not important, the Atmega328 Arduino boards (such as Arduino UNO) are a proper choice. If the size of your code is big, The UNO board may not be enough. You can use Arduino Mega2560 instead. And if you want to show high resolution images and motions with high speed, you should use the ARM core Arduino boards such as Arduino DUE.

In electronics/computer hardware a display driver is usually a semiconductor integrated circuit (but may alternatively comprise a state machine made of discrete logic and other components) which provides an interface function between a microprocessor, microcontroller, ASIC or general-purpose peripheral interface and a particular type of display device, e.g. LCD, LED, OLED, ePaper, CRT, Vacuum fluorescent or Nixie.

The display driver will typically accept commands and data using an industry-standard general-purpose serial or parallel interface, such as TTL, CMOS, RS232, SPI, I2C, etc. and generate signals with suitable voltage, current, timing and demultiplexing to make the display show the desired text or image.

The LCDs manufacturers use different drivers in their products. Some of them are more popular and some of them are very unknown. To run your display easily, you should use Arduino LCDs libraries and add them to your code. Otherwise running the display may be very difficult. There are many free libraries you can find on the internet but the important point about the libraries is their compatibility with the LCD’s driver. The driver of your LCD must be known by your library. In this article, we use the Adafruit GFX library and MCUFRIEND KBV library and example codes. You can download them from the following links.

You must add the library and then upload the code. If it is the first time you run an Arduino board, don’t worry. Just follow these steps:Go to www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software and download the software of your OS. Install the IDE software as instructed.

By these two functions, You can find out the resolution of the display. Just add them to the code and put the outputs in a uint16_t variable. Then read it from the Serial port by Serial.println(); . First add Serial.begin(9600); in setup().

First you should convert your image to hex code. Download the software from the following link. if you don’t want to change the settings of the software, you must invert the color of the image and make the image horizontally mirrored and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise. Now add it to the software and convert it. Open the exported file and copy the hex code to Arduino IDE. x and y are locations of the image. sx and sy are sizes of image. you can change the color of the image in the last input.

Upload your image and download the converted file that the UTFT libraries can process. Now copy the hex code to Arduino IDE. x and y are locations of the image. sx and sy are size of the image.

In this template, We just used a string and 8 filled circles that change their colors in order. To draw circles around a static point ,You can use sin();  and cos(); functions. you should define the PI number . To change colors, you can use color565(); function and replace your RGB code.

In this template, We converted a .jpg image to .c file and added to the code, wrote a string and used the fade code to display. Then we used scroll code to move the screen left. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We used sin(); and cos(); functions to draw Arcs with our desired thickness and displayed number by text printing function. Then we converted an image to hex code and added them to the code and displayed the image by bitmap function. Then we used draw lines function to change the style of the image. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We created a function which accepts numbers as input and displays them as a pie chart. We just use draw arc and filled circle functions.

In this template, We added a converted image to code and then used two black and white arcs to create the pointer of volumes.  Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We added a converted image and use the arc and print function to create this gauge.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

while (a < b) { Serial.println(a); j = 80 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i = 80 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); j2 = 50 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i2 = 50 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); tft.drawLine(i2 + 235, j2 + 169, i + 235, j + 169, tft.color565(0, 255, 255)); tft.fillRect(200, 153, 75, 33, 0x0000); tft.setTextSize(3); tft.setTextColor(0xffff); if ((a/20)>99)

while (b < a) { j = 80 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i = 80 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); j2 = 50 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i2 = 50 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); tft.drawLine(i2 + 235, j2 + 169, i + 235, j + 169, tft.color565(0, 0, 0)); tft.fillRect(200, 153, 75, 33, 0x0000); tft.setTextSize(3); tft.setTextColor(0xffff); if ((a/20)>99)

In this template, We display simple images one after each other very fast by bitmap function. So you can make your animation by this trick.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We just display some images by RGBbitmap and bitmap functions. Just make a code for touchscreen and use this template.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

The speed of playing all the GIF files are edited and we made them faster or slower for better understanding. The speed of motions depends on the speed of your processor or type of code or size and thickness of elements in the code.

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.

For this tutorial I composed three examples. The first example is distance measurement using ultrasonic sensor. The output from the sensor, or the distance is printed on the screen and using the touch screen we can select the units, either centimeters or inches.

