3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

2023-01-03 12:32:11

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).

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.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

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:

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (3.5" diagonal) bright (6 white-LED backlight) and colorful (18-bit 262,000 different shades)! 320x480 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a optional resistive touch panel with controller XPT2046 attached by default and a optional capacitive touch panel with controller FT6236 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 pin32 (SDO) of 3.5 display module is also used by touch panel or SD card SPI interface, so we must cut off this pin to avoid conflict with the touch panel or SD card.

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).

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.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

The new line of 3.5” TFT displays with IPS technology is now available! Three touchscreen options are available: capacitive, resistive, or without a touchscreen.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

I bought online this LCD Touchscreen Kuman SC3A-NEW-UK. It uses ILI9486 drivers, but it didn"t include any instructions manual, and kumantech.com seems to be devoid of complete technical documentation about SC3A-NEW-UK model.

Just in case it wasn"t noticable: I am trying to make a "Hello World" for my SC3A-NEW-UK"s LCD Touchscreen from an Arduino UNO board. In other words: just print "Hello World" to see if it works.

To see if I can use it, I tried downloading a whole ZIP from this Github project, and inside the Arduino IDE, I tried adding the downloaded library using the option "Include .ZIP library". If I copy-paste the code example provided within README.md (the following) and compile:

This compiled in Arduino IDE, no problem, but I still don"t know if it will work well with my screen. I am also confused about initialization of the TFT object and how would I have to wire the LCD screen to the Arduino depending on this initialization:

...i mean, my LCD screen has CS and RESET pins, but what is DC supposed to be here? (in this context, I don"t think it stands for "Direct Current"... but there"s no DC pin reference in my LCD screen written "AS IS"... ?? This brings me more confusion...

...specially having in mind that I don"t know how am I supposed to wire the LCD screen to the Arduino yet. It seems the LCD pins have been designed to fit in directly to the Arduino board without thinking too much about it (like the shape is the same), but that would make the screen getting all the Arduino UNO"s pins for itself, so I don"t think so...

...so, powering the screen shouldn"t be a big deal, but, how am I supposed to connect everything else? I am completely misguided about how am I supposed to interact with the screen from Arduino code... what is RS pin for? Should I use 4-bit or 8-bit mode? (I think 4-bit would imply connecting 4 digital pins for the screen, and 8-bit the whole 8 pins from screen to the Arduino UNO board)? Should I use LCD_RD and LCD_WR? Well you have a picture of my confusion.

Even though I know how to control Input/Output in Arduino code to interact with analog/digital input and output pins at will with C++ in Arduino code (but even so, I think I"m still an Arduino n00b), this LCD screen"s physical interface is very confusing to me...

PD: I have read somewhere that this SC3A-NEW-UK Touchscreen is made to shield Arduino MEGA boards (by fitting the PINs directly into it), but mine is an Arduino UNO Board! (perhaps I shouldn"t have bought This LCD model, then?)... but I have sets of wires, pinboards and stuff... I don"t want to give up the idea of harnessing this LCD screen using an Arduino UNO. I don"t care about shielding feature, I just want to wire it and make it work. I will figure out how to shield electronics later on.

Based on VE7JRO"s answer, I managed to map the connections by seeing where the connections would go if I just fit the connections shielding the Arduino UNO, the way VE7JRO suggested:

I put NONE for A5 input, because that pin of LCD screen doesn"t have any name on it. There are another ones without name as well, that I didn"t include in this table. I believe (perhaps I"m wrong believing it, I don"t know) that those pins without name have no use.

The bad thing about this layout is that it consumes almost all the Arduino pins, so I would not be able to attach additional circuits. However, perhaps I should not be worrying about earning connections yet, before testing the screen.

I still don"t know much of the details about what pins do what for the screen, but I have read somewhere that LCD_D0 to LCD_D7 are meant to receive digital data in some kind of 8-bit parallel mode. But I also heard that there is a 4-bit mode. If I could use that mode with this screen, I would be able to have 4 free digital pins for anything else...

I tested VE7JRO"s code. LCD Screen did draw the interface as expected. But buttons didn"t respond. I found out the code sample needs further calibration.

The fifth parameter is supposed to be the resistance measured between LCD_D6 and LCD_RS with the screen unplugged. Unfortunately, my multimeter can"t measure it for some reason (I put it in 2000 Ohms mode for reading resistance: I always get "1", the same than when I don"t connect anything... like if multimeter"s contacts aren"t working well, I don"t know)... so I left the default 300 value.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

But the main problem is not the transfer to the lcd but the calculations of the image data. Generating random numbers takes some time on an AVR. One solution could be starting a spi transfer and then calculating the next data before waiting for the previous transmission to finish. If you know the calculation takes more time than a spi transfer you can even avoid checking spi beeiing busy.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

As an option, you can order this TFT pre-assembled onto a breakout/carrier board. The board allows easy prototyping through its 0.1" headers. You can also include the carrier board in your end product to simplify construction and assembly.

