prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

2023-01-03 12:32:11

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prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

I got a 7-inch TFT LCD display (800x480 pixels, capacitive touch screen) to use with an Arduino DUE processor. It"s a ER-TFTM070-4V2.1 display, came with a shield for a DUE or Mega2560 processor, uses an SSD1963 processor. Got it working so it ran the examples in the UTFT library, displaying sine waves, moire patterns etc. Found some files of UTFT fonts and started putting together an interface of a medical ventilator, now it displays major parameters using three different fonts simultaneously, looks cool so far.

The Arduino DUE runs on 3.3V, of course, and has a voltage regulator on board so I can feed it 9VDC. It runs well with that and the display looks as good as I can make it (which isn"t saying much, my artistic talents are mediocre at best).

I"d like to have it display a small picture (150x100 pixels) in one part of the display. Picture is available in any of several formats (BMP, GIF, PNG, JPG etc.).

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

Hello, this tutorial is a follow up of the 2 other ones about the 2.4″ TFT LCD Shield with Arduino UNO, so the first one was about Interfacing and fixing the touch function problem also inverted axis, then the second one was about using simple function to draw different shapes and how to create a touch button to activate some functions…

But today we’re about the reading of images from SD card and showing them on the screen, first don’t forget to plug your SD card with your computer and format it as FAT32 then transfert your images don’t forget that they should be “BMP” format, Bitmaps 24 !! To have a correct image the resolutions should be 240*320, little explanation:

This is the library that worked for me:if you use this library but when trying with example codes it shows you a white screen, you should definitely look for the library that suits you.

Here are the codes I’ve used in the video in.ino format, don’t forget to change the name of the files you’re using. Don’t forget to check the tutorial in case you need some help.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

To do this, we will useLCD image converter.You can find it here :https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcd-image-converter/Resize your imageto the size of your screen (240x240)

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

Note: The following picture is the connection diagram of the 2.8-inch TFT screen and Arduino uno, but this product is connected in exactly the same way.

If the Arduino board has an ICSP interface, set the SPI Config switch on the display module to the ICSP direction (by default) (the company"s Arduino UNO motherboard has an ICSP interface, just plug it in directly.).

This product uses the same LCD control chip and touch panel control chip as the 3.5-inch TFT screen of the same series of our company, so the code is completely compatible. The following takes 3.5-inch TFT as an example to introduce.

LCD_Show can display colorful patterns with different shapes and times. LCD_ShowBMP is for displaying the picture in BMP, and LCD_Touch is for using the touching function.

The display controller used in this product is ILI9486, and we need to initialize the controller through the SPI communication protocol, and the initialization functions are written in LCD_Driver.cpp.

The function functions related to the screen display are written in LCD_GUI.cpp. The function of each function and the parameters passed are explained in the source code. You can call it directly when you need to use it.

Before using LCD_ShowBMP to display pictures, first copy the pictures in the PIC folder in the data to the root directory of the SD card (you should understand that in the root directory, that is to save the pictures directly to the SD card, do not put them in any subfolders folder.).

Here is an explanation. This demo shows that the BMP picture first reads the picture data in the BMP format in the SD card through the SPI protocol, and then displays the data as an image.

These functions are all written in LCD_Bmp.cpp. In fact, the image data in BMP format with a specific file name is read from the SD card, and then the display function written by us is called to re-express the data as an image.

No matter which platform this method is on, the principle is similar. Interested friends can check the relevant information and study the relevant code carefully.

In fact, you can also use Image2Lcd image modulo software to convert images of different sizes and formats into array data, and then use the functions we wrote to display them.

The data sheets of all control chips are given in the information for your reference. If you want to know more about why the underlying functions are written like this, go to the data sheets and look at them!

Note: The following picture is the connection diagram of the 2.8-inch TFT screen and XNUCLEO-F103RB, but this product is connected in exactly the same way.

The demos are developed based on the HAL library. Download the program, find the STM32 program file directory, and open STM32\XNUCLEO-F103RB\lcd4in-demo\MDK-ARM\ lcd4in-demo.uvprojx.

After running the demo, it displays some characters and patterns at first, then displays four pictures, and finally displays the touch sketchpad function. Actually, three projects in the Arduino platform code are integrated in the main function, we place the three main functions in sequence and place TP_DrawBoard(); in an infinite loop to achieve the above functions.

Before using LCD_ShowBMP to display pictures, copy the pictures in the PIC folder in the data to the root directory of the SD card, and then insert the SD card into the SD card slot on the back of the screen to start the download program verification.

It should be noted here that the SD card should be in the FAT format, and the picture should be 480*320 pixels with 24-bit color depth and BMP format.

In fact, you can also use Image2Lcd image modulo software to convert images of different sizes and formats into array data, and then use the functions we wrote to display them.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

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.

In electronic’s projects, creating an interface between user and system is very important. This interface could be created by displaying useful data, a menu, and ease of access. A beautiful design is also very important.

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.