The next example is controlling an RGB LED using these three RGB sliders. For example if we start to slide the blue slider, the LED will light up in blue and increase the light as we would go to the maximum value. So the sliders can move from 0 to 255 and with their combination we can set any color to the RGB LED,  but just keep in mind that the LED cannot represent the colors that much accurate.

The third example is a game. Actually it’s a replica of the popular Flappy Bird game for smartphones. We can play the game using the push button or even using the touch screen itself.

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.

As the code is a bit longer and for better understanding I will post the source code of the program in sections with description for each section. And at the end of this article I will post the complete source 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.

Next we need to define the fonts that are coming with the libraries and also define some variables needed for the program. In the setup section we need to initiate the screen and the touch, define the pin modes for the connected sensor, the led and the button, and initially call the drawHomeSreen() custom function, which will draw the home screen of the program.

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.

Next is the distance sensor button. First we need to set the color and then using the fillRoundRect() function we will draw the rounded rectangle. Then we will set the color back to white and using the drawRoundRect() function we will draw another rounded rectangle on top of the previous one, but this one will be without a fill so the overall appearance of the button looks like it has a frame. On top of the button we will print the text using the big font and the same background color as the fill of the button. The same procedure goes for the two other buttons.

Now we need to make the buttons functional so that when we press them they would send us to the appropriate example. In the setup section we set the character ‘0’ to the currentPage variable, which will indicate that we are at the home screen. So if that’s true, and if we press on the screen this if statement would become true and using these lines here we will get the X and Y coordinates where the screen has been pressed. If that’s the area that covers the first button we will call the drawDistanceSensor() custom function which will activate the distance sensor example. Also we will set the character ‘1’ to the variable currentPage which will indicate that we are at the first example. The drawFrame() custom function is used for highlighting the button when it’s pressed. The same procedure goes for the two other buttons.

drawDistanceSensor(); // It is called only once, because in the next iteration of the loop, this above if statement will be false so this funtion won"t be called. This function will draw the graphics of the first example.

getDistance(); // Gets distance from the sensor and this function is repeatedly called while we are at the first example in order to print the lasest results from the distance sensor

So the drawDistanceSensor() custom function needs to be called only once when the button is pressed in order to draw all the graphics of this example in similar way as we described for the home screen. However, the getDistance() custom function needs to be called repeatedly in order to print the latest results of the distance measured by the sensor.

Here’s that function which uses the ultrasonic sensor to calculate the distance and print the values with SevenSegNum font in green color, either in centimeters or inches. If you need more details how the ultrasonic sensor works you can check my particular tutorialfor that. Back in the loop section we can see what happens when we press the select unit buttons as well as the back button.

Ok next is the RGB LED Control example. If we press the second button, the drawLedControl() custom function will be called only once for drawing the graphic of that example and the setLedColor() custom function will be repeatedly called. In this function we use the touch screen to set the values of the 3 sliders from 0 to 255. With the if statements we confine the area of each slider and get the X value of the slider. So the values of the X coordinate of each slider are from 38 to 310 pixels and we need to map these values into values from 0 to 255 which will be used as a PWM signal for lighting up the LED. If you need more details how the RGB LED works you can check my particular tutorialfor that. The rest of the code in this custom function is for drawing the sliders. Back in the loop section we only have the back button which also turns off the LED when pressed.

In order the code to work and compile you will have to include an addition “.c” file in the same directory with the Arduino sketch. This file is for the third game example and it’s a bitmap of the bird. For more details how this part of the code work  you can check my particular tutorial. Here you can download that file:

drawDistanceSensor(); // It is called only once, because in the next iteration of the loop, this above if statement will be false so this funtion won"t be called. This function will draw the graphics of the first example.

getDistance(); // Gets distance from the sensor and this function is repeatedly called while we are at the first example in order to print the lasest results from the distance sensor

No! For about the price of a familiar 2x16 LCD, you get a high resolution TFT display. For as low as $4 (shipping included!), it"s possible to buy a small, sharp TFT screen that can be interfaced with an Arduino. Moreover, it can display not just text, but elaborate graphics. These have been manufactured in the tens of millions for cell phones and other gadgets and devices, and that is the reason they are so cheap now. This makes it feasible to reuse them to give our electronic projects colorful graphic displays.

