3.2 ips tft lcd display ili9481 480x320 got esp8266 factory

This 262K color 320 x 480 resolutions LCD module uses a thin-film-transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) to improve image qualities. With controller HX8357B included in the screen, it supports a 16-wires Data Bus Interface. This module also includes a 5V-3.3V power conversion circuit and a level conversion circuit. 100% compatible with Mega2560, it can be directly inserted into the Mega 2560 Board. Additionally, it comes with SD card socket and SPI flash circuit. Definitely a powerful module for your projects!

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.

Note: The appearance of this display may differ slightly because our supplier may supply a slightly different version where the circuit board size is different. However, this is mostly similar and are controlled in the same way.

Just to clarify and add to David"s excellent advice above, here is how I successfully connecting ESP32 with some old "non Serial (without SPI)" TFT LCD.

My LCD by www.mcufriend.com requires both +3.3v and +5v BUT the ESP32 only has a 3.3v supply pin So to get the display working I needed to provide an external 5v supply.

ILI9341 is a 262,144-color single-chip SOC driver for a-TFT liquid crystal display with resolution of 240RGBx320 dots, comprising a 720-channel source driver, a 320-channel gate driver, 172,800 bytes GRAM for graphic display data of 240RGBx320 dots, and power supply circuit. ILI9341 supports parallel 8-/9-/16-/18-bit data bus MCU interface, 6-/16-/18-bit data bus RGB interface and 3-/4-line serial peripheral interface (SPI). The moving picture area can be specified in internal GRAM by window address function. The specified window area can be updated selectively, so that moving picture can be displayed simultaneously independent of still picture area.

You can find ILI9341-based TFT displays in various sizes on eBay and Aliexpress. The one I chose for this tutorial is 2.2″ length along the diagonal, 240×320 pixels resolution, supports SPI interface, and can be purchased for less than $10.

Note that we will be using the hardware SPI module of the ESP8266 to drive the TFT LCD. The SPI communication pins are multiplexed with I/O pins D5 (SCK), D6 (MISO), and D7 (MOSI). The chip select (CS) and Data/Command (DC) signal lines are configurable through software.

For ILI9341-based TFT displays, there are some options for choosing the library for your application. The most common one is using Bodmer. We will use this library in this tutorial. So go ahead and download the

The library contains proportional fonts, different sizes can be enabled/disabled at compile time to optimise the use of FLASH memory. The library has been tested with the NodeMCU (ESP8266 based).

The library is based on the Adafruit GFX and Adafruit ILI9341 libraries and the aim is to retain compatibility. Significant additions have been made to the library to boost the speed for ESP8266 processors (it is typically 3 to 10 times faster) and to add new features. The new graphics functions include different size proportional fonts and formatting features. There are a significant number of example sketches to demonstrate the different features.

Configuration of the library font selections, pins used to interface with the TFT and other features is made by editting the User_Setup.h file in the library folder. Fonts and features can easily be disabled by commenting out lines.

Now you are all set to try out tons of really cool built-in examples that come with the library. The following output corresponds to the TFT_Pie_Chart example.

My favorite example is TFT terminal, which implements a simple “Arduino IDE Serial Monitor” like serial receive terminal for monitoring debugging messages from another Arduino or ESP8266 board.

The content is intended to be updated from time to time, I will add more details if I found new display or library update. You can also help me enrich the content by leaving comments below.

You can run various IoT projects prefectly without any display. But not all IoT project only feed data in single direction (IoT to server), some IoT also gather real time information from the server for displaying.

My previous instructables, ESP32 Photo Clock is am example, it download a current minute photo from the Internet, decode the JPEG photo and display it.

Many Arduino projects use monochrome display, one of the reason is the limited resources of a MCU. 320 pixels width, 240 pixels height and 8 bits color for each RGB color channel means 230 KB for each full screen picture. But normal Arduino (ATmega328) only have 32 KB flash and it is time consuming (over a second) to read data from SD card and draw it to the color display.

ESP32 have changed the game! It have much faster processing power (16 MHz vs 240 MHz dual core), much more RAM (2 KB vs over 200 KB) and much more flash (32 KB vs 4 MB), so it is capable to utilize more color and higher resolution image for displaying. At the same time it is capable to do some RAM hungry process such as Animated GIF, JPEG or PNG file decoding, it is a very important feature for displaying information gathered from the internet.

Color display have many type of interfaces: Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), 6-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit, 18-bit and 24-bit parallel interfaces and also NeoPixel!

SPI dominate the hobby electronics market, most likely because of fewer wire required to connect. Most display in my drawer only have SPI pins breaking out, so this instructables focus on SPI display and a few 8-bit display.

