3.5 tft lcd shield ili9481 free sample

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.

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.

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).

In this video we learn how to drive the new, low cost big, 3.5″ Color TFT display for Arduino Uno and Mega. For the written tutorial please check here.

Hey guys, its Nick again, welcome once again to educ8s.tv a channel that is all about DIY electronics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 and other popular boards. Today we are going to look at how to drive the low cost, big, Arduino 3.5″ Color TFT display. At the end of this tutorial, we would have learned how to use this interesting display with the Arduino Uno and Mega boards.

The display is quite big and offers a resolution of 480×320 pixels. It is based on the ILI9481 TFT driver, comes with an SD card slot at the back and it is pre-soldered with pins for easy mount on the Arduino Uno, which is nice since there are not many big TFT displays that work with the Arduino Uno.

Few weeks ago, I discovered this Arduino 3.5″ Color TFT display on Banggood.com and thought it will be useful in some of our projects because of its size and its low price. The price of the display is very low for such a big display, it costs 10$ and banggood.com were kind enough to send me a sample unit in order to test it and share my opinion about it with you.

Connecting the module to the Arduino is very easy. Since the module comes in a shield form, all we need to do is to snap it onto the top of the Arduino Uno as shown in the image below.

To use this display, we will need the libraries which can found on the product page on banggood.com. All we have to do is to install the library and load any of the examples that are designed for this shield. Since the display uses the familiar Adafruit libraries, we can easily build several impressive projects. I have developed a simple program just to demonstrate how easy it is to use the display thanks to the Adafruit libraries! It uses some of the basic functions in order to display text and simple graphics. You can download the code of this simple example for the Arduino 3.5″ Color TFT display by clicking on the download link below or by clicking on the link in the description of the video.

With this done, we then write the void setup() function. To begin we clear the LCD of previous settings, then set the type LCD we are using via the LCD.begin function. With this done, we set the rotation of the TFT and proceed to fill the screen with different colors.

We have to install a library to operate the TFT Display with Arduino Mega. Before trying the examples, you need to copy the LCDWIKI library in the Install libraries directory of the test package to the libraries folder of the Arduino project directory (the default Arduino project directory is C:\Users\Administrator\ Documents\Arduino\libraries);

480x320 TFT LCD display shield is a great display module for Arduino mega. The connections are straightforward. The Arduino program and necessary library are also available. This display can be used for any DIY embedded system project based on Arduino mega 2560. Thanks for reading the article.

Only US$14.99, buy best 3.5 inch tft color display screen module 320 x 480 support uno mega2560 geekcreit for arduino - products that work with official arduino boards sale online store at wholesale price.

It appears to me that there is no backlight control, either through software or hardware. Neither is there a comprehensive schematic for either the screen part or for the circuit board. The controller chip, the ILI9481 does, however, appear to be well documented.

The TFT LCD class provides basic firmware functionalities like Init, ResetDevice, WriteDevice, WriteDataToDevice, WriteBlock and FillRectangle.

bpl(loopstart)SCR_WIDTH,SCR_HEIGHT,SCR_ROT = const(480),const(320),const(5)TFT_CLK_PIN,TFT_MOSI_PIN,TFT_MISO_PIN,TFT_CS_PIN = const(6),const(7),const(4),const(0)

display = ILI9488(spi,cs=Pin(TFT_CS_PIN),dc=Pin(TFT_DC_PIN),rst=Pin(TFT_RST_PIN),w=SCR_WIDTH,h=SCR_HEIGHT,r=SCR_ROT)display.SetPosition(0,0);display.FillRectangle(0,0,480,320,0xBDF7)# Read files.

An Arduino IDE compatible graphics and fonts library for Mega with a drivers for the HX8357B, HX8357C, ILI9481 and ILI9486 based TFT displays with a 16 bit parallel interface. This library will not run on an UNO and it does not support 8 bit UNO shields.

This HX8357B based display does appear to have a bug in the silicon of the driver chip as it sometimes generates spurious pixels on the display. The only way around this is to redraw the whole screen occasionally to wipe out the duff ones, this is most noticeable for intensive updates in small screen areas (e.g. in ring meter sketch). So my suggestion is to go for the next revision driver, the HX8357C with 3" TFT which does not exhibit the same problem:

