arduino tft lcd screen tutorial 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.

Here’s that function which uses the ultrasonic sensor to calculate the distance and print the values with SevenSegNum font in green color, either in centimeters or inches. If you need more details how the ultrasonic sensor works you can check my particular tutorialfor that. Back in the loop section we can see what happens when we press the select unit buttons as well as the back button.

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:

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).

That’s it for this tutorial guys, thanks for reading. If you made some cool projects based on this or you just want to ask questions about this tutorial, feel free to reach out via the comment section below.

Hi guys, over the past few tutorials, we have been discussing TFT displays, how to connect and use them in Arduino projects, especially the 1.8″ Colored TFT display. In a similar way, we will look at how to use the 1.44″ TFT Display (ILI9163C) with the Arduino.

The ILI9163C based 1.44″ colored TFT Display, is a SPI protocol based display with a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels. It’s capable of displaying up to 262,000 different colors. The module can be said to be a sibling to the 1.8″ TFT display, except for the fact that it is much faster and has a better, overall cost to performance ratio when compared with the 1.8″ TFT display. Some of the features of the display are listed below;

TheTFT Display, as earlier stated, communicates with the microcontroller over SPI, thus to use it, we need to connect it to the SPI pins of the Arduino as shown in the schematics below.

Please note that the version of the display used for this tutorial is not available on fritzing which is the software used for the schematics, so follow the pin connection list below to further understand how each pin of the TFT display should be connected to the Arduino.

When connecting the display, ensure that has a voltage regulator (shown in the image below) before connecting it directly to the 5v logic level of the Arduino. This is because the display could be destroyed if the version of the display you have does not have the regulator.

In order to allow the Arduino to work with the display, we need two Arduino libraries; the sumotoy TFT ILI9163C Arduino library which can be downloaded from this link and the popular Adafruit GFX Arduino library which we have used extensively in several tutorials. Download these libraries and install them in the Arduino IDE.

For today’s tutorial, we will be using the bigtest example which is one of the example codes that comes with the sumotoy ILI9163C Arduino library to show how to use the TFT display.

The example can be opened by going to File–>Examples–>TFT_ILI9163c–>bigtest as shown in the image below. It should be noted that this will only be available after the sumotoy library has been installed.

Next, we define some of the colors that will be used along with the corresponding hex values. If you’ve gone through any of our previous tutorials where we used the Adafruit GFX library, you would have noticed that this code contains a lot from the GFX library and it should be easier for you to follow.

Next, an object of the ILI9163c library named “display” was created with CS and DC parameter as inputs but due to the kind of display being used, we need to include the pin of the Arduino to which the A0 pin of the TFT display is connected which is D8.

With this done, we move to the void setup() function. Under this function, we issue the commands that initialize the display then create a time variable updated by millis, after which we issue a command to clear the screen and display some random text on it.

Some of the functions which perform actions ranging from displaying fastlines, drawing rectangles etc are then called with a delay after each function so the text or graphics stays long enough on the screen to be visible.

Up next is the void loop function. The void loop function also calls some of the same functions called under the void setup() function to display circles, rectangles etc including the testline function which is essentially used to test the screen.

With the libraries installed, open an instance of the Arduino IDE, open the examples as described initially, don’t forget to make the A0 pin (D8) correction to the code then upload to the Arduino board. You should see different kind of text and graphics being displayed on the screen. I captured the screen in action and its shown in the image below.

That’s it for this tutorial guys, what interesting thing are you going to build with this display? Let’s get the conversation started. Feel free to reach me via the comment section if you have any questions about the tutorial.

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big 4"(3.97" diagonal) bright (6 white-LED backlight) and colorful (18-bit 262,000 different shades)! 480x800 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a optional resistive touch panel with controller XPT2046 and capacitive touch panel with FT6336.

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 (Due/Mega 2560).

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!

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.

I am trying to get my LCD screen to display a couple of values, some of which will be calculated in the code, and others that will be read in from a variety of sensors. The issue that I am having is that with the following code (for testing out the screen) the first thing that is supposed to be printed is an x value, which only displays the first iteration of the loop, then disappears. Does anyone know why this might be happening, and how to fix it?

