raspberry pi tft lcd tutorial made in china

There are plenty of small TFT LCD touch screens which mount on top of a Raspberry Pi out there, but ITEAD Studio"s "RPi 2.8 TFT Add-on V2.0" (snappy name, eh?) caught my eye because it has a pass-through for the Pi"s GPIO pins (out to the side, because you wouldn"t want to mount another board on top of a display...) and brings the I2C and serial ports out to "Grove"-style connectors - so, it"s not only a nice display, it"s maker-friendly.

Only one problem - like a lot of Chinese suppliers, ITEAD don"t exactly hold your hand when it comes to documentation. Their wiki page includes a schematic so the detail is there, and they have a pointer to notro"s wonderful framebuffer drivers - but it"s not at all clear after that exactly which drivers apply and how to get it running. And although there are plenty of LCD touch screen tutorials out there, they"re written for other displays (including V1 of this display, which has different connections) and it"s not obvious what has to be changed, where, to get this display up and running. And quite a few tutorials are outdated, now that we live in device tree land....

So I"ve written a detailed, but hopefully clear, guide to getting this LCD touch screen display working: http://www.gooligum.com.au/blog-section/TFT-28-setup

Connecting an LCD to your Raspberry Pi will spice up almost any project, but what if your pins are tied up with connections to other modules? No problem, just connect your LCD with I2C, it only uses two pins (well, four if you count the ground and power).

In this tutorial, I’ll show you everything you need to set up an LCD using I2C, but if you want to learn more about I2C and the details of how it works, check out our article Basics of the I2C Communication Protocol.

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.

There are a couple ways to use I2C to connect an LCD to the Raspberry Pi. The simplest is to get an LCD with an I2C backpack. But the hardcore DIY way is to use a standard HD44780 LCD and connect it to the Pi via a chip called the PCF8574.

The PCF8574 converts the I2C signal sent from the Pi into a parallel signal that can be used by the LCD. Most I2C LCDs use the PCF8574 anyway. I’ll explain how to connect it both ways in a minute.

I’ll also show you how to program the LCD using Python, and provide examples for how to print and position the text, clear the screen, scroll text, print data from a sensor, print the date and time, and print the IP address of your Pi.

Connecting an LCD with an I2C backpack is pretty self-explanatory. Connect the SDA pin on the Pi to the SDA pin on the LCD, and the SCL pin on the Pi to the SCL pin on the LCD. The ground and Vcc pins will also need to be connected. Most LCDs can operate with 3.3V, but they’re meant to be run on 5V, so connect it to the 5V pin of the Pi if possible.

If you have an LCD without I2C and have a PCF8574 chip lying around, you can use it to connect your LCD with a little extra wiring. The PCF8574 is an 8 bit I/O expander which converts a parallel signal into I2C and vice-versa. The Raspberry Pi sends data to the PCF8574 via I2C. The PCF8574 then converts the I2C signal into a 4 bit parallel signal, which is relayed to the LCD.

Before we get into the programming, we need to make sure the I2C module is enabled on the Pi and install a couple tools that will make it easier to use I2C.

Now we need to install a program called I2C-tools, which will tell us the I2C address of the LCD when it’s connected to the Pi. So at the command prompt, enter sudo apt-get install i2c-tools.

Next we need to install SMBUS, which gives the Python library we’re going to use access to the I2C bus on the Pi. At the command prompt, enter sudo apt-get install python-smbus.

Now reboot the Pi and log in again. With your LCD connected, enter i2cdetect -y 1 at the command prompt. This will show you a table of addresses for each I2C device connected to your Pi:

We’ll be using Python to program the LCD, so if this is your first time writing/running a Python program, you may want to check out How to Write and Run a Python Program on the Raspberry Pi before proceeding.

There are a couple things you may need to change in the code above, depending on your set up. On line 19 there is a function that defines the port for the I2C bus (I2CBUS = 0). Older Raspberry Pi’s used port 0, but newer models use port 1. So depending on which RPi model you have, you might need to change this from 0 to 1.

The function mylcd.lcd_display_string() prints text to the screen and also lets you chose where to position it. The function is used as mylcd.lcd_display_string("TEXT TO PRINT", ROW, COLUMN). For example, the following code prints “Hello World!” to row 2, column 3:

On a 16×2 LCD, the rows are numbered 1 – 2, while the columns are numbered 0 – 15. So to print “Hello World!” at the first column of the top row, you would use mylcd.lcd_display_string("Hello World!", 1, 0).

You can create any pattern you want and print it to the display as a custom character. Each character is an array of 5 x 8 pixels. Up to 8 custom characters can be defined and stored in the LCD’s memory. This custom character generator will help you create the bit array needed to define the characters in the LCD memory.

The code below will display data from a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor. Follow this tutorial for instructions on how to set up the DHT11 on the Raspberry Pi. The DHT11 signal pin is connected to BCM pin 4 (physical pin 7 of the RPi).

By inserting the variable from your sensor into the mylcd.lcd_display_string() function (line 22 in the code above) you can print the sensor data just like any other text string.

These programs are just basic examples of ways you can control text on your LCD. Try changing things around and combining the code to get some interesting effects. For example, you can make some fun animations by scrolling with custom characters. Don’t have enough screen space to output all of your sensor data? Just print and clear each reading for a couple seconds in a loop.

Well, I bought a Chinese LCD TFT touchscreen, 3.5 inches, but I cant get it working, because I cant find the drivers. The only thing it says in the back is www.mcufriend.com, but the page is not available. I tried following this tutorial, but the screen only appears white.

Compatible and Direct-connect with any revision of Raspberry Pi. (If you are using a Raspberry Pi Zero / Zero 2 W, an additional HDMI cable is required).

Raspberry Pi leads out 40 GPIO pins, while the screen leads out 26 pins. When connecting, pay attention to the corresponding pins and Raspberry Pi pins.

5) Insert the TF card into the Raspberry Pi, power on the Raspberry Pi, and wait for more than 10 seconds to display normally. But the touch is abnormal at that time, and the touch needs to be calibrated as the following steps.

You can perform touch calibration by clicking the Raspberry Pi icon on the taskbar, selecting Preferences -> Calibrate Touchscreen, and following the displayed prompts.

Since the ads7846.dtbo provided by Raspberry Pi by default has no de-jitter parameters, you can increase the de-jitter parameters by modifying and replacing ads7846.dtbo

The RPi LCD can be driven in two ways: Method 1. install driver to your Raspbian OS. Method 2. use the Ready-to-use image file of which LCD driver was pre-installed.

2) Connect the TF card to the PC, open the Win32DiskImager software, select the system image downloaded in step 1 and click‘Write’ to write the system image. ( How to write an image to a micro SD card for your Pi? See RPi Image Installation Guides for more details)

3) Connect the TF card to the Raspberry Pi, start the Raspberry Pi. The LCD will display after booting up, and then log in to the Raspberry Pi terminal,(You may need to connect a keyboard and HDMI LCD to Pi for driver installing, or log in remotely with SSH)

1. Executing apt-get upgrade will cause the LCD to fail to work properly. In this case, you need to edit the config.txt file in the SD card and delete this sentence: dtoverlay=ads7846.

This LCD can be calibrated through the xinput-calibrator program. Note: The Raspberry Pi must be connected to the network, or else the program won"t be successfully installed.

In the previous article, I described the steps needed to install an LCD touchscreen on the Raspberry Pi. In this article, I will show you how to adjust the screen rotation of the LCD to landscape mode, and will show you how to calibrate the touchscreen pointer for optimal accuracy. Just follow the steps below to compete the process of setting up your Raspberry Pi LCD touchscreen:

1. First we need to change the setting for screen rotation in the /boot/cmdline.txt file. This setting is called fbtft_device.rotate=X. By default, this is set to X=0, which results in a portrait mode screen orientation. In order to switch the orientation to landscape mode, change fbtft_device.rotate=0 to fbtft_device.rotate=90. Enter sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt at the command prompt. There should only be one line in this file. Go to the end of it and you will find the fbtft_device.rotate=X setting. Change the value from 0 to 90:

However, if you try to touch the screen now, you will find that the pointer movement does not correspond to your finger movement. This is because the LCD screen driver and the touchscreen controller driver have separate settings for screen rotation. We need to change the rotation of the touchscreen controller driver to match the rotation of the LCD screen driver.

After the Pi finishes rebooting, you should notice that when you move your finger across the touch screen, the pointer should follow correctly in both axes. If you are using the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, you will need to complete the calibration steps below before the pointer follows your finger correctly (and make sure that you have enabled startx to load automatically – see step 6 in this article).

You can rotate the screen 90 degrees (as we did in this tutorial) and the power connector will be at the bottom of the screen, but you can also rotate it 270 degrees so that the power connector is at the top of the screen. To do this, simply enter fbtft_device.rotate=270 in the /boot/cmdline.txt file. Then change the DISPLAY=:0 xinput --set-prop "ADS7846 Touchscreen" "Evdev Axis Inversion" 0 1 line in the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file to DISPLAY=:0 xinput --set-prop "ADS7846 Touchscreen" "Evdev Axis Inversion" 1 0. All you need to do is switch the values of the 0 and 1 at the end of this line.

Now that we have our LCD touchscreen up and running, the final step in the installation is the calibration of touch control. This will make the pointer much more accurate and easier to use.

This is kind of a long process, but it is well worth it if you want to get the LCD touchscreen set up properly. So if you have any trouble setting this up or have anything to say, please leave a comment below. Also, if you found this article useful, please share it with your friends!

• (2.4", 2.8", 3.2", 3.5", 4.3", 5.0", 7.0")• TFT 65K RGB Resistive Touchscreen• Onboard Processor and Memory• Simple ASCII Text Based Instruction Set• The Cost-effective HMI Solution with Decreased

Nextion is available in various TFT LCD touchscreen sizes including 2.4”, 2.8”, 3.2”, 3.5”, 4.3”, 5.0”, 7.0”, 10.1” . With a large selection to choose from, one will likely fit your needs. Go Nextion Series and Product Datasheets.

The Nextion Editor software offers an easy way to create the intuitive and superb touch user interface even for beginners. Add a static picture as background, define functions by components, you can make a simple GUI in minutes. The easy Drag-and-Drop components and simple ASCII text based instructions will dramatically reduce your HMI project development workloads.

Easy-to-use components, touch event programming and customized GUI at screen side allow you to develop projects rapidly in cost-effective way. The TTL serial Nextion display is the best balance HMI solution between cost and benefit with low and decreased learning curve. See Nextion Editor Guide and Instruction Set.

First of all, a happy new 2023! I"ll use this occasion to introduce a new type of Sunday blog post: From now on, every now and then, I"ll publish a collection of FAQ around a specific topic, to compile support requests, forum posts, and questions asked in social media or by email...Whatever you are currently celebrating, Christmas, Hanukkah, Jul, Samhain, Festivus, or any other end-of-the-civil-year festivities, I wish you a good time! This December 25th edition of the Nextion Sunday Blog won"t be loaded with complex mathematical theory or hyper-efficient but difficult to understand code snippets. It"s about news and information. Please read below...After two theory-loaded blog posts about handling data array-like in strings (Strings, arrays, and the less known sp(lit)str(ing) function and Strings & arrays - continued) which you are highly recommended to read before continuing here, if you haven"t already, it"s big time to see how things work in practice! We"ll use a string variable as a lookup lookup table containing data of one single wave period and add this repeatedly to a waveform component until it"s full.A few weeks ago, I wrote this article about using a text variable as an array, either an array of strings or an array of numbers, using the covx conversion function in addition for the latter, to extract single elements with the help of the spstr function. It"s a convenient and almost a "one fits all" solution for most use cases and many of the demo projects or the sample code attached to the Nextion Sunday Blog articles made use of it, sometimes even without mentioning it explicitly since it"s almost self-explaining. Then, I got a message from a reader, writing: "... Why then didn"t you use it for the combined sine / cosine lookup table in the flicker free turbo gauge project?"105 editions of the Nextion Sunday blog in a little over two years - time to look back and forth at the same time. Was all the stuff I wrote about interesting for my readers? Is it possible at all to satisfy everybody - hobbyists, makers, and professionals - at the same time? Are people (re-)using the many many HMI demo projects and code snippets? Is anybody interested in the explanation of all the underlying basics like the algorithms for calculating square roots and trigonometric functions with Nextion"s purely integer based language? Are optimized code snippets which allow to save a few milliseconds here and there helpful to other developers?Looking through the different Nextion user groups on social networks, the Nextion user forum and a few not so official but Nextion related forums can be surprising. Sometimes, Nextion newbies ask questions or have issues although the required function is well (in a condensed manner for the experienced developer, I admit) documented on the Nextion Instruction Set page, accessible through the menu of this website. On top of that, there is for sure one of my more than 100 Sunday blog articles which deals not only with that function, but goes often even beyond the usual usage of it. Apparently, I should sometimes move away from always trying to push the limits and listen to the "back to the roots!" calls by my potential readers...

This screen won’t work when you just plug it into your Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to edit a few configuration on boot. Touchscreen I have not tested but included some ideas on how to make it work

Make sure your power supply is rated at a high current. A 500 mA 5 volt supply will not cut it to both power the Pi and the screen. I’ve tested this with a 2A power supply and this worked great. You can plug the USB from the screen into the Pi itself to supply current to it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.