Many Arduino projects require adequate display of what is being monitored. Think of time, temperature, humidity, pressure, sound, light, voltages, or combinations of recorded data in a weather station. With the addition of fast and capable ESP32 microcontroller boards to my personal ‘fleet’ my collection of good old Arduino Unos with their TFT display shields seemed prone to gather dust. The ESP32 combines well with TFT displays through a 4-pin SPI interface* while the Uno shields have parallel interfaces that feature 28 pins of which a minimum of 13 is necessary for the daily display business (see figure 2). A parallel interface is generally faster than a SPI interface. The prospect of a bunch of shield displays with fast parallel interface parked forever in a deep drawer was a stimulus for me to start a project to connect these shields to an ESP32. Fortunately there are several solutions available of which I selected the one proposed by Alberto Iriberri Andrés at https://www.pangodream.es/ili9341-esp32-parallel. However, the nightmarish prospect of connecting shield after shield with an ESP with unwieldy Dupont jumper wires inspired me to create a Uno-shield compatible parallel ESP32 TFTdisplay workbench for the purpose of checking all my Uno TFT shields, one by one. Here follows the design, wiring, and the results with a collection of parallel Uno shield type displays.

The market is swamped with TFT shields that can be placed directly on the pin sockets of an Arduino Uno. These shields feature parallel interfaces. They have in common that there are four pin header blocks through which one can stick such a shield very handy right onto a Uno (fig. 2). The displays mounted on these shields have different pixel dimensions and, more important, different controller chips. Most commonly used are ILI9341, ILI9481 and ILI 9486 chips. The best performing TFT shields are equipped with 3V-5V voltage converters (e.g. the shield shown in fig 2) but there are plenty of cheap shields available that lack a voltage regulator and therefore accept only 3V.

Controllers need their own specific driver to make the display work correctly. A major effort to supply the Arduino world with adequate drivers for ESP8266 and ESP32 microprocessors running smoothly with the above ILI controllers has been undertaken in recent years by the electronics engineer known as Bodmer: the TFT_e_SPI.h library.

So what I needed is a board that accomodates an ESP32 and that has enough space to accommodate a variety of small (2.4 inch) and large (3.95 inch) Uno TFT shields.

The base board consists of a doule-sided soldering board fastened with four nylon spacers on a piece of cardboard. Mounted on this base are two 15-pin parallel socket headers to accommodate an ESP32 microcontroller board and the four socket headers to accommodate the Arduino Uno TFT shields to be tested. As screen diagonals of TFT shields in my ‘arsenal’ vary between 2.4 inch and 3.95 inch, a 12080 mm double-sided soldering board with 4230 holes was selected for this purpose. The positioning of the socket headers is shown in figure 3. There are also two 2-pin pin headers to allow to select the proper voltage to power the display being tested (with jumpers).

The positioning of pins on the original Arduino Uno does not follow the uniform 2.54 mm (0.1 inch) pitch rule. Any Uno parallel TFT shield therefore will not immediately fit a standard soldering board. On the back of each shield are jumper blocks labeled J1 through 4 (figure 2). We call J1 here the ‘SD jumper block’, J2 the ‘parallel jumper block’, J3 the ‘control jumper block’ and J4 the ‘power block’. Part of the SD jumper block is occupied by the parallel data interface. Some manoevering makes it clear trhat the J2-J3-J4 blocks fit the holes of the soldering board while the parallel jumper block (J1) is the outlier. Fortunately, the pins in all blocks follow the 2.54 mm pitch rule. It is J1 as a whole that is half a unit positioned ‘out of pitch’. Through this unorthodoxy, say asymmetry, a TFT shield fits an Arduino in only one way. Very clever. The present soldering board was adapted to this configuration by cutting a narrow sleeve where the pins of the J1 parallel jumper block should be, just wide enough to let the pins of the corresponding socket header through. Then an extra piece of soldering board was prepared and fastened with wire and solder under the sleeve, taking care that the J1 accepting socket header would exactly match jumper block J1.

The design is quite simple: two parallel rows of 15-pin socket headers serve as a mounting point for the ESP32 (figures 2,3). These sockets are positioned in the upper left corner of the board to leave as much area as possible to position the TFT shields. Here, TFT shields are oriented landscape. The bench is designed only for displaying data and graphs only, with no SD card reader support.

All Uno TFT shields have three pins that deal with power (3V3, 5V, GND), five pins that are necessary for display control and eight pins connected with the parallel data transfer interface, i.e., there is a total of 16 pins that need to be wired (figure 2). In addition I planned three ‘free’ pins of the ESP32 available via pin sockets for input-output puposes: pins D2, D5 and D15 (figure 4).

With so many wires it is necessary to bring order in the assembly of the bench. One can distinguish (1) power wires, (2) TFT control wires, (3) parallel interface wires, (4) additional wiring. One by one the groups of wires were mounted on the soldering board.

The group of control wires originates from pins D26, D27, D14, D12 and D13 and connect to the socket header that accomodates TFT shield jumper J1 (figure 5).

