arduino tft display clock in stock

When you are using DS1302, DS1307 or DS3231 RTC in your real time clock project, You may have observed it’s library works on 24 hours format clock. If you are like me who don’t like to see clock in 24 hour format, this tutorial is for you. we will learn how to set 12 hour clock in RTC (Real Time Clock) using DS1302 with TFT Display. It is simple to convert from 24 hour format to 12 hour format clock by using any of DS1302, DS1307 or DS3231 RTC. In short we are subtracting 12 hours from 24 hours. So let’s get started.

Download library for Real Time Clock library from Rinky-Dink Electronics  OR you can download it from here because library may change by the time or it may not work.

Time is a critical element of our existence that will never get old, and with technology, we can find better and more intuitive ways to measure it. In one of our past tutorials, we looked at how the DS3231 real time clock module can be used with Arduino to display time on a 16×2 LCD display. Today, we will build an upgrade to that project using an Arduino Due, the DS3231 RTC module and a 3.2″colour TFT display in place of the 16×2 LCD display used in the previous project.

At the heart of today’s project is the DS3231 real time clock module which we will use to obtain the current time, date and temperature of the environment. The DS3231 real time clock module is one of the most popular real-time clock chips among makers and DIY enthusiasts. It is a low-cost, highly accurate, I2Cbased real-time clock (RTC) with a temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) and crystal integrated into it.  The module integrates a coin cell battery input which helps it retain date and time even when the main power to the device is interrupted. It maintains seconds, minutes, hours, day, date, month, and year information, automatically adjusting the date for months with fewer than 31 days, including corrections for leap year. It can be set to operate either in the 24-hour or 12-hour format with an active-low AM/PM indicator. It has been used in several projects on this website mostly, due to its accuracy, and its low power requirements which help it keep time accurately, for a longer period of time compared to other real-time clocks (RTC) modules.

Another key part/component that we will use in today’s tutorial is the Arduino Due. One of the important things, when designing electronic systems that have displays is ensuring, that there is no flicker or lag when updating information on the screen and one of the best ways to ensure that, is to use a fast enough micro-controller. Putting this into consideration, for this project, we will use the very fast Arduino Due board. The Arduino Due has one of the fastest CPU in the Arduino family. The Due runs on an 84MHz CPU compared to the 16MHz CPU speed of the Arduino UNO, and as such, it is able to update the screen without any visible flickering.

The most important update to the previous project, however, is the 3.2″color LCD display being used. The display gives us the ability to create a better, bigger and colourful user interface for our clock at a cheap price as it costs about 7$ on banggood.

The goal for this project is to build a real-time clock with a user-friendly interface capable of displaying (without lag or flickering) the current time, date, temperature including the minimum and maximum temperature recorded in a particular environment over time.

The 3.2″ TFT, like most other TFT displays, comes as a shield which can be easily mounted on the Arduino Due. This, however, makes it difficult to access the IOs of the Arduino after the display has been mounted, as it tends to cover the front face of the board. To solve this, so that the DS3231 module can be connected, male headers are used (after bending them as shown in the picture below) to connect the RTC module to the Arduino.

To easily write the code for this project, we will use two libraries: the Bodmer TFT HX8537  library for the TFT display and the Sodaq DS3231 library to easily interface with the DS3231 module. Both libraries can be downloaded via the links attached to their names above. The Bodmer library is a version of the UTFT library specially modified for the Arduino Due as this particular display is incompatible with the UTFT library.

Next is the void setup function. We initiate communication with the RTC module and Initialize the display, setting our preferred orientation for the display and print the UI to the display.

With this done, we move to the void loop function. Under this function, we write the code to update all the parameters (after specific intervals) on the display including the min temperature, the max temperature, time and the date.

That’s it for this tutorial guys, there are several useful projects that can be built using this tutorial as a foundation. You could decide to add a buzzer to the project to create an alarm clock or make a to-do list based project, all out of this.

In the last Arduino project I built a simple real time clock using DS1307 RTC and ST7735 TFT display (link is below) and in this project I’m going to show how to build a real time clock with RTC chip temperature monitor using Arduino, DS3231 RTC and the same display (ST7735 TFT).

The ST7735 TFT is a color display which has a resolution of 128×160 pixel and it communicates with the master device using SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) protocol.

The DS3231 is more accurate than the DS1307 due to its built-in temperature sensor. It also (the DS3231) keeps time running even if the main power source is down (with the help of 3V battery). It also uses I2C interface to communicate with the master device which is in this case the Arduino.