There are quite a number of small cheap TFT displays available on eBay and elsewhere. But, how is it possible to determine which ones will work with an Arduino? And what then? Here is the procedure:ID the display. With luck, it will have identifying information printed on it. Otherwise, it may involve matching its appearance with a picture on Google images. Determine the display"s resolution and the driver chip.

Find out whether there is an Arduino driver available. Google is your friend here. Henning Karlsen"s UTFT library works with many displays. (http://www.rinkydinkelectronics.com/library.php?i...)

Download and install the driver library. On a Linux machine, as root, copy the library archive file to the /usr/share/arduino/libraries directory and untar or unzip it.

Load an example sketch into the Arduino IDE, and then upload it to the attached Arduino board with wired-up TFT display. With luck, you will see text and/or graphics.

For prototyping and testing:A solderless breadboard male-to-male jumpers male-to-female jumpers 22 gauge insulated hookup wire, solid Graph paper, for planning and sketching wiring diagrams and layouts

A couple of sets (4 each) of decent rechargeable NIMH AA batteries. Note: Beware of cheap ripoff batteries from Hong Kong. These typically take only a 200 mA charge, and even an "intelligent" charger will not refresh them. Purple, blue, and green ones are suspect -- see picture and ... Link #1Link #2

We"ll begin with a simple one. The ILI9163 display has a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels. With 8 pins in a single row, it works fine with a standard Arduino UNO or with a Mega. The hardware hookup is simple -- only 8 connections total! The library put together by a smart fella, by the name of sumotoy, makes it possible to display text in multiple colors and to draw lines.

Note that these come in two varieties, red and black. The red ones may need a bit of tweaking to format the display correctly -- see the comments in the README.md file. The TFT_ILI9163C.h file might need to be edited.

It is 5-volt friendly, since there is a 74HC450 IC on the circuit board that functions as a level shifter. These can be obtained for just a few bucks on eBay and elsewhere, for example -- $3.56 delivered from China. It uses Henning Karlsen"s UTFT library, and it does a fine job with text and graphics. Note that due to the memory requirement of UTFT, this display will work with a standard UNO only with extensive tweaking -- it would be necessary to delete pretty much all the graphics in the sketch, and just stay with text.

on the far side of the display. It has 220x176 resolution (hires!) and will accept either 3.3 or 5 volts. It will work hooked up to an Uno, and with a few pin changes, also with a Mega. The 11-pin row is for activating the display itself, and the 5-pin row for the SD socket on its back.

This one is a 2.2" (diagonal) display with 176x220 resolution and parallel interface. It has a standard ("Intel 8080") parallel interface, and works in both 8-bit and 16-bit modes. It uses the S6D0164 driver in Henning Karlsen"s UTFT library, and because of the memory requirements of same, works only with an Arduino Mega or Due. It has an SD card slot on its back

This one is a bit of an oddball. It"s a clone of the more common HY-TFT240, and it has two rows of pins, set at right angles to one another. To enable the display in 8-bit mode, only the row of pins along the narrow edge is used. The other row is for the SD card socket on the back, and for 16-bit mode. To interface with an Arduino ( Mega or Due), it uses Henning Karlsen"s UTFT library, and the driver is ILI9325C. Its resolution is 320x240 (hires!) and it incorporates both a touch screen and an SD card slot.

Having determined that a particular TFT display will work with the Arduino, it"s time to think about a more permanent solution -- constructing hard-wired and soldered plug-in boards. To make things easier, start with a blank protoshield as a base, and add sockets for the TFT displays to plug into. Each socket row will have a corresponding row next to it, with each individual hole "twinned" to the adjacent hole in the adjoining row by solder bridges, making them accessible to jumpers to connect to appropriate Arduino pins. An alternative is hard-wiring the socket pins to the Arduino pins, which is neater but limits the versatility of the board.

The key to an effective DIY shield is a neat and logical layout. Sketching the prospective shield on quadrille (graph) paper may be helpful. A multitester or continuity tester might be useful for detecting wiring and soldering errors.

In step 5, you mention that the TFT01 display can"t be used with the UTFT library on an Arduino Uno because of its memory requirements. It can - all you have to do is edit memorysaver.h and disable any display models you"re not using.

