arduino tft lcd display tutorial price

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big full viewing angle (4.3" diagonal) bright (8 white-LED backlight) and colorfu 800x480 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a with capacitive touch panel with controller FT5206 attached by default, so you can detect finger presses anywhere on the screen and doesn"t require pressing down on the screen with a stylus and has nice glossy glass cover.

The shield is fully assembled, tested and ready to go. No wiring, no soldering! Simply plug it in and load up our library - you"ll have it running in under 10 minutes! Works best with any classic Arduino (Due/Mega 2560).

This display shield has a controller built into it with RAM buffering, so that almost no work is done by the microcontroller. You can connect more sensors, buttons and LEDs.

Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!" - we"ve written a full open source graphics library at the bottom of this page that can draw pixels, lines, rectangles, circles and text. We also have a touch screen library that detects x,y and z (pressure) and example code to demonstrate all of it. The code is written for Arduino but can be easily ported to your favorite microcontroller!

If you"ve had a lot of Arduino DUEs go through your hands (or if you are just unlucky), chances are you’ve come across at least one that does not start-up properly.The symptom is simple: you power up the Arduino but it doesn’t appear to “boot”. Your code simply doesn"t start running.You might have noticed that resetting the board (by pressing the reset button) causes the board to start-up normally.The fix is simple,here is the solution.

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.

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.

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:

In this guide we’re going to show you how you can use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino. You’ll learn how to wire the display, write text, draw shapes and display images on the screen.

The 1.8 TFT is a colorful display with 128 x 160 color pixels. The display can load images from an SD card – it has an SD card slot at the back. The following figure shows the screen front and back view.

This module uses SPI communication – see the wiring below . To control the display we’ll use the TFT library, which is already included with Arduino IDE 1.0.5 and later.

The TFT display communicates with the Arduino via SPI communication, so you need to include the SPI library on your code. We also use the TFT library to write and draw on the display.

In which “Hello, World!” is the text you want to display and the (x, y) coordinate is the location where you want to start display text on the screen.

The 1.8 TFT display can load images from the SD card. To read from the SD card you use the SD library, already included in the Arduino IDE software. Follow the next steps to display an image on the display:

Note: some people find issues with this display when trying to read from the SD card. We don’t know why that happens. In fact, we tested a couple of times and it worked well, and then, when we were about to record to show you the final result, the display didn’t recognized the SD card anymore – we’re not sure if it’s a problem with the SD card holder that doesn’t establish a proper connection with the SD card. However, we are sure these instructions work, because we’ve tested them.

In this guide we’ve shown you how to use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino: display text, draw shapes and display images. You can easily add a nice visual interface to your projects using this display.

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.

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.

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.

Displays are one of the best ways to provide feedback to users of a particular device or project and often the bigger the display, the better. For today’s tutorial, we will look on how to use the relatively big, low cost, ILI9481 based, 3.5″ Color TFT display with Arduino.

This 3.5″ color TFT display as mentioned above, is based on the ILI9481 TFT display driver. The module offers a resolution of 480×320 pixels and comes with an SD card slot through which an SD card loaded with graphics and UI can be attached to the display. The module is also pre-soldered with pins for easy mount (like a shield) on either of the Arduino Mega and Uno, which is nice since there are not many big TFT displays that work with the Arduino Uno.

The module is compatible with either of the Arduino Uno or the Arduino Mega, so feel free to choose between them or test with both. As usual, these components can be bought via the links attached to them.

One of the good things about this module is the ease with which it can be connected to either of the Arduino Mega or Uno. For this tutorial, we will use the Arduino Uno, since the module comes as a shield with pins soldered to match the Uno’s pinout. All we need to do is snap it onto the top of the Arduino Uno as shown in the image below, thus no wiring required.

This ease of using the module mentioned above is, however, one of the few downsides of the display. If we do not use the attached SD card slot, we will be left with 6 digital and one analog pin as the module use the majority of the Arduino pins. When we use the SD card part of the display, we will be left with just 2 digital and one analog pin which at times limits the kind of project in which we can use this display. This is one of the reasons while the compatibility of this display with the Arduino Mega is such a good news, as the “Mega” offers more digital and analog pins to work with, so when you need extra pins, and size is not an issue, use the Mega.

To easily write code to use this display, we will use the GFX and TFT LCD libraries from “Adafruit” which can be downloaded here. With the library installed we can easily navigate through the examples that come with it and upload them to our setup to see the display in action. By studying these examples, one could easily learn how to use this display. However, I have compiled some of the most important functions for the display of text and graphics into an Arduino sketch for the sake of this tutorial. The complete sketch is attached in a zip file under the download section of this tutorial.

As usual, we will do a quick run through of the code and we start by including the libraries which we will use for the project, in this case, the Adafruit GFX and TFT LCD libraries.