Size of displays affects your project parameters. Bigger Display is not always better. if you want to display high-resolution images and signs, you should choose a big size display with higher resolution. But it decreases the speed of your processing, needs more space and also needs more current to run.

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.

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 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 used sin(); and cos(); functions to draw Arcs with our desired thickness and displayed number by text printing function. Then we converted an image to hex code and added them to the code and displayed the image by bitmap function. Then we used draw lines function to change the style of the image. Download the .h file and add it to the folder of the Arduino sketch.

In this template, We created a function which accepts numbers as input and displays them as a pie chart. We just use draw arc and filled circle functions.

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 added a converted image and use the arc and print function to create this gauge. Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

while (a < b) { Serial.println(a); j = 80 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i = 80 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); j2 = 50 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i2 = 50 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); tft.drawLine(i2 + 235, j2 + 169, i + 235, j + 169, tft.color565(0, 255, 255)); tft.fillRect(200, 153, 75, 33, 0x0000); tft.setTextSize(3); tft.setTextColor(0xffff); if ((a/20)>99)

while (b < a) { j = 80 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i = 80 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); j2 = 50 * (sin(PI * a / 2000)); i2 = 50 * (cos(PI * a / 2000)); tft.drawLine(i2 + 235, j2 + 169, i + 235, j + 169, tft.color565(0, 0, 0)); tft.fillRect(200, 153, 75, 33, 0x0000); tft.setTextSize(3); tft.setTextColor(0xffff); if ((a/20)>99)

In this template, We display simple images one after each other very fast by bitmap function. So you can make your animation by this trick. Download the .h file and add it to folder of the Arduino sketch.

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

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.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

Hi everyone. So im making a touch screen button for a project using a iLi9488. Everything is working fine so far, the problem is i suck at logic and syntax. So ive successfully managed to get the screen working and got the button on the screen too. I dont know what to do in order to move the image into the desired area of the screen i want(Middle). Currently the button is stuck on the left top corner.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

The 2.8" TFT is a generic display module. It prints data according to the commands it receives. The user has to prepare the data to be printed. It can read data from an sd card, but the user program has to issue the commands for it.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

When most people hear the term “JPEG decoding,” they will usually assume that it’s something really difficult, something that requires lots of processing power and complicated mathematics, something that is impossible – or at least impractical – on relatively cheap and slow 8-bit microcontroller platforms like the Arduino. In this article, we’ll learn how to take JPEG photo using an Arduino-controlled camera, turn the photo into lots and lots of pixels, and to transmit all of them via serial port to our PC – or wherever we like!

Even though what is described above is entirely possible, it is worth mentioning why exactly are we going into all the trouble of decoding a JPEG photo. After all, there’s an SD module listed in the hardware requirements above, and you’d ask “Can we just store the photo on the SD card as aphoto.jpegfile?” Sure, that is actually an important part of the entire process, but try to look at this from a different perspective: What if we want to send that photo somewhere using a slow, somewhat unreliable connection? If we simply chopped up the JPEG photo into packages and send them via a slow connection, we risk that some of them might get corrupted, while others may get lost entirely. When that happens, we most likely won’t be able to restore the original photo from the corrupted data.

However, when we decode the JPEG into bitmap, and then send the actual pixels, we risk nothing. If some of the data gets corrupted or lost during the transmission, we will still have an image, only with the corrupted data somehow discolored, misplaced, or simply missing. Granted, it’s not the same picture we originally started with, but it still carries most of the original information and is still “human-readable”. Now that we knowwhywe’re doing this, let’s take a look athowwe can approach this method.

Before we start decoding JPEG photos, first we have to take the photos. Since our ultimate goal is to take a photo, store it on a SD card and then send it somewhere. Let’s start with a simple setup that will allow us to do this.

Since we need quite a bit of RAM to decode the photos, we’ll be using Arduino Mega. Also, there’s an added bonus in the form of four separate hardware serial ports on Mega, so we can use portSerial1to communicate with the camera, and portSerialto communicate with our PC.

You probably noticed there’s a simple resistor voltage divider on the camera RX line. This is because the logic level of the VC0706 chip is 3.3 V (even though the supply voltage is 5 V), but the logic level of Arduino Mega is 5 V. Here’s a friendly advice: always use at least a voltage divider on the RX line when interfacing 5 V Arduino with 3.3 V modules. It’s much quicker than waiting until a new module arrives. The SD card reader is connected directly by SPI interface.

Now that the hardware is set up, we need to get the code sorted out. Since the library for SD cards is already a part of the standard Arduino IDE installation, we can check the SD card off the list.

Now, the Arduino will take a picture every 10 seconds or so until we run out of space on the SD card. But since the photos are typically around 48 kB, and I’m currently using 2 GB SD card, we have enough space for more than 43,000 photos. It seems reasonable to say that we don’t need that many. But now that we have some photos taken, we can now move on to the fun stuff: turning them from JPEG-compressed hard-to-manage gibberish into a simple array of pixels!

Before we start decoding, let’s take a quick look at how exactly the picture data are stored inside a JPEG file. If you don’t really care about this, please feel free to skip the next three paragraphs. If you actually know a thing or two about graphics and compressions – unlike me – you could also skip this part, as well. The following text is simplified to an extent.

When we talk about storing any sort of picture data, there are two basic approaches: lossless or lossy compression. The difference between the two is clear: when image is encoded using lossless compression, PNG for example, every pixel is exactly the same as when you started at the end of the process. This is great for things like computer graphics, but unfortunately, it comes at a cost of increased file size. On the other hand, with lossy compression like JPEG, we lose some details but the resulting file size is much smaller.

The way this is achieved in JPEG can be somewhat challenging to grasp since it involves a little something called “discrete cosine transformation”, but the main principle is actually pretty simple. First, the picture is converted from RGB color space into YCbCr. We all know RGB color space – it stores colors as values of red (R), green (G) and blue (B). YCbCr is quite different – it uses luminance (Y – basically the original image in grayscale), blue-difference chroma component (Cb – “blueness” of the picture) and red-difference chroma component (Cr – “redness” of the picture).

The way JPEG achieves the reduction in file size is actually closely related to the way human eyes process colors. Take a look at the three pictures of the Y, Cb and Cr components in the above picture. Which one looks more like the original picture? That’s right, the grayscale one! This is because the human eye is much more sensitive to luminance than to the other two components. JPEG compression uses this in a very clever way that allows it to reduce the amount of information in the Cb and Cr components while keeping the original Y component. This leads to a picture that is much smaller than the original file, and because most the compressed information was in the components human eyes aren’t too sensitive towards, you can barely notice the difference of a compressed picture in comparison to an uncompressed one.

Now let’s run a code that does the actual magic of turning JPEG into an array of pixels. Fortunately, there is a library that does exactly that – Bodmer’s JPEGDecoder (available onGitHub) which is based on an excellent picojpeg library by Rich Geldreich (also onGitHub). Even though JPEGDecoder was originally written to display images on TFT display, with a few minor tweaks it will work just fine for us.

Using the library is fairly simple: we give it the JPEG file, and the library will start generating arrays of pixels – so called Minimum Coded Units, or MCUs for short. The MCU is a block of 16 by 8 pixels. The functions in the library will return the color value for each pixel as 16-bit color value. The upper 5 bits are the red value, the middle 6 are green and the lower 5 are blue. Now we can send these values by any sort of communication channel we like. I’m going to use Serial port so that we can easily receive the data later. The following Arduino sketch decodes an image, then sends the 16-bit RGB value for each pixel in the MCU and repeats this for all the MCUs in the image file.

Header packet: This packet starts with the string “$ITHDR” and contains basic information about the image we will be sending: height and width in pixels, number of MCUs pre row and column and finally the original filename. For each image we want to send, we will send one header packet.

Now we have a code that will decode and send picture files, but there’s still one core feature missing: right now, there’s nothing listening for those data at the other end. This means it’s time to start up Processing again!

I covered a little bit of Processing inArduino Hexapod PART 3: REMOTE CONTROL to write an app that allowed us to easily control the hexapod. For a quick refresher: Processing is a Java-based language that is primarily focused on drawing stuff. This makes it perfect for what we need to do, which is displaying pixels! This program does just that.

When you run this program with the Arduino connected, and then press any key on your keyboard, you will (hopefully) see the dull, boring gray background being gradually replaced by the image that was originally stored on the SD card. And since the replacement is done pixel by pixel, the entire process has a sort of old-school, dial-up-modem style of loading the image!

The original image is 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels tall for a total of 307,200 pixels. Each of these pixels is represented by 2-byte color value, that is a total of 614,400 bytes – or 600 kilobytes – to transfer. This leaves us with the final speed of about 10 kB/s. That’s not that terrible for a “protocol” that we just made up on the go, isn’t it? Also, it shows you why image compression is so useful. The original JPEG file was only around 48 kB, while the decoded bitmap takes 600 kB. If we were to transfer the JPEG file, we would be done with it in less than 5 seconds, even when using our extremely simple “protocol.” Of course, we most likely wouldn’t be able to retrieve any data in case the transfer fails – which is something that cannot happen now.

Finally, we have proven what this article started with: processing images on Arduinoispossible and can be even useful in certain situations. We can now snap pictures using a serial camera, decode them, send them over a serial port and then receive them on the other side! Consider this article your short intro into image processing on Arduino.

As usual, there is a lot of things that can be improved. One major addition could be to encrypt our messages using AES, which is fairly easy to implement, even on Arduino. Security is usually dangerously overlooked on Arduino, so we might focus a bit more on that in another project.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

Displaying a custom image or graphic on a LCD display is a very useful task as displays are now a premium way of providing feedback to users on any project. With this functionality, we can build projects that display our own logo, or display images that help users better understand a particular task the project is performing, providing an all-round improved User Experience (UX) for your Arduino or ESP8266 based project. Today’s tutorial will focus on how you can display graphics on most Arduino compatible displays.

The procedure described in this tutorial works with all color displays supported by Adafruit’s GFX library and also works for displays supported by the TFTLCD library from Adafruit with little modification. Some of the displays on which this procedure works include:

While these are the displays we have, and on which this tutorial was tested, we are confident it will work perfectly fine with most of the other Arduino compatible displays.

For each of the displays mentioned above, we have covered in past how to program and connect them to Arduino. You should check those tutorials, as they will give you the necessary background knowledge on how each of these displays works.

For this tutorial, we will use the 2.8″ ILI9325 TFT Display which offers a resolution of 320 x 340 pixels and we will display a bitmap image of a car.

As usual, each of the components listed above can be bought from the links attached to them. While having all of the displays listed above may be useful, you can use just one of them for this tutorial.

To demonstrate how things work, we will use the 2.8″ TFT Display. The 2.8″ TFT display comes as a shield which plugs directly into the Arduino UNO as shown in the image below.

Not all Arduino displays are available as shields, so when working with any of them, connect the display as you would when displaying text (we recommend following the detailed tutorial for the display type you use of the above list). This means no special connection is required to display graphics.

Before an image is displayed on any of the Arduino screens, it needs to be converted to a C compatible hex file and that can only happen when the image is in bitmap form. Thus, our first task is to create a bitmap version of the graphics to be displayed or convert the existing image to a bitmap file. There are several tools that can be used for creation/conversion of bitmap images including, Corel Draw and Paint.net, but for this tutorial, we will use the Paint.net.

Our demo graphics today will be a car. We will create the car on a black background and use a white fill so it’s easy for us to change the color later on.

The resolution of the graphics created should be smaller than the resolution of your display to ensure the graphics fit properly on the display. For this example, the resolution of the display is 320 x 340, thus the resolution of the graphics was set to195 x 146 pixels.

Your graphics could also include some text. Just ensure the background is black and the fill color is white if you plan to change the color within your Arduino code.

With the graphics done, save both files as .bmp with 24bits color.It is important to keep in mind that large bitmaps use up a lot of memory and may prevent your code from running properly so always keep the bitmaps as small as possible.

Image2Code is an easy-to-use, small Java utility to convert images into a byte array that can be used as a bitmap on displays that are compatible with the Adafruit-GFX or Adafruit TFTLCD (with little modification) library.

All we have to do is to load the graphics into the software by clicking the “Choose file” button and it will automatically generate a byte array equivalent to the selected bitmap file.

Paste the bit array in the graphics.c file and save. Since we have two graphics (the car and the text), You can paste their data array in the same file. check the graphics.c file attached to the zip file, under the download section to understand how to do this. Don’t forget to declare the data type as “const unsigned char“, add PROGEM in front of it and include the avr/pgmspace.h header file as shown in the image below. This instructs the code to store the graphics data in the program memory of the Arduino.

With this done, we are now ready to write the code. Do note that this procedure is the same for all kind of displays and all kind of graphics. Convert the graphics to a bitmap file and use the Img2code utility to convert it into a hex file which can then be used in your Arduino code.

To reduce the amount of code, and stress involved in displaying the graphics, we will use two wonderful libraries; The GFX library and the TFTLCD library from Adafruit.

The GFX library, among several other useful functions, has a function called drawBitmap(), which enables the display of a monochrome bitmap image on the display. This function allows the upload of monochrome only (single color) graphics, but this can be overcome by changing the color of the bitmap using some code.

The Adafruit libraries do not support all of the displays but there are several modifications of the libraries on the internet for more displays. If you are unable to find a modified version of the library suitable for your the display, all you need do is copy the code of the drawBitmap() function from the GFX library and paste it in the Arduino sketch for your project such that it becomes a user-defined function.

The first two are thex and y coordinates of a point on the screen where we want the image to be displayed. The next argument is the array in which the bitmap is loaded in our code, in this case, it will be the name of the car and the text array located in the graphics.c file. The next two arguments are the width and height of the bitmap in pixels, in other words, the resolution of the image. The last argument is the color of the bitmap, we can use any color we like. The bitmap data must be located in program memory since Arduino has a limited amount of RAM memory available.

As usual, we start writing the sketch by including the libraries required. For this procedure, we will use the TFTLCD library alone, since we are assuming you are using a display that is not supported by the GFX library.

Next, we specify the name of the graphics to be displayed; car and title. At this stage, you should have added the bit array for these two bitmaps in the graphics.c file and the file should be placed in the same folder as the Arduino sketch.

With that done, we proceed to the void loop function, under the loop function, we call the drawbitmap() function to display the car and the text bitmap using different colors.

The last section of the code is the drawBitmap function itself, as earlier mentioned, to use the drawbitmap() function with the Adafruit TFTLCD library, we need to copy the function’s code and paste into the Arduino sketch.

Plug in your screen as shown above. If you are using any other display, connect it as shown in the corresponding linked tutorial. With the schematics in place, connect the Arduino board to your PC and upload the code. Don’t forget the graphics file needs to be in the same folder as the Arduino sketch.

That’s it for this tutorial guys. The procedure is the same for all kinds of Arduino compatible displays. If you get stuck while trying to replicate this using any other display, feel free to reach out to me via the comment sections below.

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

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.

In the file dialog select the downloaded ZIP file and your library will be installed automatically. This will automatically install the library for you (requires Arduino 1.0.5 or newer). Restarting your Arduino software is recommended as it will make the examples visible in the examples menu.

The easiest way to remedy this is by extracting the GitHub ZIP file. Place the files in a directory with the proper library name (Adafruit_GFX, Adafruit_ST7735 or SD) and zip the folder (Adafruit_GFX, Adafruit_ST7735.zip, SD.zip). Now the Arduino software can read and install the library automatically for you.

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:

The SD-Card needs to be FAT-16 or FAT-32 formatted, single partition, and the BMP file needs to be placed in the root (ie. not in a directory or anything like that).

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)

As you have seen before the Adafruit_GFX library (supported by the Adafruit_ST7735 library) makes this easy for us – More information can be found at the GFX Reference page.

To use this in your Arduino Sketch: The first 2 characters represent RED, the second set of two characters is for GREEN and the last 2 characters represent BLUE. Add ‘0x’ in front of each of these hex values when using them (‘0x’ designates a hexadecimal value).

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).

Based on these functions, I did create a little demo to show what these functions do. Either download the file or just copy the code and paste it into an empty Arduino Sketch.

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. ");

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

This document goes through various features of the current Nextion Editor. The Nextion Editor is used to rapidly create Human Machine Interface GUIs for Nextion HMI devices. As such the GUI can be created within Hours instead of Weeks, and Days instead of Months. So while we won’t be covering basics such as opening a file, we will point out somethings that might prove helpful to know, or reminders need be made.

Note: Nextion Editor has indeed evolved since its early beginnings, so I would like to take a moment for a quick review. As time has passed, many additional features and bug fixes were incorporated. The Nextion Editor is not expected to retain every previous behaviours between versions exactly. With the new, then there are indeed new behaviours and new possibilities.

The pandemic had created global supply shortages and to meet these challenges while keeping with Nextion quality then second source components/ICs were indeed needed. This said, while elder devices only require firmware level code to communicate with primary sources ICs, the newer devices with secondary source ICs (visually identified with QR codes on the microSD slot) indeed require more recent versions of the Nextion Editor (v1.63.3 and later recommended) for the firmware to communicate with the secondary source ICs. As such, newer devices with secondary source ICs can not make use of elder versions of the Nextion Editor (such as v0.38, or LTS) before such firmware level code was incorporated into the Nextion Editor version firmware.

Since 2020, the newer Nextion devices may give a Data Error when trying to attempt loading a *.TFT file that was created with an Editor version prior to version 1.63.3 that does not have the ability to communicate with second source ICs. One would need to compile their project with a version 1.63.3 or later and use that *.TFT file to upload their project to the newer Nextion device.

Now mostly Historical, those original Nextion devices from 2015/2016 with the Itead logo on the PCB may require an intermediary upgrade only if all the Legacy conditions are met (see the Legacy FAQ, v0.42 intermediary TFTs are supplied in FAQ), otherwise when every condition is not met then such an intermediary is not required. Devices that were upgraded to a version of the Nextion Editor v0.29 and later can not return to an earlier version (v0.28 and before). Devices that were upgraded to a version of the Nextion Editor v0.38 and later can not return to an earlier version (v0.37 and before). Enhanced Series models require v0.33 or later, when Enhanced models were introduced. Intelligent Series models require v0.58 or later, when Intelligent models were introduced. Discovery Series models require v1.62.2 and later, when Discovery models were introduced. The Nextion Editor LTS Edition (Long Term Support) can only be used with elder Basic and Enhanced devices without second sources ICs. And of course, any newer devices with the QR code on the microSD card slot requires v1.63.3 or later.

This Editor Guide will refer exclusively to the new and current Nextion Editor. Where an item within the guide may be specific to a particular Nextion series, the following icons will be used to represent the series: For the Basic T Series

* As stated in the Note above, use of Nextion Editor v1.63.3 or later is required for newer Nextion devices with second source ICs, or a Data Error may occur when the *.tft file firmware can not communicate with the second source ICs

* A reasonable sized monitor for the model’s resolution you are designing for is only good sense. When designing for a 320×240 or 240×320 model then a standard monitor size is probably sufficient. However, if one is designing for 1024×600 or 600×1024 resolutions, then it would stand to good reason not to expect best ease from using an 800×600 monitor resolution. For comfort, then it is senseful to use a large enough monitor resolution so that your design canvas, tool panes, menus, and event panes fit for your designing comfort. And in the reverse, a large enough screen for for your development comfort when designing for the smallest of Nextion devices. It is not appropriate to blame the Editor software for your too small monitor when you really know you need more screen real estate.

* As such, quickly creating an HMI GUI for Nextion does not demand extreme skills – but basic programming skill are expected. When programming logic Nextion side, then users should have a foundation in programming.

* Uploading your completed Nextion HMI project can be accomplished either by microSD card or over TTL Serial. As there are dozens of manufactures for each of these, it is the user’s domain and duty to know their device installation, configuration and operation.

The latest version of the Nextion Editor can be downloaded from [here]. Earlier versions of the Nextion Editor can be downloaded from the Nextion Editors and Change Logs thread in the Announcement Forum (Register for the forum, confirm and then Login to use).

There are typically two versions of the nextion-setup available for download.1) The EXE version is installed through the Windows MSI for a more automated installation. Only one version of the Nextion Editor may be registered at a time via the EXE version. When updating within the Nextion Editor, Auto Update will install the EXE version

2) The ZIP version can be unzipped into a user chosen folder and run directly from that folder. For maintaining multiple versions of the Nextion Editor, the ZIP version is recommended. When updating within the Nextion Editor, Manual Update will launch your web browser to the download page so you may download the ZIP version

Other settings in the Nextion Editor can be configured in Configuration under the Settings menu. The default font of the Nextion Editor can now be changed to suit your taste. The default timeout of 100ms for the Debug Simulator can be adjusted from 20ms to 5000ms. Code hints, highlighting, description, tooltips and auto-complete can be set individually for the Editor and the Debug Simulator. Default path for eeprom and sd files can be customized to suit your taste. When needed, you can reset these settings by selecting the Reset layout under the Settings menu.

In the Display Tab of the Nextion Editor on starting the Editor, there is a section for listing the most Recent Projects. The number of recent projects tracked is by default 10, and can be increased. Right-clicking a project allows you to select from the following:* Open the file: if the project file exists, then opens in the Editor

The Title Bar contains the path and filename of the HMI project file when an HMI project is loaded. When an HMI project is not currently loaded, you can:* Open an existing HMI file using the Open toolbar button.

Clear Recent Projects used to clear the Project filenames in the Recent projects pane has been removed and is now accomplished in the Recent projects pane with context click and selecting Delete all records, or by managing the recent projects with more selectiveness.

With the new TFT File Output, users can select where the TFT file should be placed (which folder, sd card drive, other). A valid HMI without compile errors is required to generate a valid TFT output file. The option to open the output folder location in Windows Explorer can be made by clicking only open the output folder link. The old folder location C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Nextion Editor\bianyi will still contain previously compiled TFTs from elder Editor versions, and only if this is used as the TFT File Output location, will the new TFT for the current project be added to that folder.

The Virtual EEPROM Folder located C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Nextion Editor\eeprom contains the eeprom.bin for the Enhanced/Intelligent series models. The default folder can be customized in Settings > Configuration.

The Virtual SD Card Folder located C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Nextion Editor\sdcard0 allows users of the Intelligent series models to copy project files here that will eventually be on their Nextion microSD card, allowing users to test their project in the Debug Simulator. The default folder can be customized in Settings > Configuration.

In the Configuration menuitem, the user can choose for the Nextion Editor and the Debug Simulator if code should be highlighted or not, if Auto-Complete should be on, if the descriptions for instruction parameters should be on or not, if the tooltips should be shown when the mouse is over the toolbar buttons.

For serial data in the Debug Simulator, the timeout can be adjusted from its 100ms default value to a user selected value within the range from 20ms to 5 seconds.

For the new Intelligent Series, the user can choose if there should be a 3 second delay at screen edge before allowing the component position to escape to the outside of the canvas area. This is useful to be on, especially in the Basic, Discovery and Enhanced models as out of bounds positioning is not permitted and will cause the project to not compile.

For the eeprom/sd folder, the user can choose to use the default path, or can set their own custom path that is more suited to their system and workflow.

Finally, the default Font used for the Nextion Editor can be changed to suit the users taste. Currently, this default font effects both Editor wide as well as the Event code font. Resetting the font to the default Microsoft Sans Serif will return the Editor to its normal traditionally used font.

Selecting About Nextion Editor menuitem in the About menu will show the about box with the version of the Nextion Editor. Clicking the link will take you to the Nextion website where you can access the forums and other documentation.

Selecting Check for new version menuitem in the About Menu will show the Update dialog when a new version is available (see Downloading the Nextion Editor at the beginning of this Guide), or a dialog informing that you have the most recent version.

Pay attention to any warnings as these will mean your project may not run as you expect. Pay attention to any error messages as they will need to be corrected before continuing. Error messages are descriptive, and if it is a code error then the user can click to jump directly to the coding error location.

A TFT file is no longer built and placed in the bianyi folder on Compile. To generate a TFT file, one has to use the TFT file output menuitem located under the File menu

If a project is not currently loaded in the Nextion Editor, Debug will open a dialog to open a compiled *.TFT file directly. This is handy for loading demos or sharing ideas without surrendering your original source code. Although the Debug Simulator can run a *.TFT file from any Nextion Series or model supported by the version of the Nextion Editor, it is important that the same version of Nextion Editor and *.TFT file is used to successfully simulate. (ie: an older v0.36 project TFT file can not be used with the current version of the Nextion Editor.)

Selecting Upload will launch an Open dialog to select a *.TFT file before the Upload to Nextion Device dialog. Ensure the Nextion is connected via serial (typically via USB to TTL adapter) before upload or the Port may not be available to select. Auto search feature will look for your Nextion’s reply to the connect instruction, but realize that data is being sent on all serial ports that are searched (and may interfere with the other connected serial devices). A better choice is to select the correct Port and Baud Rate. Proper configuration of Serial adapters, Windows drivers, device conflicts, etc is beyond the scope of Nextion support and remains the domain of user responsibility to know their used Operating System and devices.

Once Nextion has responded to the connect instruction, the upload process will begin. Do not interrupt this process until completed. If the process has been interrupted, resetting the serial port may be required. When a partial *.TFT file has been uploaded and uploading over serial is no longer an option, then the user will need to upload via the microSD method. Refer to Section 4 of this guide.

For Renumbering components: Bring Top (Arrow Up) will take the selected component(s) and renumber to the highest .id on the page. Bring Bottom (Arrow Down) will take the selected component(s) and renumber to the lowest .id starting at 1 (page component is always 0) on the page.

For Aligning components: Align Left, Align Right, Align Top and Align Bottom will take a group of selected components (green ID labels) and bring the alignment to match the component with the blue ID label.

For Resizing components: Same Width, Same Height and Same Size will take a group of selected components (green ID labels) and set the size (width, height or both) to match the component with the blue ID label.

For Spacing components: Make horizontal spacing equal, Increase horizontal spacing, and Decrease horizontal spacing will take a group of selected components (green ID labels) and adjust the horizontal spacing between components using the component with the blue ID label as the baseline component. Likewise: Make vertical spacing equal, Increase vertical spacing, and Decrease vertical spacing will take a group of selected components (green ID labels) and adjust the vertical spacing between components using the component with the blue ID label as the baseline component.

The steps to configure your HMI project for your Nextion Series and Model are usually done at the time of creating a New project. When you need to make changes, Device will launch the following window with the Device tab selected. First select the Nextion Series: T for the Basic models, K for the Enhanced models, and P for the Intelligent models. Then select your Nextion Model. For example: the Multi-touch Capacitive Nextion NX8048K070_011C, Select K for the Enhanced series and then the select the NX8048K070_011 Nextion Model.

Selecting the DISPLAY tab, the user can select the orientation and the Character Encoding. 0° is the native viewing angle for the selected model. Users can choose alternative orientations (90°, 180° or 270°) but this will not be the native viewing angle.

Character Encoding is default iso-8859-1. Select from the character encodings that make sense for your HMI project to best display your local character sets. There are a selection of single byte and double byte character sets available.

Note: While the Nextion Editor HMI project can only have one base character encoding. This does not prevent the inclusion of different encoded fonts within your HMI project. Building on the above explanation, when your MCU sends a byte 0xFF to the Nextion device, the component .font attribute is responsible for which Font resource the byte 0xFF is rendered in (provided the chosen font resource has a glyph to render and is not undefined).

If you desire to password protect your entire HMI project, selecting the project tab will bring up the Open Password Setting button. If an existing password exists, it will need be entered before a new password can be set. When a Password is lost, it is not retrievable. Fair warning is given: DO NOT LOSE YOUR PASSWORD. There is no recovery! A project with a lost password would need to be rebuilt! So, do not lose – or – do not use.

One-time update option will rename the *.tft file on your microSD card to a different extension after successful upload. You can now also now choose to ignore your pictures (image resources) and fonts (library resources) at compile time. While this is a small time saving step, it is recommended to turn these off when you are ready to create your final project compiled TFT.

Selecting ID to will toggle if the component .objnames are displayed in the upper left region of the component space. Yellow labelled components have a .vscope local, while black labelled components have a .vscope of global. (Hint: Event code is never global). When selecting multiple components, green labelled components indicate multiple components have been selected, while the one blue labelled component will be used as the baseline component. To change the baseline component while the group is still active selected, simply click on the already selected component you want to become the baseline component.

New to the Nextion Editor is the ability to Zoom the design canvas both in and out. Users can zoom from 20% to 600% using the slider, or increment steps using the + and – buttons on the ends of the slider. The value of the zoom is shown in percentage to the right of the Canvas Zoom. Clicking on the percentage zoomed allows you to reset the zoom back to an unzoomed 100% state. Note: Component dragging-by-edge (indicated by double ended arrow pointer) to move or resize components whether intended or accidental can cause an undesired snap-to effect in size and/or position where zoom is not at 100%. Calculation for the placement of component or edge must be to whole numbers and as such drag ending on partial-pixels can indeed effect component size, position or both. In the event of undesired results, use the Undo (ctrl+z) to revert back to your previous unaltered state. Version v1.65.0 maintains edge-dragging to resize, a drag movement will not resize the component.

Selecting the C on the toolbar will open the Program.s tab in the Design Canvas area. To return to the Design Canvas, click the Display Tab. The Project Start Up code section is a newly introduced concept allowing for users to define and initialize additional int globals (such as sys0=0). At the moment only int 32 bit signed integers are supported. Additionally project start up code can be added in this section to be run before the HMI runs using Nextion Instructions.

Note: Nextion Preamble 0x00 0x00 0x00 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF NIS 7.19 and Nextion Ready 0x88 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF NIS 7.29 have been moved from firmware start notifications into Program.s as a printh instruction. Users can now choose to keep these notifications or discard by removing this printh line. Default values for dim, baud and recmod also prepopulate in Program.s as this is the recommended location for setting these variables (historically was recommended in Page Preinitialize Event before Program.s existed). Also important to note that once a page instruction or system variable dp assignment has been given the HMI will change to the desired page and will not return to Program.s to run instructions beyond the page change instruction.

Every HMI project needs to have at least one Page. Pages can be created and imported into your HMI project through the Page Pane. A Page is created with Add, deleted with Delete, and copied with Copy. Insert will create a new page before the highlighted page. Use the Move Up and Move Down to renumber the page number within the Page Pane. Using Delete all (Trash) will delete all pages within the project.

The page Lock and Unlock functions are only accessed by right clicking the highlighted page name and selecting Lock or Unlock. If the page has been locked with a password, the password must be entered to access the components and event code. There is no password recovery should the password becomes lost, so don’t use or don’t use. As an example, the keyboard pages are imported as locked, but do not use passwords (the keyboard pages are also a good coding example to review). When keyboard pages are imported by the Nextion Editor component .key attribute, reset system page option is included in the context menu, which is used to reload the keyboard page and proper orientation in the cases where the keyboard page may have been edited or display orientation options may have changed.

Pages can be exported from one project to another project with Export page. This is the preferred way to share components and partial projects. Page files *.page can not be compiled on their own. If you want to export a page as locked or locked with a password, this must done before exporting.

To import a page, use Import page. Imported pages can be used independent if they are locked with a password, locked without a password, or unlocked. Locking is to protect the code. So as long as proper documentation about the page variables and functions accompanies the *.page file, an end user can use even a locked page. When a page is imported with naming conflicts, the affected conflicting names will be renamed. It is therefore relevant to perhaps select meaningful names. To import a copy of one of the keyboard pages, one can either import the *.page file directly or use the .key attribute of a Text, Scrolling Text, xFloat or Number component.

A Page component can have a background of either : Solid color, image background, or no background. An image background should use a fill screen image to avoid calling non-existent data. No background will show the current page components over top the last unloaded page, this must be used with caution. No background on a no background, on a no background soon causes unwanted side effects. There is a hard limit of 250 components allowed per page, and theoretically up to 254 pages per project (likely resources will be depleted before any page254 is reached).

Nextion Editor now has four different built-in-keyboards that can be added to a project. This allows for Text, Scrolling Text, Xfloat and Number component .txt and .val to be changed using a built in keyboard by the device user at runtime. In order to add a built-in-keyboard to your project, the component must first be set to .vscope global, second the .key attribute needs to select your desired keyboard. Selecting one of the keyboards will add the keyboard page to your project. Choices are full qwerty style (keybdA), numeric keyboard (keybdB), speed dial style (keybdC), and Chinese Input (Pinyin) style (keybdAP). The associated keyboard will load an appropriate font if not already included in the project and the keyboard page for the model size and orientation. Should you choose to change model size or orientation, use the context-menu (right click) for the keyboard page and select Reset System Page to reload.

The Page component not listed above is always created when the new Page is added to the Page pane. The page component will always have an .id of 0 and is always the bottommost layer. New page effects and swipe-to-change-page capabilities are added for the Intelligent series. There is a hard limit of 250 components allowed per page.

NOTE: with many more customizable attributes for the Intelligent Series components, it is wise to click the attribute in the Attribute Pane (see Section 2.6) for a full attribute description. ie: Intelligent Series Gauge .vvs2 attribute now controls the foot length of the gauge needle (attribute not available for the Basic, Discovery or Enhanced Series).

The Text component is a highly customizable component. The Text component has the .pw attribute for masking (Character is off, Password will mask with asterisk) and the .key attribute for integrating one of the included example keyboards (must be set to .vscope global before use).

The Scrolling text component combines an integrated timer component with a text component. The .pw option is not available with this component. The .key attribute allows for integrating one of the included example keyboards (must be set to .vscope global before use). There is a hard limit of 12 timer components per page within your project.

The Number component is used for signed 32-bit integer values. The .lenth (as spelled) sets the number of digits shown (useful for leading zeros). The .format attribute allows for a choice of integer, currency (comma separated every three digits, not float values), or hexadecimal. Input should be in integer or hexadecimal. The .key attribute allows for integrating one of the included example keyboards (must be set to .vscope global before use).

The Xfloat component is used for signed 32-bit integer values. The .vvs0 sets the number of digits shown to the left of the decimal (useful for leading zeros). The .vvs1 sets the number of digits shown to the right of the decimal. The .ke

prepare png file for arduino tft display brands

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