I think you should add a disclaimer that the code might make the Arduino Uno unprogrammable afterward (due to use up the two 0 and 1 pin) and link to how to fix it: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5290428/how-to-reset-an-arduino-board/8453576?sfb=2#84535760

Not at all - it was your Instructable that got me going with the display to begin with! We all build off each other"s work, to the benefit of everyone.0

Tho I realize this is quickly becoming legacy hardware, these 8,16 bit parallel spi with 4 wire controller 3.2in Taft touch display 240x380. It has become very inexpensive with ally of back stock world wide so incorporating them into any project is easier then ever. Sorry to my question. I’m having difficulty finding wiring solution for this lcd. It is a sd1289 3.3 and 5v ,40 pin parallel 8,16 bit. I do not want to use a extra shield,hat or cape or adapter. But there’s a lot of conflicting info about required lvl shifters for this model any help or links to info would be great .. thank you. I hope I gave enough information to understand what I’m adoing

#1 you need a data sheet for the display and pinout and the i/o board attached to the cable.Than before you buy check for a driver for this chip Raydium/RM69071.if no driver lib are you able to write one and do you have the necessary tools to work on this scale to wire it up ..if you answer no than search for an arduino ready product.WCH0

hooking up and adding a lib is no piece of cake insure the screen you buy is arduino ready and sold by a reputable shop with step by step directions...WCH0

I"m sorry that I can"t help you with this. You"ll have to do your own research. See if you can identify the chipset and find out if there"s an Arduino driver for it.0

Thanks for the wealth of knowledge! It is amazing at what is possible with items the average person can easily acquire. I hope to put some of your tips to use this winter as I would like to build sensors and other items for home automation and monitoring. Being able to have small displays around the house in addition to gathering and controlling things remotely will help the family see room conditions without going to the computer. The idea of a touchscreen control for cheap is mind blowing.

We have used Liquid Crystal Displays in the DroneBot Workshop many times before, but the one we are working with today has a bit of a twist – it’s a circle!  Perfect for creating electronic gauges and special effects.

LCD, or Liquid Crystal Displays, are great choices for many applications. They aren’t that power-hungry, they are available in monochrome or full-color models, and they are available in all shapes and sizes.

Today we will see how to use this display with both an Arduino and an ESP32. We will also use a pair of them to make some rather spooky animated eyeballs!

Waveshare actually has several round LCD modules, I chose the 1.28-inch model as it was readily available on Amazon. You could probably perform the same experiments using a different module, although you may require a different driver.

There are also some additional connections to the display. One of them, DC, sets the display into either Data or Command mode. Another, BL, is a control for the display’s backlight.

The above illustration shows the connections to the display.  The Waveshare display can be used with either 3.3 or 5-volt logic, the power supply voltage should match the logic level (although you CAN use a 5-volt supply with 3.3-volt logic).

Another difference is simply with the labeling on the display. There are two pins, one labeled SDA and the other labeled SCL. At a glance, you would assume that this is an I2C device, but it isn’t, it’s SPI just like the Waveshare device.

This display can be used for the experiments we will be doing with the ESP32, as that is a 3.3-volt logic microcontroller. You would need to use a voltage level converter if you wanted to use one of these with an Arduino Uno.

The Arduino Uno is arguably the most common microcontroller on the planet, certainly for experiments it is. However, it is also quite old and compared to more modern devices its 16-MHz clock is pretty slow.

The Waveshare device comes with a cable for use with the display. Unfortunately, it only has female ends, which would be excellent for a Raspberry Pi (which is also supported) but not too handy for an Arduino Uno. I used short breadboard jumper wires to convert the ends into male ones suitable for the Arduino.

Once you have everything hooked up, you can start coding for the display. There are a few ways to do this, one of them is to grab the sample code thatWaveshare provides on their Wiki.

The Waveshare Wiki does provide some information about the display and a bit of sample code for a few common controllers. It’s a reasonable support page, unfortunately, it is the only support that Waveshare provides(I would have liked to see more examples and a tutorial, but I guess I’m spoiled by Adafruit and Sparkfun LOL).

Open the Arduino folder. Inside you’ll find quite a few folders, one for each display size that Waveshare supports. As I’m using the 1.28-inch model, I selected theLCD_1inch28folder.

Once you do that, you can open your Arduino IDE and then navigate to that folder. Inside the folder, there is a sketch file namedLCD_1inch28.inowhich you will want to open.

When you open the sketch, you’ll be greeted by an error message in your Arduino IDE. The error is that two of the files included in the sketch contain unrecognized characters. The IDE offers the suggestion of fixing these with the “Fix Encoder & Reload” function (in the Tools menu), but that won’t work.

