arduino tft display library supplier

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (5" diagonal) bright (12 white-LED backlight) and colorfu 480x272 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a optional resistive touch panel attached on screen by default.

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 (UNO/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!

For 5 inch screen,the high current is needed.But the current of arduino uno or arduino mega board is low, an external 5V power supply is needed. Refer to the image shows the external power supply position on shield ER-AS-RA8875.

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.

Yes, Chinese Vendors tend to package hacked versions of old libraries. e.g. this seems to be based on UTFT v2.79 and UTouch has now been replaced by URTouch.

Readers will be happy to help with any adjustments required for up to date libraries. But only when you post accurate information. i.e. which ZIP example by name, which ZIP library by name.

I have posted a brand new TFT_HX8357_Due library for the Due on my GitHub repository. The display supported by the library is 16 bit with 480 x 320 pixels and is available at low cost from a number of sources for example from Banggood:

Performance is quite good (320x240 UTFT demo completes in less than 1.4s) despite the fact that the 16 bit bus to the TFT is mapped to 4 different ports and pretty random processor register bits, so a lot of register bit juggling has to be performed that wastes time.

Sometimes the vendors supply a different controller, probably an ILI9481, even though the advert states HX8357B, so the library also supports that controller by selecting the ILI9481 driver in the User_Setup.h file within the library.

When doing so, I add support for the specific TFT to my library, so I know I can control that TFT, even if I know about libraries that are better suited.

The ILI9806 is a special case, I had bought a special 7" TFT with that controller. I did not find any library for that display, and asked for example or demo code from the supplier. I got an example and extracted the initialization code from it. You find the details in the sources in the GxTFT library.

This new library is a standalone library that contains the TFT driver as well as the graphics functions and fonts that were in the GFX library. This library has significant performance improvements when used with an UNO (or ATmega328 based Arduino) and MEGA.

Examples are included with the library, including graphics test programs. The example sketch TFT_Rainbow_one shows different ways of using the font support functions. This library now supports the "print" library so the formatting features of the "print" library can be used, for example to print to the TFT in Hexadecimal, for example:

To use the F_AS_T performance option the ILI9341 based display must be connected to an MEGA as follows:MEGA +5V to display pin 1 (VCC) and pin 8 (LED) UNO 0V (GND) to display pin 2 (GND)

In the library Font 0 (GLCD font), 2, 4, 6 and 8 are enabled. Edit the Load_fonts.h file within the library folder to enable/disable fonts to save space.

TFT_ILI9341 library updated on 1st July 2015 to version 12, this latest version is attached here to step 8:Minor bug when rendering letter "T" in font 4 without background fixed

– Arduino is an open-source platform used for building electronics projects. Arduino consists of both a physical programmable microcontroller and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that runs on your computer, used to write and upload computer code to the physical board.

– The Arduino platform unlike most previous programmable circuit boards, the Arduino does not need a separate programmer to load new code onto the board — you can simply use a USB cable. Additionally, the Arduino IDE uses a simplified version of C++, making it easier to learn to program.

– The open sources and extensible language: Arduino IDE is based on open source tool. The programming language used can be extended through the C++ library.

– The open source and expandable hardware: Arduino is based on Atmel’s ATMEGA 8-bit microcontrollers and its SAM3X8E and SAMD21 32-bit microcontrollers. Development boards and modules are planned to be released under the premise of following the “Creative Commons License Agreement”, so experienced circuit designers can make their own modules and carry out corresponding expansions and improvements. Even users who are relatively inexperienced can make a trial version of the basic Uno development board, which is easy to understand the principle of its operation and save costs.

– The Arduino hardware and software were designed for artists, designers, hobbyists, hackers, newbies, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can interact with buttons, LEDs, motors, speakers, GPS units, cameras, the internet, and even your smart-phone or your TV.

Arduino Leonardo: Arduino’s first development board to use one microcontroller with built-in USB. It is cheaper and simpler. The code libraries allow the board to emulate a computer keyboard, mouse, and more.