With this done, the Void Setup() function is next. We start the function by issuing atft.reset() command to reset the LCD to default configurations. Next, we specify the type of the LCD we are using via the LCD.begin function and set the rotation of the TFT as desired. We proceed to fill the screen with different colors and display different kind of text using diverse color (via the tft.SetTextColor() function) and font size (via the tft.setTextSize() function).

Next is the void loop() function. Here we basically create a UI to display the youtube subscribe button, using some of the same functions we used under the void setup() function.

The Adafruit library helps reduce the amount of work one needs to do while developing the code for this display, leaving the quality of the user interface to the limitations of the creativity and imagination of the person writing the code.

That’s it for this tutorial guys, thanks for reading. If you made some cool projects based on this or you just want to ask questions about this tutorial, feel free to reach out via the comment section below.

This is a 2.8" Arduino Touch Screen Tutorial with the ILI9325 driver. Is this Arduino touch display a good option for your Arduino projects? Keep watching in...

Adding a display to your Arduino can serve many purposes. Since a common use for microcontrollers is reading data from sensors, a display allows you to see this data in real-time without needing to use the serial monitor within the Arduino IDE. It also allows you to give your projects a personal touch with text, images, or even interactivity through a touch screen.

Transparent Organic Light Emitting Diode (TOLED) is a type of LED that, as you can guess, has a transparent screen. It builds on the now common OLED screens found in smartphones and TVs, but with a transparent display, offers up some new possibilities for Arduino screens.

Take for example this brilliant project that makes use of TOLED displays. By stacking 10 transparent OLED screens in parallel, creator Sean Hodgins has converted a handful of 2D screens into a solid-state volumetric display. This kind of display creates an image that has 3-dimensional depth, taking us one step closer to the neon, holographic screens we imagine in the future.

Crystalfontz has a tiny monochrome (light blue) 1.51" TOLED that has 128x56 pixels. As the technology is more recent than the following displays in this list, the cost is higher too. One of these screens can be purchased for around $26, but for certain applications, it might just be worth it.

The liquid crystal display (LCD) is the most common display to find in DIY projects and home appliances alike. This is no surprise as they are simple to operate, low-powered, and incredibly cheap.

This type of display can vary in design. Some are larger, with more character spaces and rows; some come with a backlight. Most attach directly to the board through 8 or 12 connections to the Arduino pins, making them incompatible with boards with fewer pins available. In this instance, buy a screen with an I2C adapter, allowing control using only four pins.

Available for only a few dollars (or as little as a couple of dollars on AliExpress with included I2C adapter), these simple displays can be used to give real-time feedback to any project.

The screens are capable of a large variety of preset characters which cover most use cases in a variety of languages. You can control your LCD using the Liquid Crystal Library provided by Arduino. The display() and noDisplay() methods write to the LCD, as shown in the official tutorial on the Arduino website.

Are you looking for something simple to display numbers and a few basic characters? Maybe you are looking for something with that old-school arcade feel? A seven-segment display might suit your needs.

These simple boards are made up of 7 LEDs (8 if you include the dot), and work much like normal LEDs with a common Anode or Cathode connection. This allows them to take one connection to V+ (or GND for common cathode) and be controlled from the pins of your Arduino. By combining these pins in code, you can create numbers and several letters, along with more abstract designs—anything you can dream up using the segments available!

Next on our list is the 5110 display, also affectionately known as the Nokia display due to its wide use in the beloved and nigh indestructible Nokia 3310.

These tiny LCD screens are monochrome and have a screen size of 84 x 48 pixels, but don"t let that fool you. Coming in at around $2 on AliExpress, these displays are incredibly cheap and usually come with a backlight as standard.

Depending on which library you use, the screen can display multiple lines of text in various fonts. It"s also capable of displaying images, and there is free software designed to help get your creations on screen. While the refresh rate is too slow for detailed animations, these screens are hardy enough to be included in long-term, always-on projects.

For a step up in resolution and functionality, an OLED display might be what you are looking for. At first glance, these screens look similar to the 5110 screens, but they are a significant upgrade. The standard 0.96" screens are 128 x 64 monochrome, and come with a backlight as standard.

They connect to your Arduino using I2C, meaning that alongside the V+ and GND pins, only two further pins are required to communicate with the screen. With various sizes and full color options available, these displays are incredibly versatile.

For a project to get you started with OLED displays, our Electronic D20 build will teach you everything you need to know -- and you"ll end up with the ultimate geeky digital dice for your gaming sessions!

These displays can be used in the same way as the others we have mentioned so far, but their refresh rate allows for much more ambitious projects. The basic monochrome screen is available on Amazon.

Thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT LCDs) are in many ways another step up in quality when it comes to options for adding a screen to your Arduino. Available with or without touchscreen functionality, they also add the ability to load bitmap files from an on-board microSD card slot.

Arduino have an official guide for setting up their non-touchscreen TFT LCD screen. For a video tutorial teaching you the basics of setting up the touchscreen version, YouTuber educ8s.tv has you covered:

With the touchscreen editions of these screens costing less than $10 on AliExpress, these displays are another great choice for when you need a nice-looking display for your project.

Looking for something a little different? An E-paper (or E-ink depending on who you ask) display might be right for you. These screens differ from the others giving a much more natural reading experience, it is no surprise that this technology is the cornerstone of almost every e-reader available.

The reason these displays look so good is down to the way they function. Each "pixel" contains charged particles between two electrodes. By switching the charge of each electrode, you can influence the negatively charged black particles to swap places with the positively charged white particles.

This is what gives e-paper such a natural feel. As a bonus, once the ink is moved to its location, it uses no power to keep it there. This makes these displays naturally low-power to operate.

This article has covered most options available for Arduino displays, though there are definitely more weird and wonderful ways to add feedback to your DIY devices.

Now that you have an idea of what is out there, why not incorporate a screen into your DIY smart home setup? If retro gaming is more your thing, why not create some retro games on Arduino?

To interface TFT LCD Display with Arduino, for designing custom HMI TFT LCD Display provide rich colours, detailed images, and bright graphics with their full-colour RGB mode it comes in different pixels 128 x 160 pixels, 320×240 pixels and many more.

In this tutorial, we’ll interface the 1.8 TFT LCD display with Arduino Uno. You’ll learn how to interface the TFT LCD with Arduino to write text on this LCD. This tutorial presents the coding, wiring diagram and components list required for the LCD display.

Creating an interface between the user and the system is very important. This interface can be created by displaying useful data, and menus. There are several components to achieving this. LEDs, 7-segments, OLEDs, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, and the type of user interaction.

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. In the case of Arduino, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-colour TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands. This TFT has 128 x 160 pixels. 1.8 TFT display can load images from an SD card. It has an SD card slot at the back. You can see the front and back views of the TFT LCD in the figures below.

TFT is an abbreviation of “Thin Film Transistor”. It has transistors made up of thin films of Amorphous silicon. It serves as a control valve to provide an appropriate voltage onto liquid crystals for individual sub-pixels. The working principle is very simple the TFT LCD composes of many pixels that can emit light of any colour. The desired image achieves by controlling each pixel to display the corresponding colour. In TFT LCD, the backlight technology is generally used. In order to accurately control the colour and brightness of each pixel, it is necessary to install a shutter-like switch after each pixel. When the “blinds” are opened, light can pass through them. When the shutters are closed, light cannot pass through them.

Connect your PC to Arduino and open Arduino IDE. For the very first steps, you can refer to Connecting Windows PC with Arduino tutorial. You can get the .ino code and libraries from my download area with the following link:

This is the section before setup which uses for globe variables defining and libraries additions. TFT.h is the library for TFT LCD Display and uses for writing and drawing on the display. The TFT display communicates with the Arduino via SPI communication, so you need to include the SPI library.

This is the setup section in which Serial.begin(9600) initialize. TFTscreen.begin() is use to initialize the library. TFTscreen.background(0, 0, 0) is use to customize the screen background color here TFTscreen.background(0, 0, 0) means the background colour is black. TFTscreen.setTextSize(2) is use to set the font size.

In the loop section first, we will print the “Hi_peppe8o!” in the centre of the LCD and this will be in three different colours (Red, Green, Blue) you can choose any colour using the different colour codes. After 300 milliseconds a straight line will be displayed, after 300 milliseconds a square will be displayed, after 300 milliseconds a circle will be displayed, and after 300 milliseconds screen will be black/ erase and these all shapes and the text will be repeated in the void loop.

The LCD displays the text of “Hi_peppe80” and after that displays the line, square, and circle and then erases everything after completing this sequence. The command used for clearing all the data is TFTscreen.background(0,0,0):

The2.4 inch TFT LCD Shield Touch Screen Module For 2.4 inch TFT LCD display screenhas excellent vivid colour contrast. This Arduino Uno TFT display is big (2.4″ diagonal) bright (4 white-LED backlights) and colourful (18-bit 262,000 different shades). 240×320 pixels with individual pixel control.

As with all Arduino Shields, connecting to the Arduino is simply a matter of plugging the shield in. Take care to align the pins correctly, and ensure the bottom of the shield does not make contact with the Arduino USB port.

1 Adafruit have disabled old model LCD"s support so please install Adafruit_GFX older version 1.5.3 from Sketch--> Include Libraries --> Manage Libraries.