The error just seems to be with a couple of the Chinese characters used in the comments of the sketch. You can just ignore the error, the sketch will compile correctly in spite of it.

The code is pretty basic, I’m not repeating all of it here, as it consists of several files.  But we can gather quite a bit of knowledge from the main file, as shown here.

You can see from the code that after loading some libraries we initialize the display, set its backlight level (you can use PWM on the BL pin to set the level), and paint a new image. We then proceed to draw lines and strings onto the display.

Unfortunately, Waveshare doesn’t offer documentation for this, but you can gather quite a bit of information by reading theLCD_Driver.cppfile, where the functions are somewhat documented.

After uploading the code, you will see the display show a fake “clock”. It’s a static display, but it does illustrate how you can use this with the Waveshare code.

This library is an extension of the Adafruit GFX library, which itself is one of the most popular display libraries around. Because of this, there isextensive documentation for this libraryavailable from Adafruit.  This makes the library an excellent choice for those who want to write their own applications.

As with the Waveshare sample, this file just prints shapes and text to the display. It is quite an easy sketch to understand, especially with the Adafruit documentation.

The sketch finishes by printing some bizarre text on the display. The text is an excerpt from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and it’s a sample of Vogon poetry, which is considered to be the third-worst in the Galaxy!

Here is the hookup for the ESP32 and the GC9A01 display.  As with most ESP32 hookup diagrams, it is important to use the correct GPIO numbers instead of physical pins. The diagram shows the WROVER, so if you are using a different module you’ll need to consult its documentation to ensure that you hook it up properly.

The TFT_eSPI library is ideal for this, and several other, displays. You can install it through your Arduino IDE Library Manager, just search for “TFT_eSPI”.

There is a lot of demo code included with the library. Some of it is intended for other display sizes, but there are a few that you can use with your circular display.

To test out the display, you can use theColour_Test sketch, found inside the Test and Diagnostic menu item inside the library samples.  While this sketch was not made for this display, it is a good way to confirm that you have everything hooked up and configured properly.

A great demo code sample is theAnimated_dialsketch, which is found inside theSpritesmenu item.  This demonstration code will produce a “dial” indicator on the display, along with some simulated “data” (really just a random number generator).

In order to run this sketch, you’ll need to install another library. Install theTjpeg_DecoderLibrary from Library Manager. Once you do, the sketch will compile, and you can upload it to your ESP32.

One of my favorite sketches is the Animated Eyes sketch, which displays a pair of very convincing eyeballs that move. Although it will work on a single display, it is more effective if you use two.

The first thing we need to do is to hook up a second display. To do this, you connect every wire in parallel with the first display, except for the CS (chip select) line.

You can also hook up some optional components to manually control the two “eyeballs”.  You’ll need an analog joystick and a couple of momentary contact, normally open pushbutton switches.

The Animated Eyes sketch can be found within the sample files for the TFT_eSPI library, under the “generic” folder.  Assuming that you have wired up the second GC9A01 display, you’ll want to use theAnimated_Eyes_2sketch.

The GC9A01 LCD module is a 1.28-inch round display that is useful for instrumentation and other similar projects. Today we will learn how to use this display with an Arduino Uno and an ESP32.

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.

The user interface has two pages: one controls two LEDs connected to the Arduino pins, and the other shows data gathered from the DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor;

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.

Additionally, we provide all the resources you need to complete this project. Here’s all the resources you need (be aware that you may need to change some settings on the user interface to match your display size):

Toolbox – this is where you have a wide variety of components you can add to the user interface, like pictures, progress bar, buttons, sliders, and much more.

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:

2. Click the (+) button and select your background image. The image will be added to the pictures list and it will be given an id. In this case it is 0.

4. Having that component selected, you should see its attribute in the attribute area.  You can double click on the attributes to edit them. Double-click on the pic attribute to select the picture you want. You must write “0” which is the index of the picture you want, or select the image on the new window that pops up. After writing “0”, you actually need to hit ENTER to save the changes.

Here you can select the font height, type, spacing and if you want it to be bold or not. Give it a name and click the Generate font button. After that, save the .zi file and add the generator font by clicking yes.

The font will be added to the Fonts library at the left bottom corner and it will be given an index. As this is your first font, it will have the index 0.