There are eight data pins on the TFT shields, marked LCD_D0 through LCD_D07. LCD-00 and LCD_01 are pins on jumper block J3 while the remaining LCD_nn pins can be found on jumper block J2. These pins must be connected to, respectively, pins RX2, D4, D23, D22, D21, D19, D18 and TX2 (figure 6).

Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI library is different than other libraries, e.g. Adafruit_GFX and U8G2 in the sense that there is no ‘constructor’. Pin definitions for each type of controller are in TFT_eSPI systematics stored in a separate Setup_nn.h file that is placed in a folder with the name ‘User_Setups’. In turn, the specific Setup_nn.h is called in another stetup file named User_Setup_Select.h. Consider the systematics as a kind of two-stage rocket. Both stages need to be edited befor launch. The first stage is User_Setup_Select.h and the second stage is Setup_nn.h.

An example of the specific Setup_nn.h file for one of my ILI9341 shields (the one shown in figure 1) is named ‘Setup_FW_WROOM32_ILI9341_parallel_TFT_016.h’. This is a file editable with any ASCII editor.

Figure 1 shows one of my Uno TFT shields mounted on the bench, running the example ‘TFT_graphicstest_one_lib,’ that can be found in the Arduino IDE under File, Examples, TFT_eSPI, 320×240, of course after correct installation of Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI library. With an ESP32. My own ‘ESP32_parallel_Uno_shield_TFT_radar_scope.ino’ runs fine: the downloadable demo sketch which mimics an aviation traffic controller’s radar scope with a sweeping beam. I created this sketch in 2017 as a demo for one of my first Arduino Uno TFT shields**. The body of that demo was used for the present demo sketch.

Testing my complete collection showed marked differences between shields. I tested shields with ILI341, ILI9481, ILI8486 and ILI9488 controllers, with mixed results. Best performance was achieved with ILI9341 controller equipped shields. Shields that lack a voltage regulator appeared to be dedicated 3V3 shields as they would not perform, or produce an upload error, if the 5V jumper was closed. One 3V3 shield needed the 3V3 jumper closed during upload while after upload it needed 5V to lighten up the screen. Some but not all shields accepted closed 3V3 and 5V jumpers during uploading and running sketches. One ILI9481-powered shield behaved very peculiar: only if both 3V3 and 5V jumpers were open during upload the sketch would be accepted and then be visible on screen only with the 5V jumper closed.

The experiences with the TFT shields lead to the following rule of thumb: first try to figure out the correct controller (this on an Arduino Uno with David Prentices’ ‘MCUFRIEND_kbv.h’), then checking the User_Setup_nn.h file icreated for this shield n the TFT_eSPI library system, and then try to upload first with the 3V3 jumper closed, then again (if necessary) with the 5V jumper closed, and finally with both jumpers closed.

An excellent new compatible library is available which can render TrueType fonts on a TFT screen (or into a sprite). This has been developed by takkaO and is available here. I have been reluctant to support yet another font format but this is an amazing library which is very easy to use. It provides access to compact font files, with fully scaleable anti-aliased glyphs. Left, middle and right justified text can also be printed to the screen. I have added TFT_eSPI specific examples to the OpenFontRender library and tested on RP2040 and ESP32 processors, however the ESP8266 does not have sufficient RAM. Here is a demo screen where a single 12kbyte font file binary was used to render fully anti-aliased glyphs of gradually increasing size on a 320x480 TFT screen:

The following is now deprecated due to the number of issues it can cause in certain circumstances. For ESP32 ONLY, the TFT configuration (user setup) can now be included inside an Arduino IDE sketch providing the instructions in the example Generic->Sketch_with_tft_setup are followed. See ReadMe tab in that sketch for the instructions. If the setup is not in the sketch then the library settings will be used. This means that "per project" configurations are possible without modifying the library setup files. Please note that ALL the other examples in the library will use the library settings unless they are adapted and the "tft_setup.h" header file included. Note: there are issues with this approach, #2007 proposes an alternative method.

Smooth fonts can now be rendered direct to the TFT with very little flicker for quickly changing values. This is achieved by a line-by-line and block-by-block update of the glyph area without drawing pixels twice. This is a "breaking" change for some sketches because a new true/false parameter is needed to render the background. The default is false if the parameter is missing, Examples:

Frank Boesing has created an extension library for TFT_eSPI that allows a large range of ready-built fonts to be used. Frank"s library (adapted to permit rendering in sprites as well as TFT) can be downloaded here. More than 3300 additional Fonts are available here. The TFT_eSPI_ext library contains examples that demonstrate the use of the fonts.