This development kit includes everything needed to get started with the 3.5" EVE module: a 320x240 display mounted on an EVE2 graphically accelerated PCBA, a Seeeduino, an EVE breakout board, jumper wires, USB cable and a ribbon cable. We even assemble this kit and pre-load some demonstration software so that you can have a functioning module in your hands within seconds.

This kit consists of a CFAF320240F-035T a 320x240 3.5" Full Color TFT LCD module mounted on a carrier board (CFA-10074). The carrier board supports a current driver for the LED backlight of the display.

This TFT LCD display module is perfect for the designer who"s looking to have a graphic and audio processor already embedded in the display unit. Powered by an FTDI/BridgeTek FT810 Embedded Video Engine (EVE) graphics accelerator chip, simply send over a few commands via SPI or I2C and the EVE will put your stored image up on the display. Need to draw a line, create dials/knobs/buttons, or rotate an image? Send a handful of bytes and the EVE will take care of it.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

I am using a 3.5: TFT LCD display with an Arduino Uno and the library from the manufacturer, the KeDei TFT library. The library came with a bitmap font table that is huge for the small amount of memory of an Arduino Uno so I"ve been looking for alternatives.

Are these due to different target devices such as a Windows display driver or a Linux display driver versus a bare metal Arduino TFT LCD display driver?

What is the criteria used to determine a particular bitmap font representation as a series of unsigned char values? Are different types of raster devices such as a TFT LCD display and its controller have a different sequence of bits when drawing on the display surface by setting pixel colors?

Is there some method other than the approach I"m using to determine what transformation is needed? I currently plug the bitmap font table into a test program and print out a set of characters to see how it looks and then fine tune the transformation by testing with the Arduino and the TFT LCD screen.

With the size of this table and the small amount of memory on the Arduino Uno, I started hunting for other bitmap fonts that would be legible while also taking up less memory. See reducing memory required for KeDei TFT library used with 3.5" TFT display with Arduino

What I have run into is that while I have found several different examples of bitmap fonts not all seem to be compatible with my specific 3.5" TFT LCD display.

The code for drawing a single line of a character is as follows. The outline of this function is to provide to the LCD controller a rectangle specifying the region of the display to be modified followed by a series of two 8 bit writes to set the two byte RGB565 color value of each of the pixels in the region.

static bool TFTLCD::draw_glyph(unsigned short x0, unsigned short y0, TftColor fg_color, TftColor bg_color, unsigned char bitMap, unsigned char bmWidth, unsigned char flags)

TFTLCD::draw_glyph(Font::now_x, Font::now_y, Font::font_color, Font::txt_backcolor, Font::font_table.table[char_i_x + char_m], Font::font_table.nCols, glyphFlags);

There are a number of font specifications including rasterized bitmap type fonts. These specifications do not necessarily describe the glyph bitmaps used in application such as the KeDei TFT library but rather provide a device independent description of a bitmap font format.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to set up an LCD on an Arduino and show you all the different ways you can program it. I’ll show you how to print text, scroll text, make custom characters, blink text, and position text. They’re great for any project that outputs data, and they can make your project a lot more interesting and interactive.

The display I’m using is a 16×2 LCD display that I bought for about $5. You may be wondering why it’s called a 16×2 LCD. The part 16×2 means that the LCD has 2 lines, and can display 16 characters per line. Therefore, a 16×2 LCD screen can display up to 32 characters at once. It is possible to display more than 32 characters with scrolling though.

The code in this article is written for LCD’s that use the standard Hitachi HD44780 driver. If your LCD has 16 pins, then it probably has the Hitachi HD44780 driver. These displays can be wired in either 4 bit mode or 8 bit mode. Wiring the LCD in 4 bit mode is usually preferred since it uses four less wires than 8 bit mode. In practice, there isn’t a noticeable difference in performance between the two modes. In this tutorial, I’ll connect the LCD in 4 bit mode.

BONUS: I made a quick start guide for this tutorial that you can download and go back to later if you can’t set this up right now. It covers all of the steps, diagrams, and code you need to get started.