Note: At the time of writing this instructions there is an issue with font types. Whatever font type you chose, it will always look the same.Still, you can edit the font size and if it is bold or not.

At this moment, you can start adding components to the display area. For our project, drag three buttons, two labels and one slider, as shown in the figure below. Edit their looks as you like.

All components have an attribute called objname. This is the name of the component. Give good names to your components because you’ll need them later for the Arduino code. Also note that each component has one id number that is unique to that component in that page. The figure below shows the objname and id for the slider.

You should trigger an event for the touchable components (the buttons and the slider) so that the Arduino knows that a component was touched. You can trigger events when you press or when you release a component.

To do that, select one of the buttons, and in the event window, select the Touch Release Event tab, and put a tick on the Send Component ID option. Repeat this process for the other button, and the slider.

Adding more pages to your GUI is really simple. On the top right corner, in the Page area, select the Add button to add a new page. A new page will be created. In this case, page1.

Our second page will display data from the DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor. We have several labels to hold the temperature in Celsius, the temperature in Fahrenheit, and the humidity. We also added a progress bar to display the humidity and an UPDATE button to refresh the readings. The bBack button redirects to page0.

Notice that we have labels to hold the units like “ºC”, “ºF” and “%”, and empty labels that will be filled with the readings when we have our Arduino code running.

In that window you can click on the buttons and see what happens. You should be able to swap between pages by clicking the corresponding buttons. You should also see the data returned when you click each button as highlighted in red in the figure above.

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.

The first thing you should do is to take note of your components in the GUI that will interact with the Arduino and take note of their ID, names and page. Here’s a table of all the components the code will interact to (your components may have a different ID depending on the order you’ve added them to the GUI).

After that, you define led1 and led2. These variables refer to the digital pins 8 and 9 respectively. (led 1 will be controlled with the ON and OFF buttons of the user interface, and led2 brightness will be controlled using the slider).

Here you use the page ID, the component ID and their name – just check the table above with all the components. To define a text you use NexText, to define a button you use NexButton, for a slider you use NexSlider and for the progress bar you use NexProgressBar.

This function will set the led1 to HIGH, as well as update the tState label with the text “State: on”. Updating text labels is as simple as using setText().

For the slider (h0), you have the following function that writes the current slider position on the tSlider label and sets led2 brightness accordingly:

Finally, you need a function for the bUpdate (the update button). When you click this button the DHT temperature and humidity sensor reads temperature and humidity and displays them on the corresponding labels, as well as the humidity on the progress bar. That is the bUpdatePopCallback() function.

In the setup(), you need to attach the functions created to the corresponding events. For example, when you click on the bOn button, the bOnPopCallback function will be triggered.

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.

The ST7789 TFT module contains a display controller with the same name: ST7789. It’s a color display that uses SPI interface protocol and requires 3, 4 or 5 control pins, it’s low cost and easy to use. This display is an IPS display, it comes in different sizes (1.3″, 1.54″ …) but all of them should have the same resolution of 240×240 pixel, this means it has 57600 pixels. This module works with 3.3V only and it doesn’t support 5V (not 5V tolerant).

The ST7789 display module shown in project circuit diagram has 7 pins: (from right to left): GND (ground), VCC, SCL (serial clock), SDA (serial data), RES (reset), DC (or D/C: data/command) and BLK (back light).

As mentioned above, the ST7789 TFT display controller works with 3.3V only (power supply and control lines). The display module is supplied with 3.3V (between VCC and GND) which comes from the Arduino board.

To connect the Arduino to the display module, I used voltage divider for each line which means there are 4 voltage dividers. Each voltage divider consists of 2.2k and 3.3k resistors, this drops the 5V into 3V which is sufficient.

The first library is a driver for the ST7789 TFT display which can be installed from Arduino IDE library manager (Sketch —> Include Library —> Manage Libraries …, in the search box write “st7789” and install the one from Adafruit).

testdrawtext("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur adipiscing ante sed nibh tincidunt feugiat. Maecenas enim massa, fringilla sed malesuada et, malesuada sit amet turpis. Sed porttitor neque ut ante pretium vitae malesuada nunc bibendum. Nullam aliquet ultrices massa eu hendrerit. Ut sed nisi lorem. In vestibulum purus a tortor imperdiet posuere. ", ST77XX_WHITE);

testdrawtext("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur adipiscing ante sed nibh tincidunt feugiat. Maecenas enim massa, fringilla sed malesuada et, malesuada sit amet turpis. Sed porttitor neque ut ante pretium vitae malesuada nunc bibendum. Nullam aliquet ultrices massa eu hendrerit. Ut sed nisi lorem. In vestibulum purus a tortor imperdiet posuere. ",ST77XX_WHITE);

In this blog I will show how to connect a 0.96" IPS color display that is 80x160 pixels to Arduino Nano. Then I will try the new Arduino Web Editor to create and later to share this project.