Users of PowerPoint experienced with running macros may be interested in the pptm sketch generator here, this converts graphics and tables drawn in PowerPoint slides into an Arduino sketch that renders the graphics on a 480x320 TFT. This is based on VB macros created by Kris Kasprzak here.

"Four wire" SPI and 8 bit parallel interfaces are supported. Due to lack of GPIO pins the 8 bit parallel interface is NOT supported on the ESP8266. 8 bit parallel interface TFTs (e.g. UNO format mcufriend shields) can used with the STM32 Nucleo 64/144 range or the UNO format ESP32 (see below for ESP32).

The library supports some TFT displays designed for the Raspberry Pi (RPi) that are based on a ILI9486 or ST7796 driver chip with a 480 x 320 pixel screen. The ILI9486 RPi display must be of the Waveshare design and use a 16 bit serial interface based on the 74HC04, 74HC4040 and 2 x 74HC4094 logic chips. Note that due to design variations between these displays not all RPi displays will work with this library, so purchasing a RPi display of these types solely for use with this library is NOT recommended.

A "good" RPi display is the MHS-4.0 inch Display-B type ST7796 which provides good performance. This has a dedicated controller and can be clocked at up to 80MHz with the ESP32 (125MHz with overclocked RP2040, 55MHz with STM32 and 40MHz with ESP8266). The MHS-3.5 inch RPi ILI9486 based display is also supported, however the MHS ILI9341 based display of the same type does NOT work with this library.

Some displays permit the internal TFT screen RAM to be read, a few of the examples use this feature. The TFT_Screen_Capture example allows full screens to be captured and sent to a PC, this is handy to create program documentation.

The library includes a "Sprite" class, this enables flicker free updates of complex graphics. Direct writes to the TFT with graphics functions are still available, so existing sketches do not need to be changed.

The "Animated_dial" example shows how dials can be created using a rotated Sprite for the needle. To run this example the TFT interface must support reading from the screen RAM (not all do). The dial rim and scale is a jpeg image, created using a paint program.

The XPT2046 touch screen controller is supported for SPI based displays only. The SPI bus for the touch controller is shared with the TFT and only an additional chip select line is needed. This support will eventually be deprecated when a suitable touch screen library is available.

The library supports SPI overlap on the ESP8266 so the TFT screen can share MOSI, MISO and SCLK pins with the program FLASH, this frees up GPIO pins for other uses. Only one SPI device can be connected to the FLASH pins and the chips select for the TFT must be on pin D3 (GPIO0).

Configuration of the library font selections, pins used to interface with the TFT and other features is made by editing the User_Setup.h file in the library folder, or by selecting your own configuration in the "User_Setup_Selet,h" file. Fonts and features can easily be enabled/disabled by commenting out lines.

It would be possible to compress the vlw font files but the rendering performance to a TFT is still good when storing the font file(s) in SPIFFS, LittleFS or FLASH arrays.

Anti-aliased fonts can also be drawn over a gradient background with a callback to fetch the background colour of each pixel. This pixel colour can be set by the gradient algorithm or by reading back the TFT screen memory (if reading the display is supported).

The common 8 bit "Mcufriend" shields are supported for the STM Nucleo 64/144 boards and ESP32 UNO style board. The STM32 "Blue/Black Pill" boards can also be used with 8 bit parallel displays.

Unfortunately the typical UNO/mcufriend TFT display board maps LCD_RD, LCD_CS and LCD_RST signals to the ESP32 analogue pins 35, 34 and 36 which are input only. To solve this I linked in the 3 spare pins IO15, IO33 and IO32 by adding wires to the bottom of the board as follows:

If you load a new copy of TFT_eSPI then it will overwrite your setups if they are kept within the TFT_eSPI folder. One way around this is to create a new folder in your Arduino library folder called "TFT_eSPI_Setups". You then place your custom setup.h files in there. After an upgrade simply edit the User_Setup_Select.h file to point to your custom setup file e.g.:

The library was intended to support only TFT displays but using a Sprite as a 1 bit per pixel screen buffer permits support for the Waveshare 2 and 3 colour SPI ePaper displays. This addition to the library is experimental and only one example is provided. Further examples will be added.

If using the UTFT library from RinkyDink electronics, open up their initlcd.h file. In the section for Memory Access Control (lines 85-86 in version I have), change the write to:

The display is based on the popular ILI9481 chipset and works with 5V so it can be used with all Arduino compatible boards. Just plugin and start coding.

Note: There is a film on the LCD, if there is scratch on the film when you receive the item, pls try to remove the film with your finger nail from the corner of the LCD, thanks.

This display can be mounted on an Arduino Mega or Due. It has a fairly high resolution of 320*480 pixels and is also quite large with 3.2 inch LCD size.