3.5 tft lcd code mcufriend price

I bought four MCU Friend 3.5″ TFT shields.  And, unfortunately, they have spiraled me into a deep, dark place trying to figure out how to use them.  The the documentation consists of a sticker on the antistatic bag, a picture of the shield with a list of 5 different possible LCD drivers, a pinout, and a block of code that supposedly represents the startup code.  The unfortunate part is that none of these have been exactly right – they all have errors.  This article is a description of the journey to figuring out how to use them.

Here is a picture of the bag. (the QR code is a number “181024202132” which I thought might be a phone number but isn’t.  It also doesn’t match anything in google, so i’m not sure what it is.

It also has a picture which says the LCD has one of several different controllers (and after digging in I know for a fact that two of mine were made by Raydium and are not on the list)

The first thing I did was try to use the MCUFRIEND_kbv library to see if the screens worked.  The first board identified as ID=0x9403 and did not work.  Apparently, the tool just spits out the ID if it doesn’t know it, which it did not.

One of the boards identified as ID=0x6814 worked perfectly, and one had a blue cast to all of the screens.  The crazy part is the two boards that identified as ID=0x6814 had different PCBs.  According to the comments in the MCUFRIEND_kbv.cpp ID=0x6814 is an RM68140 and ID=9403 is unknown.

Next, I started down the path of trying to figure out what the controllers were by using register reads.  David Prentice (the guy who wrote/maintains the MCU Friend_kbv Arduino library) has an absolute ton of responses on the Arduino forum trying to help people figure out what their shield is.  He asks them to post the register report from his example program LCD_ID_readnew which is included as an example in the library.

When you look at these LCD controllers they all have some variant of “Read ID” which responds with 1-6 bytes.  The basic idea of this program is to look at what bytes are returned to try to identify the controller.  Here is an example of what I got when I ran the LCD_ID_readnew program on my shields:

The key thing to see in this output is the register 0x04 which says 54,80,66 which identifies this as a Raydium RM68140 LCD controller.  Here is a snapshot from the data sheet.

After digging some more, I decided that it is super ugly out there, as you find that there are a significant number of LCD controllers that are clones, copies, pirated etc… and that they all present themselves differently.  And, in hindsight I think that this is the reason that my ILI9341 from the previous article doesnt quite work correctly.

The next thing that I did was try out the startup code that MCUFriend_kbv generates.  I used the same technique from PSoC 6 + Segger EmWin + MCUFriend 2.4″ Part 1 and spit out the startup bytes.  Here they are:

Well, things still aren’t quite right, so for some strange reason, I keep going and try to use the startup code from the web.  In order to make it work I translate

Earlier I told you that I much preferred to use the more compact startup code.  In order to match this, I decided to add a new code “0xDD” which means delay.  (I hope that there are no controllers out there that use 0XDD).  Here is the updated function:

At this point I have spent a frightening amount of time figuring out how these screens work.  Although it has been a good learning experience, I have generally decided that using unknown displays from China with LCD drivers of questionable origin is not worth the pain of trying to sort out the interface.  Beyond that:

This note introduces a low-cost Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display to enhance the operation and usefulness of Liquid Crystal Display(LCD) devices. TFT technology controls the pixel element on the glass surface thereby greatly reducing image blurring and improving viewing angles.

The test board chosen for this exercise is the Elegoo Arduino UNO board from the corresponding Super Starter Kit. The kit already has several simple numeric and text displays. The TFT display may perhaps provide better ways to interact in applications.

The controller for the illustrated model of the TFT display is SSD1297.This information is important because the display (owing to its low cost and high popularity) has many different manufacturers who may not leverage the same controller instruction set. The specification of the controller in the coding exercises is examined in the Appendix section of this note.