Sometimes it is handy to have a small screen in your Arduino project. The 0.96 inch IPS color diplay is perfect for this. You can get the original Adafruit Color TFT display with SD card readerfor this for $20 (excluding shipping costs), but you can also find a clone on Chinese reseller websites or eBay. Mine did not include a SD card reader, but it was $3 (including shipping).

Because everything happens now "In The Cloud". I have decided to try out the new Arduino Web Editor. Another reason you might want to create Arduino sketches online is if you want to share them.

What is also handy about the Web Editor is that you don"t need to install any libraries. As you will see, in my project I use some Adafruit libraries, but did not have to do anything to call the extra library functions. I just compiled without any errors or warnings.

To get it working follow the "Getting Started" steps on this page of the Arduino website. The steps include creating an account and installing a plugin, which will detect COM ports where your Arduinos are connected. It also works with Arduino clones. As a test I had an old Arduino Nano clone connected and it detected it flawlessly.

To make your project better to understand, you can also add board diagrams. This can be done using Fritzing. Just download the version supported by your OS. I have used the Windows 64-bit version and just needed to unzip it and start Fritzing.exe.

In my case I also needed a part that was not in the Fritzing database. Luckily there is a community that submits parts. It is located on the forum page.  Adafruit also has parts on their Github page. To import the part just click the icon in the Parts frame and select Import...

I was now able to create the breadboard diagram. Below you see the breadboard diagram created with Fritzing app of how to connect the display to Arduino Nano.

The display part is Adafruit based, but I have created a table on how to translate the Original Adafruit 0.96" 160x80 Color TFT Display to Chinese Clone IPS 0.96 inch 7P SPI ST7735 module

The 1.54inch LCD uses the PH2.0 8PIN interface, which can be connected to the Raspberry Pi according to the above table: (Please connect according to the pin definition table. The color of the wiring in the picture is for reference only, and the actual color shall prevail.)

The example we provide is based on STM32F103RBT6, and the connection method provided is also the corresponding pin of STM32F103RBT6. If you need to transplant the program, please connect according to the actual pin.

The built-in controller used in this LCD is ST7789VW, which is an LCD controller with 240 x RGB x 320 pixels, while the pixels of this LCD itself is 135 (H)RGB x 240(V). There are two types of horizontal and vertical screens, so the internal RAM of the LCD is not fully used.

The LCD supports 12-bit, 16-bit, and 18-bit input color formats per pixel, namely RGB444, RGB565, and RGB666 three color formats, this routine uses RGB565 color format, which is also a commonly used RGB format

Note: Different from the traditional SPI protocol, the data line from the slave to the master is hidden since the device only has display requirement.

CPOL determines the level of the serial synchronous clock at idle state. When CPOL = 0, the level is Low. However, CPOL has little effect to the transmission.

CPHA determines whether data is collected at the first clock edge or at the second clock edge of serial synchronous clock; when CPHL = 0, data is collected at the first clock edge.

PS: If you are using the system of the Bullseye branch, you need to change "apt-get" to "apt", the system of the Bullseye branch only supports Python3.

Framebuffer uses a video output device to drive a video display device from a memory buffer containing complete frame data. Simply put, a memory area is used to store the display content, and the display content can be changed by changing the data in the memory.

There is an open source project on github: fbcp-ili9341. Compared with other fbcp projects, this project uses partial refresh and DMA to achieve a speed of up to 60fps

Note: The script will replace the corresponding /boot/config.txt and /etc/rc.local and restart, if the user needs, please back up the relevant files in advance.

We have carried out the low-level encapsulation, if you need to know the internal implementation can go to the corresponding directory to check, for the reason that the hardware platform and the internal implementation are different

2.We use Dev libraries by default. If you need to change to BCM2835 or WiringPi libraries ,please open RaspberryPi\c\Makefile and modify lines 13-15 as follows:

If you need to draw pictures, or display Chinese and English characters, we provide some basic functions here about some graphics processing in the directory RaspberryPi\c\lib\GUI\GUI_Paint.c(.h).