The screen is 1.77" diagonal, with 160 x 128 pixel resolution. The TFT library interfaces with the screen"s controller through SPI when using the TFT library. Refer to the screen"s data sheet for complete details.

The Arduino TFT library extends the Adafruit GFX, and Adafruit ST7735 libraries that it is based on. The GFX library is responsible for the drawing routines, while the ST7735 library is specific to the screen on the Arduino screen. The Arduino specific additions were designed to work as similarly to the Processing API as possible.

The TFT library relies on the SPI library, which must be included in any sketch that uses the scree. If you wish to use the SD card, you need to include the SD library as well.

Let"s get started with this creative Arduino project, where you"ll learn about the TFT LCD touch screen and how to use it to create your own colourful calculator. For a basic understanding of touch screen & LCD, a cheap TFT 2.4" Arduino shield is used to create this project. For creating a similar project, one should follow the steps and edit the code for better understanding.

Touch-screen devices using resistive technology, a two-dimensional membrane potentiometer provides x and y coordinates. The top layer is thin glass spaced close to a neighboring inner layer. The underside of the top layer has a transparent conductive coating; the surface of the layer beneath it has a transparent resistive coating. A finger or stylus deforms the glass to contact the underlying layer. Edges of the resistive layer have conductive contacts. Locating the contact point is done by applying a voltage to opposite edges, leaving the other two edges temporarily unconnected. The voltage of the top layer provides one coordinate. Disconnecting those two edges, and applying a voltage to the other two, formerly unconnected, provides the other coordinate. Alternating rapidly between pairs of edges provides frequent position updates. An analog to digital converter provides output data.

The shield connects ILI9341"s data pins 0-7 to Arduino"s digital pins 2-8 (allowing parallel communication, not SPI. ILI9341"s RESET goes to Arduino analog pin A4. CS (chip select) to A3. RS (CD command/data) to A2. WR and RD to A1 and A0.

ILI9341 is integrated inside the display. It drives the display and has nothing to do with the touchscreen (Although the shield connects some pins of ILI9341 together with pins of the touchscreen).

Now, open Arduino IDE and select Sketch -> Include Library -> Add .ZIP library. A browser window will open navigate to the ZIP file and click “OK”. You should notice “Library added to your Libraries” on the bottom-left corner of Arduino, if successful.

The touchscreen I tested sometimes wrongly detects a touch, outside of the touched point. To prevent this I added some delays and the X and Y analog value is read repeatedly and touch is approved only if values do not differ a lot.

You can also find an SD card slot at the bottom of the module shown above, which can be used to load an SD card with BMP image files, and these images can be displayed on our TFT LCD screen using the Arduino Program.

The 2.4” TFT LCD screen is a perfect Arduino Shield. You can directly push the LCD screen on top of the Arduino Uno and it will perfectly match with the pins and slid in through. However, as matters of safety cover the programming terminal of your Arduino UNO with some insulator, just in case if the terminal comes in contact with your TFT LCD screen.

The calculator here is based on the simple logic that, you have to divide the screen according to touch coordinates values and write a program accordingly. Every digit or symbol visible on-screen have a defined area.

I bought online this LCD Touchscreen Kuman SC3A-NEW-UK. It uses ILI9486 drivers, but it didn"t include any instructions manual, and kumantech.com seems to be devoid of complete technical documentation about SC3A-NEW-UK model.

Just in case it wasn"t noticable: I am trying to make a "Hello World" for my SC3A-NEW-UK"s LCD Touchscreen from an Arduino UNO board. In other words: just print "Hello World" to see if it works.

To see if I can use it, I tried downloading a whole ZIP from this Github project, and inside the Arduino IDE, I tried adding the downloaded library using the option "Include .ZIP library". If I copy-paste the code example provided within README.md (the following) and compile:

This compiled in Arduino IDE, no problem, but I still don"t know if it will work well with my screen. I am also confused about initialization of the TFT object and how would I have to wire the LCD screen to the Arduino depending on this initialization:

...i mean, my LCD screen has CS and RESET pins, but what is DC supposed to be here? (in this context, I don"t think it stands for "Direct Current"... but there"s no DC pin reference in my LCD screen written "AS IS"... ?? This brings me more confusion...