Welcome to another Arduino video tutorial! In this video, we are going to take a first look at this 2.8” Color TFT Touch display! It is a big, low-cost touch display which is very easy to use. Without any further delay, let’s get started.

Hello guys, I am Nick and welcome to educ8s.tv a channel that is all about DIY electronics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266, ESP32 and other popular boards. If you are new here, welcome, be sure to subscribe and check the previous videos on the channel.

Today we are going to learn how to drive the 2.8” Touch display with the ILI9341 driver with an Arduino Uno and an ESP32 board. First of all, let’s take a close look at the display itself. The display is big, and it offers a resolution of 320×240 pixels. Compared to one of my favorites displays, the 1.8” Color TFT display you can see it a lot larger. The screen also offers touch functionality which is an added bonus and an SD card slot at the back. It uses the SPI interface, so the connection with the Arduino is very straightforward. The cost of the display is relatively low; it costs around 11$ which in my opinion is a fair price for what this display offers.

Another thing I like about this display is that it does not come as a shield like the touch display we were using so far. This way, we can connect the display to any board, the Arduino Pro mini, the STM32, the ESP8266 and the ESP32. This is very important because we now have a low-cost display that we can use with every board. Until now, the only touch display we could use with these boards were the Nextion displays which are more expensive, and to be honest even though I use them from time to time, I don’t really like them.

Now let’s see how to connect this display to an Arduino Uno. The first 9 pins of the display are the power pins and the SPI pins. So, if we connect only the first 9 pins of the display, we can use it as a regular display without touch functionality. The display uses 3.3-volt logic levels and unfortunately, it is not 5V tolerant. So, we need to use some 10K resistors if we want to drive it with a board that uses 5V logic levels like the Arduino Uno.

As you can see, we have connected Vcc to 5V of the Arduino Uno and the SPI pins of the display to the hardware SPI pins of the Arduino Uno. Let’s load a demo sketch now. As you can the 8bit Arduino Uno with only 2KBs of RAM can drive this big display! But as you can see it is very slow in updating the screen. It takes many seconds to update the whole screen which is a pity. It can display text with more speed though. It is obvious that the Arduino Uno is not enough to drive a display with such a high resolution. It is obvious that we need a more powerful board to drive this display effectively.

But can we build a useful project using this display? I wanted to find out, so I decided to build a simple real-time clock and temperature monitor. I added a DS3231 RTC module, and I modified the code of a previous project to use the new bigger display. You can find the code of the project in a link in the description below. The result is not that bad as the demo sketch. The project works fine, but of course, there is a small delay when the values on the screen are updated. In my opinion, this project demonstrates that we can use this display with an 8bit Arduino only on very simple projects that update the screen rarely.

Before moving to the more capable ESP32 board, let’s try to use the touch functionality of the display. We connect the remaining 5 pins according to this schematic diagram, and we are ready to upload the second sketch to the board.

To my surprise, the touch demo works relatively fast! It is a simple sketch in which we draw on the screen using this stylus. I think this result is impressive if we take into consideration that this display is driven by an 8bit board.

Let’s now connect the display to an ESP32 board. If you are not familiar with it, the ESP32 is a very fast and inexpensive Arduino compatible board. I prepared a detailed review of this board a few months ago; you can watch it by clicking on the card here. Since the ESP32 board uses 3.3V logic levels, we don’t need any resistors to drive the display. So, if we don’t need the touch functionality, we connect the display according to this schematic diagram.

If we upload the same sketch that used before on the Arduino Uno, we can see the ESP32 is extremely fast. It can update the display, draw graphics and complete the demo sketch way faster than the Arduino Uno.

Unfortunately, the touch demo is not compatible with the ESP32 board yet, so I didn’t have the chance to try the touch functionality of the display. I will prepare another video about the ESP32 board and this display soon. First I want to test more libraries and find a touch library that works with the ESP32 chip and build a simple demo sketch. Stay tuned.

Let’s now see the software side of the project. In order to use this display with Arduino, we need to install the Adafruit ILI9341 driver and the familiar Adafruit GFX library if we don’t use the touch functionality. If we want to use the touch functionality, we have also to install the URtouch library. You can find links to all the libraries needed along with the code of the demo programs I showed you in the description below.

As a final thought, I believe this display is a great display to use for our future projects. I think I am going to use this display a lot with the ESP32, and STM32 boards because it is easy to use, offers touch functionality and it is relatively inexpensive. I am going to build a complete project around this display soon, to test it even more, and see what is capable of.

I would love to hear your opinion on this display. Have you ever used it in your projects, or are you going o use it in the future? Do you have any project ideas that we could build using this display? Please post your comments below and don’t forget to like the video if you find it useful. Thanks!