sainsmart 3.2 tft lcd display tutorial free sample

SainSmart 3.2" TFT LCD Display is a LCD touch screen module. It has 40pins interface and SD card and Flash reader design. It is a powerful and mutilfunctional module for your project.The Screen include a controller SSD1289, it"s a support 8/16bit data interface , easy to drive by many MCU like STM32 ,AVR and 8051. It is designed with a touch controller in it . The touch IC is ADS7843 , and touch interface is included in the 40 pins breakout. It is the version of product only with touch screen and touch controller.

There is built-in SD card slot in the shield, so we can use it to upload images. But the images need to be converted RAW format first.You can use the tool here. SD libraries need to be preinstalled for displaying the image.

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.

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.

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:

If someone, like me, would like to solder the whole thing together and make an attachable shield on the TFT, needs a 2×20 socket strip, a breadboard and soldering tools.

The other pins of the display must be connected via the blocks. Some pins of the Pi (like MOSI, SLCK, …) are used more often, this should be considered when connecting. The connections are as follows (on the left are the pins of the Pi, on the right those of the display).

Dieses Bauteil hat mehrere Inverter. Wir benötigen nur eines davon. Zum Beispiel kannst du Pin 1 (1A) als Eingang nehmen (Ausgang von 74HC4040) und Pin 2 (1Y) als Ausgang zum Pin 5 (WR) des Displays.

sudo modprobe flexfb debug=3 width=240 height=320 regwidth=16 setaddrwin=2 init=-1,0x00,0x0001,-1,0x03,0xA8A4,-1,0x0C,0x0000,-1,0x0D,0x080C,-1,0x0E,0x2B00,-1,0x1E,0x00B7,-1,0x01,0x2B3F,-1,0x02,0x0600,-1,0x10,0x0000,-1,0x11,0x6068,-1,0x05,0x0000,-1,0x06,0x0000,-1,0x16,0xEF1C,-1,0x17,0x0003,-1,0x07,0x0233,-1,0x0B,0x0000,-1,0x0F,0x0000,-1,0x41,0x0000,-1,0x42,0x0000,-1,0x48,0x0000,-1,0x49,0x013F,-1,0x4A,0x0000,-1,0x4B,0x0000,-1,0x44,0xEF00,-1,0x45,0x0000,-1,0x46,0x013F,-1,0x30,0x0707,-1,0x31,0x0204,-1,0x32,0x0204,-1,0x33,0x0502,-1,0x34,0x0507,-1,0x35,0x0204,-1,0x36,0x0204,-1,0x37,0x0502,-1,0x3A,0x0302,-1,0x3B,0x0302,-1,0x23,0x0000,-1,0x24,0x0000,-1,0x25,0x8000,-1,0x4f,0x0000,-1,0x4e,0x0000,-1,0x22,-3

flexfb debug=3 width=240 height=320 regwidth=16 setaddrwin=2 init=-1,0x00,0x0001,-1,0x03,0xA8A4,-1,0x0C,0x0000,-1,0x0D,0x080C,-1,0x0E,0x2B00,-1,0x1E,0x00B7,-1,0x01,0x2B3F,-1,0x02,0x0600,-1,0x10,0x0000,-1,0x11,0x6068,-1,0x05,0x0000,-1,0x06,0x0000,-1,0x16,0xEF1C,-1,0x17,0x0003,-1,0x07,0x0233,-1,0x0B,0x0000,-1,0x0F,0x0000,-1,0x41,0x0000,-1,0x42,0x0000,-1,0x48,0x0000,-1,0x49,0x013F,-1,0x4A,0x0000,-1,0x4B,0x0000,-1,0x44,0xEF00,-1,0x45,0x0000,-1,0x46,0x013F,-1,0x30,0x0707,-1,0x31,0x0204,-1,0x32,0x0204,-1,0x33,0x0502,-1,0x34,0x0507,-1,0x35,0x0204,-1,0x36,0x0204,-1,0x37,0x0502,-1,0x3A,0x0302,-1,0x3B,0x0302,-1,0x23,0x0000,-1,0x24,0x0000,-1,0x25,0x8000,-1,0x4f,0x0000,-1,0x4e,0x0000,-1,0x22,-3

Reason: The hooks on the backight of ER-TFT032-3.1 is always complained by most customers for inconvenient assembly. So we cancel the hooks in the new version of ER-TFT032-3.2.That"s the only difference for these two versions.

ER-TFT032-3.2 is 240x320 dots 3.2" color tft lcd module display with ILI9341 controller and optional 4-wire resistive touch panel and 3.2 inch capactive touch panel with controller FT6236,superior display quality,super wide viewing angle and easily controlled by MCU such as 8051, PIC, AVR, ARDUINO ARM and Raspberry PI.It can be used in any embedded systems,industrial device,security and hand-held equipment which requires display in high quality and colorful image.It supports 8080 8/16-bit parallel,3/4-wire serial interface. FPC with zif connector is easily to assemble or remove.Lanscape mode is also available.

Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!".Here is the link for 3.2"TFT Touch Shield with Libraries, Examples.Schematic Diagram for Arduino Due,Mega 2560 and Uno . For 8051 microcontroller user,we prepared the detailed tutorial such as interfacing, demo code and development kit at the bottom of this page.

I"m having some strange issues with the SainSmart Mega 2560 R3 + Adapter Shield +3.2 TFT Touch that I bought from SainSmart, and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced the same thing:

This is SainSmart Mega 2560 tft display kit. Simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.

I can successfully compile and load any of the example files that come with those libraries and they seem to work OK...until I unplug and restart. When I plug back into the USB cable or to a 12V wall wart, the program runs, and the uC and LCD work OK, but the touch screen is all messed up. I have to recompile and program the board again to get it to work correctly. I"ve tried all of the UTFT examples that use the touch screen and they all do the same thing.

For example, if I compile and load the UTouch_QuickDraw example code, it works OK; I can touch any part of the screen and it draws pixels in the corresponding LCD location. But, if I unplug and restart the uC board the touch screen then only responds to touches to the bottom-right quadrant. And, the data is not correct. As I touch in the bottom-right quadrant, the LCD draws in the top-left quadrant. I did a quick mod to the code to spit out the X/Y values that were being read and, sure enough, in the bottom-right quadrant it would read x = 0 to ~150 and Y = 0 to ~125. Pressing in any other quadrant gave x and y values of -1. If I then recompiled and programmed the board again the everything would work OK; I would get x = 0 to 320 and y = 0 to 240.

The display is driven by a ST7735R controller ( ST7735R-specifications.pdf (2.1 MB) ), can be used in a “slow” and a “fast” write mode, and is 3.3V/5V compatible.

Adafruit_ST7735 is the library we need to pair with the graphics library for hardware specific functions of the ST7735 TFT Display/SD-Card controller.

Basically, besides the obvious backlight, we tell the controller first what we are talking to with the CS pins. CS(TFT) selects data to be for the Display, and CS(SD) to set data for the SD-Card. Data is written to the selected device through SDA (display) or MOSI (SD-Card). Data is read from the SD-Card through MISO.

So when using both display and SD-Card, and utilizing the Adafruit libraries with a SainSmart display, you will need to connect SDA to MOSI, and SCL to SCLK.

As mentioned before, the display has a SLOW and a FAST mode, each serving it’s own purpose. Do some experiments with both speeds to determine which one works for your application. Of course, the need of particular Arduino pins plays a role in this decision as well …

Note: Adafruit displays can have different colored tabs on the transparent label on your display. You might need to adapt your code if your display shows a little odd shift. I noticed that my SainSmart display (gree tab) behaves best with the code for the black tab – try them out to see which one works best for yours.

Low Speed display is about 1/5 of the speed of High Speed display, which makes it only suitable for particular purposes, but at least the SPI pins of the Arduino are available.

After connecting the display in Low Speed configuration, you can load the first example from the Arduino Software (“File” “Example” “Adafruit_ST7735” –  recommend starting with the “graphictest“).

Below the code parts for a LOW SPEED display (pay attention to the highlighted lines) – keep in mind that the names of the pins in the code are based on the Adafruit display:

#define sclk 4 // SainSmart: SCL#define mosi 5 // SainSmart: SDA#define cs 6 // SainSmart: CS#define dc 7 // SainSmart: RS/DC#define rst 8 // SainSmart: RES

#define sclk 13 // SainSmart: SCL#define mosi 11 // SainSmart: SDA#define cs 10 // SainSmart: CS#define dc 9 // SainSmart: RS/DC#define rst 8 // SainSmart: RES

You can name your BMP file “parrot.bmp” or modify the Sketch to have the proper filename (in “spitftbitmap” line 70, and in “soft_spitftbitmap” line 74).

#define SD_CS 4 // Chip select line for SD card#define TFT_CS 10 // Chip select line for TFT display#define TFT_DC 9 // Data/command line for TFT#define TFT_RST 8 // Reset line for TFT (or connect to +5V)

#define SD_CS 4 // Chip select line for SD card#define TFT_CS 10 // Chip select line for TFT display#define TFT_DC 9 // Data/command line for TFT#define TFT_RST 8 // Reset line for TFT (or connect to +5V)

This function is used to indicate what corner of your display is considered (0,0), which in essence rotates the coordinate system 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees.

However, if your application needs your screen sideways, then you’d want to rotate the screen 90 degrees, effectively changing the display from a 128×160 pixel (WxH) screen to a 160×128 pixel display. Valid values are: 0 (0 degrees), 1 (90 degrees), 2 (180 degrees) and 3 (270 degrees).

tft.print("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur adipiscing ante sed nibh tincidunt feugiat. Maecenas enim massa, fringilla sed malesuada et, malesuada sit amet turpis. Sed porttitor neque ut ante pretium vitae malesuada nunc bibendum. Nullam aliquet ultrices massa eu hendrerit. Ut sed nisi lorem. In vestibulum purus a tortor imperdiet posuere. ");

In this guide we’re going to show you how you can use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino. You’ll learn how to wire the display, write text, draw shapes and display images on the screen.

The 1.8 TFT is a colorful display with 128 x 160 color pixels. The display can load images from an SD card – it has an SD card slot at the back. The following figure shows the screen front and back view.

This module uses SPI communication – see the wiring below . To control the display we’ll use the TFT library, which is already included with Arduino IDE 1.0.5 and later.

The TFT display communicates with the Arduino via SPI communication, so you need to include the SPI library on your code. We also use the TFT library to write and draw on the display.

In which “Hello, World!” is the text you want to display and the (x, y) coordinate is the location where you want to start display text on the screen.

The 1.8 TFT display can load images from the SD card. To read from the SD card you use the SD library, already included in the Arduino IDE software. Follow the next steps to display an image on the display:

Note: some people find issues with this display when trying to read from the SD card. We don’t know why that happens. In fact, we tested a couple of times and it worked well, and then, when we were about to record to show you the final result, the display didn’t recognized the SD card anymore – we’re not sure if it’s a problem with the SD card holder that doesn’t establish a proper connection with the SD card. However, we are sure these instructions work, because we’ve tested them.

In this guide we’ve shown you how to use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino: display text, draw shapes and display images. You can easily add a nice visual interface to your projects using this display.

HY-TFT320 is a 3.2 inch TFT LCD Screen module, 320*240 (resolution), 65K color, 34pins interface , not just a LCD breakout, but include the Touch screen, SD card. So it’s a powerful extension module for your project.

This Screen includes a controller SSD1289, it’s 16bit data interface, easy to drive by many MCU like STM32 ,AVR and 8051.HY-TFT320 is designed with a touch controller in it . The touch IC is XPT2046 , and touch interface is included in the 34 pins breakout. Another useful extension in this module is the SD Card socket . It use the SPI mode to operate the SD card, the SPI interface include in the 40pins breakout.