...specially having in mind that I don"t know how am I supposed to wire the LCD screen to the Arduino yet. It seems the LCD pins have been designed to fit in directly to the Arduino board without thinking too much about it (like the shape is the same), but that would make the screen getting all the Arduino UNO"s pins for itself, so I don"t think so...

...so, powering the screen shouldn"t be a big deal, but, how am I supposed to connect everything else? I am completely misguided about how am I supposed to interact with the screen from Arduino code... what is RS pin for? Should I use 4-bit or 8-bit mode? (I think 4-bit would imply connecting 4 digital pins for the screen, and 8-bit the whole 8 pins from screen to the Arduino UNO board)? Should I use LCD_RD and LCD_WR? Well you have a picture of my confusion.

Even though I know how to control Input/Output in Arduino code to interact with analog/digital input and output pins at will with C++ in Arduino code (but even so, I think I"m still an Arduino n00b), this LCD screen"s physical interface is very confusing to me...

PD: I have read somewhere that this SC3A-NEW-UK Touchscreen is made to shield Arduino MEGA boards (by fitting the PINs directly into it), but mine is an Arduino UNO Board! (perhaps I shouldn"t have bought This LCD model, then?)... but I have sets of wires, pinboards and stuff... I don"t want to give up the idea of harnessing this LCD screen using an Arduino UNO. I don"t care about shielding feature, I just want to wire it and make it work. I will figure out how to shield electronics later on.

Based on VE7JRO"s answer, I managed to map the connections by seeing where the connections would go if I just fit the connections shielding the Arduino UNO, the way VE7JRO suggested:

I put NONE for A5 input, because that pin of LCD screen doesn"t have any name on it. There are another ones without name as well, that I didn"t include in this table. I believe (perhaps I"m wrong believing it, I don"t know) that those pins without name have no use.

The bad thing about this layout is that it consumes almost all the Arduino pins, so I would not be able to attach additional circuits. However, perhaps I should not be worrying about earning connections yet, before testing the screen.

I still don"t know much of the details about what pins do what for the screen, but I have read somewhere that LCD_D0 to LCD_D7 are meant to receive digital data in some kind of 8-bit parallel mode. But I also heard that there is a 4-bit mode. If I could use that mode with this screen, I would be able to have 4 free digital pins for anything else...

I tested VE7JRO"s code. LCD Screen did draw the interface as expected. But buttons didn"t respond. I found out the code sample needs further calibration.

...because their values when I touch the screen with the touchpen are very weird. I tried to guess which ranges they go, and they don"t make sense when I move around the screen. Perhaps it"s because this strange "Z instead of Y" mapping from the TSPoint object. Perhaps pixel_x and pixel_y don"t need to make an intuitive sense, perhaps it"s just some intrincated in-bound logic that only makes sense within electronics" low-level scope, or within Adafruit_GFX_Button.press method, I don"t know... but x, y and z readings from TSPoint object seem very accurate, despite Y being Z and Z being Y...

There are 22 test sketches that come with the MCUFRIEND_kbv library. One of them scans your display and outputs configuration information (sorry, it"s been a while since I tested my screen). Another sketch will draw little boxes in each corner and sides. This is used to get the x y coordinates of the edges of your particular screen (it might be called TouchScreen_Calibr_native.ino).

z seems indeed sensitive to touch pressure, but it"s like its sensitivity is different depending on the touchpen"s position on screen (altough I"m not a robot, I think I was using more or less the same amount of force with my hand). It prints 0 when i do not touch the screen.

The fifth parameter is supposed to be the resistance measured between LCD_D6 and LCD_RS with the screen unplugged. Unfortunately, my multimeter can"t measure it for some reason (I put it in 2000 Ohms mode for reading resistance: I always get "1", the same than when I don"t connect anything... like if multimeter"s contacts aren"t working well, I don"t know)... so I left the default 300 value.