Here’s a diagram of the pins on the LCD I’m using. The connections from each pin to the Arduino will be the same, but your pins might be arranged differently on the LCD. Be sure to check the datasheet or look for labels on your particular LCD:

Also, you might need to solder a 16 pin header to your LCD before connecting it to a breadboard. Follow the diagram below to wire the LCD to your Arduino:

All of the code below uses the LiquidCrystal library that comes pre-installed with the Arduino IDE. A library is a set of functions that can be easily added to a program in an abbreviated format.

In order to use a library, it needs be included in the program. Line 1 in the code below does this with the command #include . When you include a library in a program, all of the code in the library gets uploaded to the Arduino along with the code for your program.

Now we’re ready to get into the programming! I’ll go over more interesting things you can do in a moment, but for now lets just run a simple test program. This program will print “hello, world!” to the screen. Enter this code into the Arduino IDE and upload it to the board:

TheLiquidCrystal() function sets the pins the Arduino uses to connect to the LCD. You can use any of the Arduino’s digital pins to control the LCD. Just put the Arduino pin numbers inside the parentheses in this order:

This function sets the dimensions of the LCD. It needs to be placed before any other LiquidCrystal function in the void setup() section of the program. The number of rows and columns are specified as lcd.begin(columns, rows). For a 16×2 LCD, you would use lcd.begin(16, 2), and for a 20×4 LCD you would use lcd.begin(20, 4).

This function clears any text or data already displayed on the LCD. If you use lcd.clear() with lcd.print() and the delay() function in the void loop() section, you can make a simple blinking text program:

Similar, but more useful than lcd.home() is lcd.setCursor(). This function places the cursor (and any printed text) at any position on the screen. It can be used in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.

The cursor position is defined with lcd.setCursor(column, row). The column and row coordinates start from zero (0-15 and 0-1 respectively). For example, using lcd.setCursor(2, 1) in the void setup() section of the “hello, world!” program above prints “hello, world!” to the lower line and shifts it to the right two spaces:

You can use this function to write different types of data to the LCD, for example the reading from a temperature sensor, or the coordinates from a GPS module. You can also use it to print custom characters that you create yourself (more on this below). Use lcd.write() in the void setup() or void loop() section of your program.

The function lcd.noCursor() turns the cursor off. lcd.cursor() and lcd.noCursor() can be used together in the void loop() section to make a blinking cursor similar to what you see in many text input fields:

Cursors can be placed anywhere on the screen with the lcd.setCursor() function. This code places a blinking cursor directly below the exclamation point in “hello, world!”:

This function creates a block style cursor that blinks on and off at approximately 500 milliseconds per cycle. Use it in the void loop() section. The function lcd.noBlink() disables the blinking block cursor.

This function turns on any text or cursors that have been printed to the LCD screen. The function lcd.noDisplay() turns off any text or cursors printed to the LCD, without clearing it from the LCD’s memory.

This function takes anything printed to the LCD and moves it to the left. It should be used in the void loop() section with a delay command following it. The function will move the text 40 spaces to the left before it loops back to the first character. This code moves the “hello, world!” text to the left, at a rate of one second per character:

Like the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, the text can be up to 40 characters in length before repeating. At first glance, this function seems less useful than the lcd.scrollDisplay() functions, but it can be very useful for creating animations with custom characters.

lcd.noAutoscroll() turns the lcd.autoscroll() function off. Use this function before or after lcd.autoscroll() in the void loop() section to create sequences of scrolling text or animations.

This function sets the direction that text is printed to the screen. The default mode is from left to right using the command lcd.leftToRight(), but you may find some cases where it’s useful to output text in the reverse direction:

This code prints the “hello, world!” text as “!dlrow ,olleh”. Unless you specify the placement of the cursor with lcd.setCursor(), the text will print from the (0, 1) position and only the first character of the string will be visible.

This command allows you to create your own custom characters. Each character of a 16×2 LCD has a 5 pixel width and an 8 pixel height. Up to 8 different custom characters can be defined in a single program. To design your own characters, you’ll need to make a binary matrix of your custom character from an LCD character generator or map it yourself. This code creates a degree symbol (°):

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

Display brilliant colors on the Displaytech 3.5 inch TFT LCD module! This LCD display has 320 x 240 RGB resolution and uses the NewVision NV3035C single chip digital driver. The TFT driver IC supports 16M colors allowing for a range of hues to be displayed and can also support up to 22 different types of input video formats within RGB, CCIR656, and CCIR601 video formats. The 3.5” TFT is available with a touch screen panel in either resistive (single-finger or stylus pressure) or capacitive (five-finger, multi-gesture) touchscreen technology.

3.5 tft lcd arduino tutorial quotation

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