LCD means liquid crystal display. Basically, any displays can be used with Arduino, including alphanumeric character LCD display, monochrome graphic LCD display, color TFT LCD display, IPS LCD display. It can also be used for non LCD displays like: PMOLED display, AMOLED display, E-ink (E-paper) displays.  Orient Display developed easy interface (SPI, I2C) displays which can be easily used with Arduino.

LCD displays were first used for watches and calculators.  Now, LCD display technology dominants the display world, it can be found in wearables, smart homes, mobile phones, TVs, laptops, monitors, kiosks, aircraft cockpit, digital cameras, lab instrument, power grid etc.

LCD itself can emit light itself. It has to utilize outside light sources. LCD display module normally includes LCD glass (or LCD panel), LCD driving circuitry ( can be COG, COB or TAB) and a backlight.

A LCD display 16*2 is actually a basic and simple to use LCD module. It includes LCD glass, COB (Chip on PCB Board) LCD control board, backlight, zebra to connect LCD glass and control board and a bezel to hold everything together.  16×2 LCD display can display 16 characters per line and there are two lines. Each character has 5×7 dot matrix pixels and the cursor underneath. All 16×2 LCD display originally used standard Hitachi HD44780 driver. Of course the legendary HD44780 controller had EOL long time ago. All the 16×2 LCD displays use HD44780 compatible LCD controllers. Some of them are drop replacement, some of them need to modify the initialization code a little.

Pin5 (Read/Write/Control Pin): This pin toggles the display among the read or writes operation, and it is connected to a microcontroller unit pin to get either 0 or 1 (0 = Write Operation, and 1 = Read Operation).

Pins 7-14 (Data Pins): These pins are used to send data to the display. These pins are connected in two-wire modes like 4-bit mode and 8-bit mode. In 4-wire mode, only four pins are connected to the microcontroller unit like 0 to 3, whereas in 8-wire mode, 8-pins are connected to microcontroller unit like 0 to 7.

Command Register: The main function of the command register is to store the instructions of command which are given to the display. So that predefined tasks can be performed such as clearing the display, initializing, set the cursor place, and display control. Here commands processing can occur within the register.

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 let’s 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:

There are 19 different functions in the LiquidCrystal library available for us to use. These functions do things like change the position of the text, move text across the screen, or make the display turn on or off. What follows is a short description of each function, and how to use it in a program.

The LiquidCrystal() 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 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.

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.

The detailed LCD tutorial can be found in the article. ARDUINO LCD SET UP AND PROGRAMMING GUIDE or to check https://github.com/arduino-libraries/LiquidCrystal

This is a compact graphics library that supports a range of different colour TFT displays, such as the displays from Adafruit and AliExpress. It uses standard Arduino SPI calls making it compatible with a variety of different boards and processors:

It supports plotting points and drawing lines, drawing filled rectangles, and plotting characters and text in 16-bit colour. The library occupies less than 4K bytes, including the character set and demo program, and so will fit on microcontrollers with 4K flash such as the ATtiny45, ATtiny402, and ATtiny412.

In my earlier article Tiny TFT Graphics Library I described a small graphics library designed for driving a variety of TFT displays from an ATtiny85. This library is an extension of that program, with the following enhancements:

* These Adafruit displays conveniently all have the same edge-connector layout, so you can make a prototyping board or PCB that will take any of them.

Some of the AliExpress displays include a LDO 3.3V regulator, but as far as I can tell none of them include logic-level translation, so I recommend only interfacing them to a processor running from 3.3V.

The Adafruit displays all include an LDO 3.3V regulator and logic-level translation, so can be safely interfaced to processors powered from either 5V or 3.3V.

On the AliExpress 160x128 display you need to connect the backlight pin to Vcc to turn it on. This doesn"t seem to be necessary with the other displays.

The library will probably support other TFT displays that use the same ST7735 or ST7789 driver chips, but you may need to experiment with the parameters to get the image scaled and centered correctly.

Two of these, Data In and Clock, are dictated by the SPI interface on the processor you are using. They are usually called MOSI and SCK on the pinout diagram, and they connect to the appropriate two pins on the display.

For the other two signals, Chip Select and Data/Command, you can use any two spare I/O lines on the processor. You need to specify the Arduino pin numbers of the two pins you are using at the start of the Compact TFT Graphics Library listing; for example, to use the ATtiny402 circuit below:

This graphics library will work with ATtiny processors that support SPI using the hardware USI peripheral, such as the ATtiny85, ATtiny84, and ATtiny4313, but note that on these devices the MOSI pin is labelled DO.

The library includes basic graphics routines for plotting points and drawing lines. These work on a conventional coordinate system with the origin at lower left. For example, on the 80x160 display:

The different displays are catered for by six constants which specify the size of the display, the offsets relative to the area supported by the display driver, whether the display is inverted, and the rotation value; for example:

Note that on some displays you may also have to change the xoff or yoff value when rotating the display. For example, to rotate the image on the 240x240 displays by 180° use the settings:

To check or adjust the values for each display I ran this program, which draws a one-pixel border around the display area, and plots an "F" to show the orientation:

In this article, you will learn how to use TFT LCDs by Arduino boards. From basic commands to professional designs and technics are all explained here.

In electronic’s projects, creating an interface between user and system is very important. This interface could be created by displaying useful data, a menu, and ease of access. A beautiful design is also very important.

There are several components to achieve this. LEDs,  7-segments, Character and Graphic displays, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, type of user interaction, and processor capacity.

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. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven LCDs with a few segments.

In Arduino-based projects, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex, high definition images and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-color TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands.

In this article, we have used libraries and advanced technics to display data, charts, menu, etc. with a professional design. This can move your project presentation to a higher level.

In electronic’s projects, creating an interface between user and system is very important. This interface could be created by displaying useful data, a menu, and ease of access. A beautiful design is also very important.

There are several components to achieve this. LEDs,  7-segments, Character and Graphic displays, and full-color TFT LCDs. The right component for your projects depends on the amount of data to be displayed, type of user interaction, and processor capacity.

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. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven LCDs with a few segments.

In Arduino-based projects, the processor frequency is low. So it is not possible to display complex, high definition images and high-speed motions. Therefore, full-color TFT LCDs can only be used to display simple data and commands.

In this article, we have used libraries and advanced technics to display data, charts, menu, etc. with a professional design. This can move your project presentation to a higher level.

Size of displays affects your project parameters. Bigger Display is not always better. if you want to display high-resolution images and signs, you should choose a big size display with higher resolution. But it decreases the speed of your processing, needs more space and also needs more current to run.

After choosing the right display, It’s time to choose the right controller. If you want to display characters, tests, numbers and static images and the speed of display is not important, the Atmega328 Arduino boards (such as Arduino UNO) are a proper choice. If the size of your code is big, The UNO board may not be enough. You can use Arduino Mega2560 instead. And if you want to show high resolution images and motions with high speed, you should use the ARM core Arduino boards such as Arduino DUE.

In electronics/computer hardware a display driver is usually a semiconductor integrated circuit (but may alternatively comprise a state machine made of discrete logic and other components) which provides an interface function between a microprocessor, microcontroller, ASIC or general-purpose peripheral interface and a particular type of display device, e.g. LCD, LED, OLED, ePaper, CRT, Vacuum fluorescent or Nixie.

The display driver will typically accept commands and data using an industry-standard general-purpose serial or parallel interface, such as TTL, CMOS, RS232, SPI, I2C, etc. and generate signals with suitable voltage, current, timing and demultiplexing to make the display show the desired text or image.

The LCDs manufacturers use different drivers in their products. Some of them are more popular and some of them are very unknown. To run your display easily, you should use Arduino LCDs libraries and add them to your code. Otherwise running the display may be very difficult. There are many free libraries you can find on the internet but the important point about the libraries is their compatibility with the LCD’s driver. The driver of your LCD must be known by your library. In this article, we use the Adafruit GFX library and MCUFRIEND KBV library and example codes. You can download them from the following links.

You must add the library and then upload the code. If it is the first time you run an Arduino board, don’t worry. Just follow these steps:Go to www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software and download the software of your OS. Install the IDE software as instructed.

By these two functions, You can find out the resolution of the display. Just add them to the code and put the outputs in a uint16_t variable. Then read it from the Serial port by Serial.println(); . First add Serial.begin(9600); in setup().

First you should convert your image to hex code. Download the software from the following link. if you don’t want to change the settings of the software, you must invert the color of the image and make the image horizontally mirrored and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise. Now add it to the software and convert it. Open the exported file and copy the hex code to Arduino IDE. x and y are locations of the image. sx and sy are sizes of image. you can change the color of the image in the last input.

Upload your image and download the converted file that the UTFT libraries can process. Now copy the hex code to Arduino IDE. x and y are locations of the image. sx and sy are size of the image.

In this template, We converted a .jpg image to .c file and added to the code, wrote a string and used the fade code to display. Then we used scroll code to move the screen left. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We used sin(); and cos(); functions to draw Arcs with our desired thickness and displayed number by text printing function. Then we converted an image to hex code and added them to the code and displayed the image by bitmap function. Then we used draw lines function to change the style of the image. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We created a function which accepts numbers as input and displays them as a pie chart. We just use draw arc and filled circle functions.

In this template, We added a converted image to code and then used two black and white arcs to create the pointer of volumes.  Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We added a converted image and use the arc and print function to create this gauge.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

while (a < b) { Serial.println(a); j = 80 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i = 80 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); j2 = 50 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i2 = 50 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); tft.drawLine(i2 + 235, j2 + 169, i + 235, j + 169, tft.color565(0, 255, 255)); tft.fillRect(200, 153, 75, 33, 0x0000); tft.setTextSize(3); tft.setTextColor(0xffff); if ((a/20)>99)

while (b < a) { j = 80 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i = 80 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); j2 = 50 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i2 = 50 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); tft.drawLine(i2 + 235, j2 + 169, i + 235, j + 169, tft.color565(0, 0, 0)); tft.fillRect(200, 153, 75, 33, 0x0000); tft.setTextSize(3); tft.setTextColor(0xffff); if ((a/20)>99)

In this template, We display simple images one after each other very fast by bitmap function. So you can make your animation by this trick.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We just display some images by RGBbitmap and bitmap functions. Just make a code for touchscreen and use this template.  Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

There are a few common TFT display drivers on the electronics hobbyist market, and a handful of libraries that work with them. TFT displays are high resolution and full color, unlike the OLED or ePaper displays mentioned in this repository. Most libraries for color TFT displays implement the usual 24-bit RGB color space, where 0xFF0000 is red, 0x00FF00 is green, and 0x0000FF is blue.

TFT displays can be slow to update. Therefore, it’s sometimes usefil to draw only part of the display at once. Adafruits GFX library includes a Canvas class, which lets you update elements offscreen and then draw them. It doesn’t speed up the display, but it can simplify drawing a subset of the screen. See this example to see it in use. Other libraries don’t include a canvas, but you can draw a filled rectangle over part of the screen and then draw on top of it, as shown in this example for the ILI9225.

Most TFT displays tend to have an SPI interface, with some extra pins, as explained on the main page of this repo. Some displays, like MakerFocus’ 1.3” TFT, do not implement the CS pin. For this board and others like it, initializing them with SPI_MODE3 works.

All of the displays listed below have been tested with the Adafruit_ST7735/ST7789 libraries and the Adafruit_GFX library, with the modifications mentioned below.

MakerFocus 1.3” LCD Display, no MicroSD, Amazon link - This display does not have a CS pin, so it can’t be used with other SPI devices at the same time. It works with the Adafruit_ST7789 library, but you have to change the init() function to include the SPI mode like so:

There’s no standard library for TFT screens, unfortunately. Vendors tend to support the displays they make in their own breakout boards, and not others. As with other types of displays, a well-supported library like the Adafruit libraries makes the display worth more, but limits you to the types of displays that vendor offers. Display manufacturers like Ilitek and Sitronix do not appear to release their own libraries for their displays.

The Adafruit_ST7735/7789 library and Adafruit_GFX library works well with some of the Sitronix boards above. It does not support the DFRobot ST7867S board, however.

The DFRobot_ST7687S library has slow refresh rate on the ST7687S board. It’s unclear whether the issue is the library or the board, however. I have yet to find another library to use with this display, though there are a couple other vendors for the board itself on Amazon. Unfortunately the u8g2 library doesn’t support this display, though it does support many of the Sitronix boards.

The TFT_22_ILI9225 library works with this display, and its methods are well documented. Its graphics API is different than some of the other graphics libraries, and doesn’t implement the Printable API, so you can’t use commands like print() and println() with it. It has its own drawText() method instead, which takes an Arduino String object. It comes with a few built-in fonts, and includes many of the Adafruit GFX fonts, and you can generate your own fonts using the The squix.ch custom font generator. Set the settings to

A library for driving self-timed digital RGB/RGBW LEDs (WS2812, SK6812, NeoPixel, WS2813, etc.) using the Espressif ESP32 microcontroller"s RMT output peripheral.

LiquidCrystal fork for displays based on HD44780. Uses the IOAbstraction library to work with i2c, PCF8574, MCP23017, Shift registers, Arduino pins and ports interchangably.

The most powerful and popular available library for using 7/14/16 segment display, supporting daisy chaining so you can control mass amounts from your Arduino!

A simple library to display numbers, text and animation on 4 and 6 digit 7-segment TM1637 based display modules. Offers non-blocking animations and scrolling!

Monochrome LCD, OLED and eInk Library. Display controller: SSD1305, SSD1306, SSD1309, SSD1312, SSD1316, SSD1318, SSD1320, SSD1322, SSD1325, SSD1327, SSD1329, SSD1606, SSD1607, SH1106, SH1107, SH1108, SH1122, T6963, RA8835, LC7981, PCD8544, PCF8812, HX1230, UC1601, UC1604, UC1608, UC1610, UC1611, UC1617, UC1638, UC1701, ST7511, ST7528, ST7565, ST7567, ST7571, ST7586, ST7588, ST75160, ST75256, ST75320, NT7534, ST7920, IST3020, IST3088, IST7920, LD7032, KS0108, KS0713, HD44102, T7932, SED1520, SBN1661, IL3820, MAX7219, GP1287, GP1247, GU800. Interfaces: I2C, SPI, Parallel.

True color TFT and OLED library, Up to 18 Bit color depth. Supported display controller: ST7735, ILI9163, ILI9325, ILI9341, ILI9486,LD50T6160, PCF8833, SEPS225, SSD1331, SSD1351, HX8352C.

The ST7789 TFT module contains a display controller with the same name: ST7789. It’s a color display that uses SPI interface protocol and requires 3, 4 or 5 control pins, it’s low cost and easy to use. This display is an IPS display, it comes in different sizes (1.3″, 1.54″ …) but all of them should have the same resolution of 240×240 pixel, this means it has 57600 pixels. This module works with 3.3V only and it doesn’t support 5V (not 5V tolerant).

The ST7789 display module shown in project circuit diagram has 7 pins: (from right to left): GND (ground), VCC, SCL (serial clock), SDA (serial data), RES (reset), DC (or D/C: data/command) and BLK (back light).

As mentioned above, the ST7789 TFT display controller works with 3.3V only (power supply and control lines). The display module is supplied with 3.3V (between VCC and GND) which comes from the Arduino board.

To connect the Arduino to the display module, I used voltage divider for each line which means there are 4 voltage dividers. Each voltage divider consists of 2.2k and 3.3k resistors, this drops the 5V into 3V which is sufficient.

The first library is a driver for the ST7789 TFT display which can be installed from Arduino IDE library manager (Sketch —> Include Library —> Manage Libraries …, in the search box write “st7789” and install the one from Adafruit).

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.

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.

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:

TFT LCDs are the most popular color displays – the displays in smartphones, tablets, and laptops are actually the TFT LCDs only. There are TFT LCD shields available for Arduino in a variety of sizes like 1.44″, 1.8″, 2.0″, 2.4″, and 2.8″. Arduino is quite a humble machine whenever it comes to process or control graphics. After all, it is a microcontroller platform, and graphical applications usually require much greater processing resources. Still, Arduino is capable enough to control small display units. TFT LCDs are colorful display screens that can host beautiful user interfaces.

Most of the smaller TFT LCD shields can be controlled using the Adafruit TFT LCD library. There is also a larger TFT LCD shield of 3.5 inches, with an ILI9486 8-bit driver.

The Adafruit library does not support the ILI9486 driver. Actually, the Adafruit library is written to control only TFT displays smaller than 3.5 inches. To control the 3.5 inch TFT LCD touch screen, we need another library. This is MCUFRIEND_kbv. The MCUFRIEND_kbv library is, in fact, even easier to use in comparison to the Adafruit TFT LCD library. This library only requires instantiating a TFT object and even does not require specifying pin connections.

TFT LCDs for ArduinoUser interfaces are an essential part of any embedded application. The user interface enables any interaction with the end-user and makes possible the ultimate use of the device. The user interfaces are hosted using a number of devices like seven-segments, character LCDs, graphical LCDs, and full-color TFT LCDs. Out of all these devices, only full-color TFT displays are capable of hosting sophisticated interfaces. A sophisticated user interface may have many data fields to display or may need to host menus and sub-menus or host interactive graphics. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD capable of hosting high-quality images.

Arduino operates at low frequency. That is why it is not possible to render high-definition images or videos with Arduino. However, Arduino can control a small TFT display screen rendering graphically enriched data and commands. By interfacing a TFT LCD touch screen with Arduino, it is possible to render interactive graphics, menus, charts, graphs, and user panels.

Some of the popular full-color TFT LCDs available for Arduino include 3.5″ 480×320 display, 2.8″ 400×200 display, 2.4″ 320×240 display and 1.8″ 220×176 display. A TFT screen of appropriate size and resolution can be selected as per a given application.

If the user interface has only graphical data and commands, Atmega328 Arduino boards can control the display. If the user interface is a large program hosting several menus and/or submenus, Arduino Mega2560 should be preferred to control the TFT display. If the user interface needs to host high-resolution images and motions, ARM core Arduino boards like the DUE should be used to control the TFT display.

MCUFRIEND_kbv libraryAdafruit TFT LCD library supports only small TFT displays. For large TFT display shields like 3.5-inch, 3.6-inch, 3.95-inch, including 2.4-inch and 2.8-inch TFT LCDs, MCUFRIEND_kbv library is useful. This library has been designed to control 28-pin TFT LCD shields for Arduino UNO. It also works with Arduino Mega2560. Apart from UNO and Mega2560, the library also supports LEONARDO, DUE, ZERO, and M0-PRO. It also runs on NUCLEO-F103 and TEENSY3.2 with Sparkfun Adapter. The Mcufriend-style shields tend to have a resistive TouchScreen on A1, 7, A2, 6 but are not always in the same direction rotation. The MCUFRIEND_kbv library can be included in an Arduino sketch from the library manager.

The 3.5-inch TFT LCD shield needs to be plugged atop the Arduino board. The Mcufriend-style shields are designed to fit into all the above-mentioned Arduino boards. The shields have a TFT touch screen that can display colorful images and interfaces and a micro SD card reader to save images and other data. A 3.5-inch TFT LCD touch screen has the following pin diagram.

How project worksThe code fills a rectangle, then draws a rectangle within which text “EEWORLDONLINE” is displayed. Then, lines, circles, rectangles, and squares are drawn on the screen. The project ends with a greeting and a message.