NeoPixel matrix is a very special type of color display. If you are interested in NeoPixel matrix display, here are some of my instructables using it:

There are various color display for hobby electronics: LCD, IPS LCD, OLED with different resolutions and different driver chips. LCD can have higher image density but OLED have better viewable angle, IPS LCD can have both. OLED have more power efficient for each light up pixel but may have burn-in problems. Color OLED operate in 14 V, it means you need a dedicate step-up circuit, but it is not a problem if you simply use with a break-out board. LCD in most case can direct operate in 3.3 V, the same operating voltage as ESP32, so you can consider not use break out board to make a slimmer product.

Software support on the other side also influence your selection. You can develop ESP32 program with Arduino IDE or direct use ESP-IDF. But since ESP-IDF did not have too much display library and not much display hardware supported, so I will concentrate on Arduino display libraries only.

For the beginner, I think buying adafruit, or similar supportive vendor, hardware and using its Arduino library can have good seamless experience (though I have no budget to try it all). TFT_eSPI library have better performance but configuration require make changes in the library folder. Ucglib and UTFT-ESP run a little bit slow but it support many hardware and it is a popular library, you can find many Arduino projects using it. LovyanGFX library start appear at 2019, it support many dev device such as M5Stack, M5StickC, TTGO T-Watch, ODROID-GO, ESP-WROVER-KIT, WioTerminal and more. I am also writing a new library called Arduino_GFX since 2019.

OLED have a big advantage, the pixel only draw power if it lights up. On the other hand, LCD back light always draw full power even you are displaying a black screen. So OLED can help save some power for the project powered by a battery.

This is a 1.5" 128 x 128 color OLED, this form factor is very fit for smart-watch-like wearable project. The most barrier of select this should be the price tag is around 4 times of a normal LCD.

ST7735 is a very popular LCD driver model for the resolution 128x128 and 128x160. It may cause by its popularity, there are many manufacturer produce compatible product. However, they are not fully compatible.

Thanks for the popularity of wearable gadget, I can find more small size IPS LCD in the market this year(2018). The above picture is an 0.96" 80x160 IPS color LCD using ST7735 driver chip. As you can see in the 3rd picture, you can treat it as a 128x160 color display in code but only the middle part is actually displaying. The 4th picture is the display without breakout board, it is thin, tiny and very fit for a wearable project!

SSD1283A is 1.6" 130x130 display, it claim only consume 0.1 in sleep mode and backlight turned off. In sleep mode the last drawn screen still readable under sufficient lighting.

It is a 2.2" 176x220 color LCD. It is relatively fewer projects using this chips and resolution. It may caused by the success of its chip family brother, ILI9341 (0.2" larger in size but have near double resolution).

I think ILI9341 is the most popular LCD driver chip in the hobby electronics market. In most case it is 240x320 resolution and have many screen size from 1.7" to 3.5". Some breakout board also built-in touch screen feature.

This also the highest pixel density color display in my drawer. As same as normal LCD, it can direct operate in 3.3 V, so it is very good for making slim wearable device.

There are many display libraries that can support various hardware. I have picked 4 of most popular Arduino library for comparison:Adafruit GFX Family

The display speed is one of the most important thing we consider to select which library. I have chosen TFT_eSPI PDQ test for this comparison. I have made some effort to rewrite the PDQ test that can run in 4 libraries. All test will run with the same 2.8" ILI9341 LCD.

As I found TFT_eSPI is the most potential display library for ESP32 in this instructables, I have paid some effort to add support for all my display in hand. The newly added display support marked letter M in red at the above picture, here is my enhanced version:

Adafruit sell various display module in hobby electronics market and they also have very good support in software level. Their display libraries all built on a parent class called Adafruit_GFX, so I call it Adafruit GFX Family. This library generally support most Arduino hardware (also ESP32).

In Arduino Library Manager simply search "adafruit display", you can see all the family members. If you want to install it, say ILI9341, simply select "Adafruit ILI9341" and then click install. Remember also install its dependent library "Adafruit GFX Library".

This library method signature is very similar to Adafruit GFX, but it is tailor-made for ESP8266 or ESP32. I think the source code is optimised for ESP32, so the PDQ result is much faster than other libraries.

Note: The most difficult part using this library is you are required to configure this library before you can use it. The configuration file is located at the library folder, it should be "Arduino/libraries/TFT_eSPI/User_setup.h" under you own documents folder. It have many comments help you to do that, please follow the comments step by step to finish the configuration. Here is my User_setup.h for ILI9341:

#define LOAD_GLCD // Font 1. Original Adafruit 8 pixel font needs ~1820 bytes in FLASH
#define LOAD_FONT2 // Font 2. Small 16 pixel high font, needs ~3534 bytes in FLASH, 96 characters

ST7735 and ILI9341 are the most popular display, this 2 are better option for the beginner. You may notice LCD have a big weakness, the viewable angle, some color lost outside the viewable angle and the screen become unreadable. If you have enough budget, OLED or IPS LCD have much better viewable angle.

In most case, we study how to use a code library by searching sample on the web. I have tried search four libraries keyword in Github, Adafruit is most popular and UTFT the second.

ILI9341 should be most valuable display for the beginner. Adafruit GFX Library should be most easy to use for the beginner, and since TFT_eSPI have very similar method signature, it is very easy to switch to a faster library later on.

OLED require 14 V to light up the pixel so it is not easy to decouple the breakout board. On the other hand, LCD (also IPS LCD) usually operate in 3.3 V, as same as the ESP32. In most case, there are only the LED control circuit required between LCD and ESP32, i.e. a transistor and few resistors. So it relatively easy to make it.

It is very important to read the data sheet first before you decide not using breakout board. The pins layout, pin pitch size, the sample circuit connection and maximum rating all you can find in data sheet. The maximum voltage is especially important, you should sticky follow the rating or you will blow your LCD. The chip can operate in 3.3 V but LED may be 2.8 - 3.0 V so it require some electronics in the middle, most data sheet have the sample circuit. You may ask your seller send a soft copy of data sheet to you or simply Google it by the model number.

My special hint: I like to soldering a FPC cable with the same pin pitch size as the LCD to help the connection with the MCU. I have used this technique in these instructables:

If you read through the data sheet of the color display, you may find most of color display can support 18 bit color depth (6 bit for each RGB channel). 18 bit color depth can have a better image quality that 16 bit color depth (5 bit in red and blue channel, 6 bit for green channel). However, only Ucglib actually run at 18 bit color depth (262,144 colors), other 3 libraries all run at 16 bit color depth (65,536 colors). It is because 18 bit color depth actually require transfer 3 bytes (24 bit) of data for each pixel, it means 50% more data require to transfer and store in memory. It is one of the reason why Ucglib run slower, but it can have a better image quality.

Thank you very much for posting this detailed review of the color display option available for "Duino users. You have saved me hours, maybe days of time wandering the web looking for information.0

Great article! Very interested in round displays. There are available round displays based on st7687s (128 * 128) and st7789 (240 * 240), but I have not found any information on practical use.

Hello! Yes, I purchased this display from keyestudio, connected it to esp32 using this library from dfrobot. It is only necessary to consider that the pinout of the display connectors differs from dfrobot and keyestudio.

I"m wanting to connect a VGA camera, the sort you find as a little module on eBay with OVPxxxx chip, to a screen such as ILxxxx family, which appears to have direct VGA input. I think it will work if I connect the camera directly with no MCU, but I"d also like to add a cross-hair to the display (for a drill targetting system). I wonder is it possible to intercept the serial video data and change individual pixels in a streaming fashion, instead of loading a whole screen into memory, changing it and passing it on? I ask because it seems to me it would need a much less powerful MCU.0

Thank you so much for such a great article. I have been trying to choose the best library to use for a project that will use either a SSD1351 or a ST7735 both being 128x128. The key to my project is to be able to dump a frame buffer in to the display and then recalculate the next frame buffer. :)

Bonjour merci pour ce gros projet très instructifs. J"ai acheté un mini ips (rgb)0,96"80x160 et je n"arrive pas à trouver de librairie valide, j"utilise la librairie st7735 mais j"ai deux lignes de bruit sur le côté et en bas. J"ai testé toutes les inclinaison mais c"est toujours la. Et j"aimerais bien afficher une image . bmp dessus mais je ne sais pas comment connecter mon lecteur de carte micro sd externe vue que l"écran et le lecteur utilise des pins identique. Peut-être auriez vous une solution à me proposer ?

So, basically I make a reset in the beggining (read datasheet) then next I use only SPI_DAT and SPLI_CLK. If I destroy the sequence touching with an oscilloscope, the LCD stops to understand the sequence DAT/CLK and I have to make another reset.

Those 2 pins must be dedicated to the display, otherwise the display will get confused without the CS pin. One DAT/CLK to LCD and another DAT/CLK to I2C.

Hello! Thank"s for your instruction. I want to use your 8pin ili9486 320x480 spi display with one of your presented libraries and esp32. 1.) Could you please tell me the connections between the display and the esp32 and 2.) which numbers do I have to write into the line utft myglcd (ili9486,?,?,?,?)?