The ST7735S shown in project circuit diagram has 8 pins: (from right to left): RST (reset), CE (chip enable), DC (or D/C: data/command), DIN (data in), CLK (clock), VCC (5V or 3.3V), BL (back light) and Gnd (ground).

Normally the ST7735 display works with 3.3V only, but many boards of this display have a built-in 3.3V regulator (AMS1117 3V3) like the one shown in the circuit diagram. This regulator supplies the display controller with 3.3V from 5V source.

All Arduino UNO board output pins are 5V, connecting a 5V pin directly to the ST7735 display board may damage its controller circuit. To avoid that, I connected each control line of the display to the Arduino board through 1k ohm resistor.

The DS3231 RTC module SDA (serial data) and SCL (serial clock) pins are respectively connected to Arduino A4 and A5 pins (ATmega328P hardware I2C module pins).

The ST7735 TFT display is connected to Arduino hardware SPI module pins (clock and data), the other pins which are: RST (reset), CS (chip select) and DC (data/command) are defined as shown below:

Nothing can be compared when you can put your hard work to display on a 4” TFT display- From one end to the other end it"s 480*360 pixel to play with. 4” TFT Analog-GPS clock on Arduino

Every electronic hobbyist dreams to display his work on display – be it LCD, GLCD (64*128), OLED or TFT . LCDs are the oldest type of displays. If putting your work on LCD or GLCD is great then putting it on OLED is certainly greater but nothing can be compared when you can put your hard work to display on a 4” TFT display. From one end to the other end it"s 480*360 pixel to put up with and it"s very very impressive.

The latest Chinese TFT displays are very cheap and works perfectly with Arduino & Raspberry Pi. The TFT ILI9488 display costs about $8 on aliexpress.com. There are two varieties available one with 26 pins 13*2 DIL and the other is with pins aligned exactly to sit on an UNO board.

Arduino style – Directly sits exactly on an Arduino UNO board. The major disadvantage is that once it sits on an UNO board one can hardly use any other GPIO pins for other usages. Both these styles I"ve used for creating art works on Arduino & Raspberry Pi. The Arduino type has an extra SDCard attached and gets connected to the SPI (D-10,11,12,13) pins when inserted.

Hurdles:The main hurdles that I faced with these type of displays is that they are not common and all are made by mcufrends.com. Fortunately the mcufriends.com itself has made and freely distributed the MCUFRIEND_kbd.h header files which works out of the box for these displays and many other type of similar displays. The other header file that are required for this displays are Adafruit_GFX.h [both these header files are added in the archieve]

While the pin connections of the Arduino type is pretty clear and straight forward the same on Raspberry Pi type is not clear at all. However, here"s my hard work for you to make your life easy ! [See the connection diagram for both the types]

While the Arduino type shield is fairly easy to connect but difficult to attach other devices , the Raspberry Pi type shield is little difficult to find out the pin details but it has extremely easy & compact interface while fitted up . Here"s the 26 pin DIL pin details which will go to the same pins of Arduino.

These shields are basically for 3.3 volt operations. But upto 5 volt it works , However, prolong operation on 5 volt is not recommended as it gets heated up profusely. In case you want to free some other Arduino pins then you look into the mcufriend_shield.h file and re-write the connections as I shifted some connections to alternate pins.

Construction:The possibilities are limitless when you can tie up the display so easily. Here"s a GPS ana-digital clock with temperature indicator built with the following Bill Of Materials.

The connections are easy as shown in the schematic diagrams. Since all the top portion of the UNO is covered by the TFT shield, the connections for the LM-35, GPS receiver is taken from the bottom side of the UNO shield.

Software: This is real fun ! With small strokes of code the TFT behaves differently and opens up many different ways of displaying the output. Creating a thick line, making the hands move smoothly was real challenge as the Adafruit_GFX is not so much developed but a look back to the high school trigonometry is all that you need to make it all happen for you.

Operation:The present GPS receivers which have a built in patch antenna on top ,can locate the LEO GPS satellite very easily if you have your windows are open or glass covered. The moment it locates 2 such satellites ,the time starts ticking on the analog dial. At the same time the time is shown digitally on the right side with the temperature display at the bottom. For temperature sensor I"ve used a TMP36 sensor which works on 3.3 volt. However, an LM35 can also be used but you have to have 5volt supply for that.

In electronics world today, Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Arduino board designs use a variety of microprocessors and controllers. The boards are equipped with sets of digital and analog input/output (I/O) pins that may be interfaced to various expansion boards (‘shields’) or breadboards (for prototyping) and other circuits.

The boards feature serial communications interfaces, including Universal Serial Bus (USB) on some models, which are also used for loading programs. The microcontrollers can be programmed using the C and C++ programming languages, using a standard API which is also known as the “Arduino language”. In addition to using traditional compiler toolchains, the Arduino project provides an integrated development environment (IDE) and a command line tool developed in Go. It aims to provide a low-cost and easy way for hobbyist and professionals to create devices that interact with their environment using sensors and actuators. Common examples of such devices intended for beginner hobbyists include simple robots, thermostats and motion detectors.

In order to follow the market tread, Orient Display engineers have developed several Arduino TFT LCD displays and Arduino OLED displays which are favored by hobbyists and professionals.

Although Orient Display provides many standard small size OLED, TN and IPS Arduino TFT displays, custom made solutions are provided with larger size displays or even with capacitive touch panel.

The latest Chinese TFT displays are quite low in price but work perfectly with Arduino and Raspberry Pi. There are two different types of TFT shields available: one with 26 pins (13×2 DIL) for Raspberry Pi and the other as Arduino TFT shield for Arduino Uno board.

Arduino TFT shield can be perfectly mounted on top of an Arduino Uno board. But a major disadvantage is that after mounting the shield on Arduino Uno board, it is difficult to use its GPIO pins for any other application.

The Arduino TFT shield has a micro SD card attached that gets connected to its serial peripheral interface (SPI) pins for communication with the microcontroller. This micro SD card is not used in this project.

The main hurdle with this display is that it is not common and is available only from mcufriend.com. Fortunately, the mcufriend_kbd.h header file is freely available and it works out of the box for this and many other similar displays. The other header file required for this display is Adafruit_GFX.h. Both these header files, along with the main source code, are given below.

This project creates an analogue dial clock along with digital date, time and temperature display using an LM35/TMP36 temperature sensor. The time signal is derived from a U-Blox NEO-6M GPS receiver module. Once the technique is understood, it can be deployed for many other applications.

The connections are easy to make as shown in Fig. 2. The pin connections of the Arduino TFT shield are straightforward; you just need to mount the shield on top of the Arduino Uno board. The pin-to-pin connection details between TFT shield and Arduino Uno are given in the table.

Since top portion of the Arduino Uno is covered by TFT shield, the connections for the TMP36 and GPS receiver are taken from the bottom side of the Arduino Uno board (refer Fig. 3). In case you want to free some Arduino pins then you should see the mcufriend_shield.h file and re-write the connections to do so.

Writing the Arduino code/sketch (GPS_analog_clock.ino) for the project is real fun! You can make TFT display in many different ways through coding. Creating a thick border line, making the hour and minutes hands move smoothly were quite challenging as Adafruit_GFX library is not so much developed. High school trigonometry is all that you need to make it happen for you.

After uploading the code, solder the pins of TMP36 and GPS module to the Arduino board. Then mount the TFT shield on top of the Arduino board. After all the connections are done as per Fig. 2, connect it to 3.3V DC source. GPS module requires a few minutes to trace the satellites.

Most GPS receivers have an inbuilt patch antenna that can locate the low Earth orbit (LEO) GPS satellites very easily, even if your room’s windows are closed. As soon as two such satellites are located, the time starts appearing on the analogue dial. At the same time, the date, time and temperature are shown digitally on right side of the TFT display.

Clock is my fascination. I have made clocks of several variety & themes but I never made any clock which have millisecond display. The reason being the huge load of processing power which always falls short for the demand of fast changing display.

However, the first success came when I successfully could run the 3.5” ILI9488 TFT display on 8 bit mode with ESP32. On 8 bit mode it needs 12 GPIO pins to run the display and it is really very fast and there lies the success of this millisecond display clock.

Although the TFT display fits very easily on an Arduino UNO but this millisecond display is not possible on Arduino UNO as it lacks the computing power.

The time is calculated from the RTC DS3231. This RTC have capability of measuring temperature as well which is also displayed on the TFT. The time duration between consecutive seconds is divided by 1000 to calculate the millisecond and displayed on the TFT. The simple line drawing is tricked to created thick line which is put into variable function.

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:

This TFT display is big (3.5" diagonal) bright and colorful! 480x320 pixels with individual RGB pixel control, this has way more resolution than a black and white 128x64 display.

This display has a controller built into it with RAM buffering so that almost no work is done by the microcontroller. The display can be used in two modes: 8-bit or SPI. For 8-bit mode, you"ll need 8 digital data lines and 4 or 5 digital control lines to read and write to the display (12 lines total). SPI mode requires only 5 pins total (SPI data in, data out, clock, select, and d/c) but is slower than 8-bit mode.