Select image buffer: The purpose of the selection is that you can create multiple image attributes, there can be multiple images buffer, you can select each image you create.

Mirror: indicates the image mirroring mode. MIRROR_NONE, MIRROR_HORIZONTAL, MIRROR_VERTICAL, MIRROR_ORIGIN correspond to no mirror, horizontal mirror, vertical mirror, and image center mirror respectively.

Set points of the display position and color in the buffer: here is the core GUI function, processing points display position and color in the buffer.

The fill color of a certain window in the image buffer: the image buffer part of the window filled with a certain color, usually used to fresh the screen into blank, often used for time display, fresh the last second of the screen.

Draw rectangle: In the image buffer, draw a rectangle from (Xstart, Ystart) to (Xend, Yend), you can choose the color, the width of the line, whether to fill the inside of the rectangle.

Draw circle: In the image buffer, draw a circle of Radius with (X_Center Y_Center) as the center. You can choose the color, the width of the line, and whether to fill the inside of the circle.

Write Ascii character: In the image buffer, use (Xstart Ystart) as the left vertex, write an Ascii character, you can select Ascii visual character library, font foreground color, font background color.

Write English string: In the image buffer, use (Xstart Ystart) as the left vertex, write a string of English characters, you can choose Ascii visual character library, font foreground color, font background color.

Write Chinese string: in the image buffer, use (Xstart Ystart) as the left vertex, write a string of Chinese characters, you can choose character font, font foreground color, font background color of the GB2312 encoding

Write numbers: In the image buffer,use (Xstart Ystart) as the left vertex, write a string of numbers, you can choose Ascii visual character library, font foreground color, font background color.

Display time: in the image buffer,use (Xstart Ystart) as the left vertex, display time,you can choose Ascii visual character font, font foreground color, font background color.;

2. The module_init() function is automatically called in the INIT () initializer on the LCD, but the module_exit() function needs to be called by itself

Python has an image library PIL official library link, it do not need to write code from the logical layer like C, can directly call to the image library for image processing. The following will take 1.54inch LCD as an example, we provide a brief description for the demo.

The first parameter defines the color depth of the image, which is defined as "1" to indicate the bitmap of one-bit depth. The second parameter is a tuple that defines the width and height of the image. The third parameter defines the default color of the buffer, which is defined as "WHITE".

The first argument is a tuple of four elements. (20,10) is the coordinate value in the upper left corner of the rectangle, and (70,60) is the coordinate value in the lower right corner of the rectangle. Fill =" WHITE" means BLACK inside, and outline="BLACK" means the color of the outline is black.

Draw an inscribed circle in the square, the first parameter is a tuple of 4 elements, with (150, 15) as the upper left corner vertex of the square, (190, 55) as the lower right corner vertex of the square, specifying the level median line of the rectangular frame is the angle of 0 degrees, the second parameter indicates the starting angle, the third parameter indicates the ending angle, and fill = 0 indicates that the the color of the line is white.

The first parameter is the coordination of the enclosing rectangle. The second and third parameters are the beginning and end degrees of the circle. The fourth parameter is the fill color of the circle.

Note: Each character library contains different characters; If some characters cannot be displayed, it is recommended that you can refer to the encoding set ro used.

The first parameter is a tuple of 2 elements, with (40, 50) as the left vertex, the font is Font2, and the fill is the font color. You can directly make fill = "WHITE", because the regular color value is already defined Well, of course, you can also use fill = (128,255,128), the parentheses correspond to the values of the three RGB colors so that you can precisely control the color you want. The second sentence shows Micro Snow Electronics, using Font3, the font color is white.

According to my experence for another 2.2" LCD display with D/C Pin, I am using CD4050BE to convert the UNO pin 5v to 3.3v to fit to the TFT signal standard.

The product page (china seller) said it is using ILI9341, but I read the attachment which seller send to me, attachment said it is ILI9340. And I did a research from google, someone said it is HX8347A.

PS: I have tried using Adafruit_ILI9340 & Adafruit_ILI9341 with Adafruit_GFX, but I am no luck to see anything, the screen just got some flash (slightly dimmed and go back to bright).