black.backgrount tft lcd pricelist

Displaying a custom image or graphic on a LCD display is a very useful task as displays are now a premium way of providing feedback to users on any project. With this functionality, we can build projects that display our own logo, or display images that help users better understand a particular task the project is performing, providing an all-round improved User Experience (UX) for your Arduino or ESP8266 based project. Today’s tutorial will focus on how you can display graphics on most Arduino compatible displays.

The procedure described in this tutorial works with all color displays supported by Adafruit’s GFX library and also works for displays supported by the TFTLCD library from Adafruit with little modification. Some of the displays on which this procedure works include:

For this tutorial, we will use the 2.8″ ILI9325 TFT Display which offers a resolution of 320 x 340 pixels and we will display a bitmap image of a car.

To demonstrate how things work, we will use the 2.8″ TFT Display. The 2.8″ TFT display comes as a shield which plugs directly into the Arduino UNO as shown in the image below.

Image2Code is an easy-to-use, small Java utility to convert images into a byte array that can be used as a bitmap on displays that are compatible with the Adafruit-GFX or Adafruit TFTLCD (with little modification) library.

To reduce the amount of code, and stress involved in displaying the graphics, we will use two wonderful libraries; The GFX library and the TFTLCD library from Adafruit.

As usual, we start writing the sketch by including the libraries required. For this procedure, we will use the TFTLCD library alone, since we are assuming you are using a display that is not supported by the GFX library.

The last section of the code is the drawBitmap function itself, as earlier mentioned, to use the drawbitmap() function with the Adafruit TFTLCD library, we need to copy the function’s code and paste into the Arduino sketch.

Two of the main contenders for display technologies that are widely available are AMOLED and LCD. Here in this article, we will be comprising AMOLED vs LCD and find out which one is better for you.

The AMOLED display is similar to the OLED in various factors like high brightness and sharpness, better battery life, colour reproduction, etc. AMOLED display also has a thin film transistor, “TFT” that is attached to each LED with a capacitor.

TFT helps to operate all the pixels in an AMOLED display. This display might have a lot of positives but there are a few negatives too let’s point both of them out.

The LCD stands for “Liquid Crystal Display”, and this display produces colours a lot differently than AMOLED. LCD display uses a dedicated backlight for the light source rather than using individual LED components.

The LCD displays function pretty simply, a series of thin films, transparent mirrors, and some white LED lights that distributes lights across the back of the display.

As we have mentioned, an LCD display always requires a backlight and also a colour filter. The backlight must have to pass through a thin film transistor matrix and a polarizer. So, when you see it, the whole screen will be lit and only a fraction of light gets through. This is the key difference comparing AMOLED vs LCD and this is what differentiates these two display technologies.

The LCD displays are cheaper compared to the AMOLED as there is only one source of light which makes it easier to produce. Most budget smartphones also use LCD displays.

LCD displays have bright whites, the backlight emits lots of light through pixels which makes it easy to read in outdoors. It also shows the “Accurate True to Life” colours, which means it has the colours that reflect the objects of the real world more accurately than others.

LCDs also offer the best viewing angle. Although it may depend on the smartphone you have. But most high-quality LCD displays support great viewing angles without any colour distortion or colour shifting.

The LCD displays can never show the deep blacks like AMOLED. Due to the single backlight, it always has to illuminate the screen making it impossible to show the deep blacks.

The LCDs are also thicker than other displays because of the backlight as it needs more volume. So, LCD smartphones are mostly thicker than AMOLED ones.

Let’s start with the pricing. Most AMOLED display smartphones always cost more than an LCD smartphone. Although the trend is changing a bit. But still, if you want to get a good quality AMOLED display you have to go for the flagship devices.

The colors are also very sharp and vibrant with the AMOLED displays. And they look much better than any LCD display. The brightness is something where LCDs stood ahead of the AMOLED display. So using an LCD display outdoors gives much better results.

Looking at all these factors and comparing AMOLED vs LCD displays, the AMOLED displays are certainly better than the LCDs. Also, the big display OEMs, like Samsung and LG are focusing more the OLED technologies for their future projects. So, it makes sense to look out for AMOLED displays. That being said, if we see further enhancements in the LCD technology in terms of battery efficiency and more, there is no point to cancel them at this moment.