The UTFT library is required to be installed to get this screen model display. This library is especially designed for 3.2” TFT LCD screen using 16 bit mode. The library require the following connections.

Note: The TFT controller model needs to be declared in the initializing statement. ITDB02 myGLCD(38,39,40,41) needs to be modified as myGLCD(38,39,40,41,ITDB32S) when using Arduino Mega2560.ITDB02 myGLCD(19,18,17,16,ITDB32S) needs to be commented when using Aduino UNO. Otherwise it just show a blank screen. In practice, RS, WR, CS, RSET can be connected to any free pin. But the pin number must be in accord with myGLCD(RS,WR,CS,RST).

The LCD has a 3.2" 4-wire resistive touch screen lying over it. The Touch libraryneeds to be installed to get it works. This library is designed for 2.4’’ TFT, 3.2” TFT LCD screen module.

The default setting is accurate for 2.4” TFT module, but you need to calibrate when using 3.2” TFT module. A program to calibrate the touch screen is included in the example. If you touch screen is inaccurate, you need to run touch_calibration. Follow the on-screen instruction to calibrate the touch screen. Better not use your finger to calibrate it, use your accessory touch pen to pressure the frontsight with stength. Then record the calibration parameters and apply them in ITDB02_Touch.cpp in your touch screen library.

There is built-in SD card slot in the shield, so we can use it to upload images. But the images need to be converted RAW format first. SD libraries tinyFAT and tinyFAT_16 need to be preinstalled for displaying the image.

Also when tutorial said to download an image to install the screen: should I install win32disk on the raspberry to be able to write the screen image? Please help.

so... right off the bat, I noticed that this screen in the video is not a sainsmart device. That will change things a bit from the vid. Also, in looking at the Pi pins in use in the video, you will notice that he is using I2C, not SPI, so your hookup and code will be completely different. (if you based your hookups on the video, that"s your main problem)

Maybe I can use this to make the sainsmart display work. But I"m a little bit confused about the TFT/cs in the picture. He connected it to GPIO8(CE0). Or can I use your wirings?

Hi, I"ve connected everything said like above (just the display). I edited the code on the framebuffer line to /dev/fb0, cause i couldn"t find fb1. The display seems to be initialized (i made some debug output). But i can"t see anything, only the background light is flickering each time a command is send to display.

If you read the previous blog entry on the same site -- Raspberry Pi and TFT Display -- it covers the kernel frame buffer driver being used for /dev/fb1. Without this kernel driver, the python code from the subsequent blog entry will not work.

I was using 2012-07-15-wheezy-raspbian, so its a bit older (maybe too old?). I downloaded the version mentioned in the tutorial and will make that rpi-update stuff(or can i skip that by using 2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian/?).

I had to set up a new raspbian-wheezy 2012-12-16 (on a slooowww 2gb sd-card) and did all steps except rpi-update. This keeps me the 3.2.27 kernel. (apt-get update; apt-get upgrade is o.k.)

after i took the newest wheezy and build the kernel with the driver as module, the fb1 appeared. But the drawing example didn"t cause the display to work it was just flickering. Then i rewired the pi (DC ->GPIO24 and RES->GPIO25) and voilá there was the drawin.YES!!!

I found the tossing of the words "SPI" and "MOSI" misleading, and ended up creating simple, isolated demonstration on how to use the display driver. It"s available here: https://github.com/gima/st7735r

This is a very short example. How to conenct and use this SSD1289 TFT touch display with Arduino. You need to make the connection and downlaod the library. Then downlaod or copy/paste the example code.

First, you need an SSD1289 TFT display like this one on this link and an Arduino MEGA and the shield. This uses SPI communication to show text, numbers or any other logo with colours. To send data, we will need a library that you will find below. It also have an SD card slot.

First, we need the UTFT.h and URTouch.h library that you could dowload from below. So, for that, go below and downlaod that library. It will be a .zip file. Open Arduino IDE and go to sketch, include library, add .zip library and select the downlaoded file. Now the library is installed. You could downlaod the example code or just copy/paste it from below.