youtube arduino tft lcd screen quotation

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.

For this tutorial I composed three examples. The first example is distance measurement using ultrasonic sensor. The output from the sensor, or the distance is printed on the screen and using the touch screen we can select the units, either centimeters or inches.

The third example is a game. Actually it’s a replica of the popular Flappy Bird game for smartphones. We can play the game using the push button or even using the touch screen itself.

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.

Next we need to define the fonts that are coming with the libraries and also define some variables needed for the program. In the setup section we need to initiate the screen and the touch, define the pin modes for the connected sensor, the led and the button, and initially call the drawHomeSreen() custom function, which will draw the home screen of the program.

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.

Now we need to make the buttons functional so that when we press them they would send us to the appropriate example. In the setup section we set the character ‘0’ to the currentPage variable, which will indicate that we are at the home screen. So if that’s true, and if we press on the screen this if statement would become true and using these lines here we will get the X and Y coordinates where the screen has been pressed. If that’s the area that covers the first button we will call the drawDistanceSensor() custom function which will activate the distance sensor example. Also we will set the character ‘1’ to the variable currentPage which will indicate that we are at the first example. The drawFrame() custom function is used for highlighting the button when it’s pressed. The same procedure goes for the two other buttons.

So the drawDistanceSensor() custom function needs to be called only once when the button is pressed in order to draw all the graphics of this example in similar way as we described for the home screen. However, the getDistance() custom function needs to be called repeatedly in order to print the latest results of the distance measured by the sensor.

Ok next is the RGB LED Control example. If we press the second button, the drawLedControl() custom function will be called only once for drawing the graphic of that example and the setLedColor() custom function will be repeatedly called. In this function we use the touch screen to set the values of the 3 sliders from 0 to 255. With the if statements we confine the area of each slider and get the X value of the slider. So the values of the X coordinate of each slider are from 38 to 310 pixels and we need to map these values into values from 0 to 255 which will be used as a PWM signal for lighting up the LED. If you need more details how the RGB LED works you can check my particular tutorialfor that. The rest of the code in this custom function is for drawing the sliders. Back in the loop section we only have the back button which also turns off the LED when pressed.

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:

My website link for downloads (if any are present), etc:http://youtube.accbs.co.uk/Video.aspx?Video_Id=2xsL6JSwlS0A short and concise video on how to wire up...

We’ve done quite a number of tutorials on the use of several displays with Arduino boards and today we will add another tutorial to that list. We will look at the ILI9325 based 2.8″ touchscreen display shown below and how it can be used with the Arduino to deliver a better user experience for your projects.

For today’s tutorial, we will use the ILI9325 driver based, 2.8″ display from Geekcreit. The display comes as a shield so it’s ready to be used for Arduino based projects. It is an 18-bit color display with a total of 262,000 different color shades. The display has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels with individual pixel control.

Today’s project involves some very simple tasks which we will use to demonstrate the capabilities of the display. We will create a button which when touched, will trigger the Arduino to display a message on the screen. At the end of today’s tutorial, we would have gone through how to create a user interface on the touchscreen, how to detect when the screen is touched and how to display data on the screen.

The Arduino Mega or any of the other Arduino board can be used for this project and the power bank comes in handy when the project is to be used in a standalone mode. As usual, the exact components used for this tutorial can be purchased via the links attached to each of them.

The 2.8″ TFT display used for this project comes as a shield with the form factor of the Arduino Uno. This makes it easy to connect the shield to boards like the Uno, Mega and Due, as all we need to do, is plug it directly into the board, eliminating all the mess made by wires.  Plug the display to the Arduino as shown in the image below.

The fact that the display comes as a shield becomes a disadvantage when its used with the Arduino Uno as it occupies almost all the pins leaving just 2 digital pins and one analog pin for other uses. This can however, be overcome by using either the Arduino Mega or Due as they both work perfectly well with the display.

The code for this tutorial is heavily reliant on a modified version of Adafruit’s TFT LCD,GFX and touchscreen libraries. These libraries can be downloaded from the links attached to them.

As mentioned earlier, our focus for this tutorial will be to demonstrate, how UI can be created on the display and interpret touches to trigger actions. To achieve this, we will develop a simple sketch which displays a Youtube subscribe button. When the subscribe button is pressed, a text is displayed on the screen.

Calibration needs to be done before the touchscreen functionality of this display can be used. To calibrate the screen, we upload the code and Open the Serial Monitor to obtain the values of the display’s edges. Click (touch) on the top left corner of the display and write down the X and Y values displayed on the serial monitor. Then we edit the code to reflect those values. The X value goes to the TS_MAXX variable and the Y value goes to the TS_MAXY variable. Next, click on the bottom right corner of the display and enter the values displayed on the serial monitor for the TS_MINX and TS_MINY variables. With this done our display is now calibrated and ready for use.

Next, we declare the colors to be used with their hexadecimal values and we create an object of the Adafruit TFTLCD library, indicating the variables used to represent the pins of the Arduino to which the display is connected.

We start by initializing the serial monitor and the display. After this, we set the orientation of the LCD and fill the screen with a black color to serve as the background.

next, we draw a white frame on the display, set the text cursor to the desired location, change its color to white, and print the “Hello” text on the screen. By following the same procedure, we display the red YouTube text as well.

Next, we create the red Youtube subscribe button. To achieve this, we create a red rectangle and for our size requirements, we set the x and y pixel coordinates of the top left corner point of this rectangle to (60,180), define its width as 200 pixels, its height as 40 pixels and set pixel coordinates for the bottom right of the rectangle to (260, 220). To make the rectangle look more like a button, we draw a similar white rectangle outside of the red rectangle and write the “Subscribe” text on it.

With the setup function all done, we move to the loop function, the algorithm in operation for the loop section is simple, each time the user clicks on the screen, we convert the point coordinates of the touch point into pixels using the Map function. After conversion, if that point is inside the red rectangle area, it means that the user has pressed the button, so we disable the button by setting this variable to false and we clear the screen so to display the “Thank you for Subscribing” message on the screen.

Copy the code above and create a new Arduino sketct. Ensure the libraries are installed and upload the code to the setup described under the schematics section. Once the upload is complete, you should see the display come up as shown below.

Displays are one of the best ways to provide feedback to users of a particular device or project and often the bigger the display, the better. For today’s tutorial, we will look on how to use the relatively big, low cost, ILI9481 based, 3.5″ Color TFT display with Arduino.

This 3.5″ color TFT display as mentioned above, is based on the ILI9481 TFT display driver. The module offers a resolution of 480×320 pixels and comes with an SD card slot through which an SD card loaded with graphics and UI can be attached to the display. The module is also pre-soldered with pins for easy mount (like a shield) on either of the Arduino Mega and Uno, which is nice since there are not many big TFT displays that work with the Arduino Uno.

The module is compatible with either of the Arduino Uno or the Arduino Mega, so feel free to choose between them or test with both. As usual, these components can be bought via the links attached to them.

One of the good things about this module is the ease with which it can be connected to either of the Arduino Mega or Uno. For this tutorial, we will use the Arduino Uno, since the module comes as a shield with pins soldered to match the Uno’s pinout. All we need to do is snap it onto the top of the Arduino Uno as shown in the image below, thus no wiring required.

This ease of using the module mentioned above is, however, one of the few downsides of the display. If we do not use the attached SD card slot, we will be left with 6 digital and one analog pin as the module use the majority of the Arduino pins. When we use the SD card part of the display, we will be left with just 2 digital and one analog pin which at times limits the kind of project in which we can use this display. This is one of the reasons while the compatibility of this display with the Arduino Mega is such a good news, as the “Mega” offers more digital and analog pins to work with, so when you need extra pins, and size is not an issue, use the Mega.

To easily write code to use this display, we will use the GFX and TFT LCD libraries from “Adafruit” which can be downloaded here. With the library installed we can easily navigate through the examples that come with it and upload them to our setup to see the display in action. By studying these examples, one could easily learn how to use this display. However, I have compiled some of the most important functions for the display of text and graphics into an Arduino sketch for the sake of this tutorial. The complete sketch is attached in a zip file under the download section of this tutorial.

As usual, we will do a quick run through of the code and we start by including the libraries which we will use for the project, in this case, the Adafruit GFX and TFT LCD libraries.

With this done, the Void Setup() function is next. We start the function by issuing atft.reset() command to reset the LCD to default configurations. Next, we specify the type of the LCD we are using via the LCD.begin function and set the rotation of the TFT as desired. We proceed to fill the screen with different colors and display different kind of text using diverse color (via the tft.SetTextColor() function) and font size (via the tft.setTextSize() function).

Next is the void loop() function. Here we basically create a UI to display the youtube subscribe button, using some of the same functions we used under the void setup() function.

Welcome to this Arduino ST7789 tutorial. A few weeks ago I received this small display which uses the ST7789 driver. The price was so tempting, just $6 for a 1.3" display with an impressive resolution of 240x240 pixels. You can get it here. When I ordered it I didn"t know if it is going to [...]

Dear friends welcome to this Arduino E-Paper display tutorial. In this video, we are going use this small e-paper display with Arduino for the first time and talk about its advantages and disadvantages. Intro to the Arduino E-Paper Display Tutorial Hello, guys, I am Nick and welcome to educ8s.tv a channel that is [...]

Dear friends welcome back! The summer is over here in Greece, and I am thrilled to be back with a new video. In this Arduino Tutorial, we are going to build a simple Arduino FM Radio with a Nokia LCD display. Let’s get started! Intro to the Arduino Arduino FM Radio project Hello, guys, [...]

Dear friends welcome to another ESP8266 project video! Today we are going to build a DIY YouTube subscriber counter with a big LCD display and a 3D printed enclosure. Let’s get started! Intro to the DIY YouTube subscriber counter Hello guys, I am Nick and welcome to educ8s.tv a channel that is all [...]

Hey guys, welcome to today"s tutorial. Today we are going to learn how to use the large 20x4 character LCD display with Arduino. Intro to the Arduino 20x4 Character LCD Tutorial I first came across the 20x4 LCD display a few weeks back on banggood.com and I was attracted to it because of [...]

Hello guys, I am Nick and welcome once again to educ8s.tv a channel/blog that is all about DIY electronics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 and other popular boards. In today"s tutorial, we are going learn how to build our own menu for the popular Nokia 5110 LCD display, which has the ability to make [...]

Hey guys, its Nick again, welcome to educ8s.tv a channel that is all about DIY electronics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 and other popular boards. Today we are going to take a look at how to use the inexpensive, ILI9325 driver based, 2.8” touchscreen display designed for Arduino and at the end of this tutorial, you [...]

Hey guys, its Nick again, welcome once again to educ8s.tv a channel that is all about DIY electronics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 and other popular boards. Today we are going to look at how to drive the low cost, big, Arduino 3.5" Color TFT display. At the end of this tutorial, we would [...]

The 1.44" Color TFT display (ILI9163C) is ideal for Arduino. It is fast, low cost and easy to use. In this video we are going to see how to use it with an Arduino Uno, but it will work on any Arduino board. It is the smaller brother of the 1.8" Color TFT [...]

Welcome to another Arduino project video! Today we are going to build an Arduino Breathalyzer. It is a device that senses alcohol in the air and prints the value it reads on the display. We use an MQ-3 gas sensor along with an I2C OLED display on an Arduino Mega. It is a very easy [...]