The output from the diagnostic program, LCD_ID_reading.ino, is shown below:Read Registers on MCUFRIEND UNO shieldcontrollers either read as single 16-bite.g. the ID is at readReg(0)or as a sequence of 8-bit valuesin special locations (first is dummy)reg(0x0000) 97 97ID: ILI9320, ILI9325, ILI9335, ...reg(0x0004) 97 97 97 97Manufacturer IDreg(0x0009) 97 97 97 97 97Status Registerreg(0x000A) 97 97Get Power Modereg(0x000C) 97 97Get Pixel Formatreg(0x0061) 97 97RDID1 HX8347-Greg(0x0062) 97 97RDID2 HX8347-Greg(0x0063) 97 97RDID3 HX8347-Greg(0x0064) 97 97RDID1 HX8347-Areg(0x0065) 97 97RDID2 HX8347-Areg(0x0066) 97 97RDID3 HX8347-Areg(0x0067) 97 97RDID Himax HX8347-Areg(0x0070) 97 97Panel Himax HX8347-Areg(0x00A1) 97 97 97 97 97RD_DDB SSD1963reg(0x00B0) 97 97RGB Interface Signal Controlreg(0x00B4) 97 97Inversion Controlreg(0x00B6) 97 97 97 97 97Display Controlreg(0x00B7) 97 97Entry Mode Setreg(0x00BF) 97 97 97 97 97 97ILI9481, HX8357-Breg(0x00C0) 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97Panel Controlreg(0x00C8) 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97GAMMAreg(0x00CC) 97 97Panel Controlreg(0x00D0) 97 97 97Power Controlreg(0x00D2) 97 97 97 97 97NVM Readreg(0x00D3) 97 97 97 97ILI9341, ILI9488reg(0x00D4) 97 97 97 97Novatek IDreg(0x00DA) 97 97RDID1reg(0x00DB) 97 97RDID2reg(0x00DC) 97 97RDID3reg(0x00E0) 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97GAMMA-Preg(0x00E1) 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97GAMMA-Nreg(0x00EF) 97 97 97 97 97 97ILI9327reg(0x00F2) 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97 97Adjust Control 2reg(0x00F6) 97 97 97 97Interface Control

The controller is referenced as SSD1297 with ID=0x9797. This display requires the use of the following statement in the code prior to the invocation of other header files for the display. Please review the header files for the equivalent#define SUPPORT_1289

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.

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).

The Adafruit library helps reduce the amount of work one needs to do while developing the code for this display, leaving the quality of the user interface to the limitations of the creativity and imagination of the person writing the code.

I, actually, lost track of "Arduino" and "Uno" and other italian (or italianized english) words used for renaming Atmel (and now other) chips after adding a piece of assembly in them, I use the Atmel chips themselves. It was cute over 15 years ago when the idea was new, and always cute for microcontroller beginners for a few experiments. Another thing, I don"t like those professional C++ programmers who engrave "Ardino pin numbers" in stone in their classes/libraries and the daughter boards in the shape of the 2005 original board (to save those programmers from the savagery of using physical tools like a soldering iron or the EE SW tools like PCB design), so I always add to my notebook lookup tables and notes for flexibility after spending quite a bit of time inside their code files looking for the "stones". I believe, like most people I know, that your own personal "Arduino"/project board is a PCB order away.

This note introduces a low-cost Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display to enhance the operation and usefulness of Liquid Crystal Display(LCD) devices. TFT technology controls the pixel element on the glass surface thereby greatly reducing image blurring and improving viewing angles.

The test board chosen for this exercise is the Elegoo Arduino UNO board from the corresponding Super Starter Kit. The kit already has several simple numeric and text displays. The TFT display may perhaps provide better ways to interact in applications.

The controller for the illustrated model of the TFT display is SSD1297.This information is important because the display (owing to its low cost and high popularity) has many different manufacturers who may not leverage the same controller instruction set. The specification of the controller in the coding exercises is examined in the Appendix section of this note.

The controller is referenced as SSD1297 with This display requires the use of the following statement in the code prior to the invocation of other header files for the display. Please review the header files for the equivalent

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. At the end of this article, you can : Write texts and numbers with your desired font.

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.

So, First, you should check the resolution, speed of motion, details of color and size of your project’s images, texts, and numbers. We suggest popular size of Arduino displays such as 3.5 inch 480×320, 2.8 inch 400×240, 2.4 inch 320×240 and 1.8 inch 220×176. 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. Unzip the MCUFRIEND KBV and open the MCUFRIEND_kbv.CPP. You can see the list of drivers that are supported by MCUFRIEND library.

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 just used a string and 8 filled circles that change their colors in order. To draw circles around a static point, You can use sin(); and cos(); functions. you should define the PI number. To change colors, you can use color565(); function and replace your RGB code.

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

Step 18: Final Remarks The speed of playing all the GIF files are edited and we made them faster or slower for better understanding. The speed of motions depends on the speed of your processor or type of code or size and thickness of elements in the code.

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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.

As the code is a bit longer and for better understanding I will post the source code of the program in sections with description for each section. And at the end of this article I will post the complete source 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.

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: