adafruit tft lcd datasheet quotation

Hi guys, welcome to today’s tutorial. Today, we will look on how to use the 1.8″ ST7735  colored TFT display with Arduino. The past few tutorials have been focused on how to use the Nokia 5110 LCD display extensively but there will be a time when we will need to use a colored display or something bigger with additional features, that’s where the 1.8″ ST7735 TFT display comes in.

The ST7735 TFT display is a 1.8″ display with a resolution of 128×160 pixels and can display a wide range of colors ( full 18-bit color, 262,144 shades!). The display uses the SPI protocol for communication and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer which means it can be used with all kinds of microcontroller and you only need 4 i/o pins. To complement the display, it also comes with an SD card slot on which colored bitmaps can be loaded and easily displayed on the screen.

Due to variation in display pin out from different manufacturers and for clarity, the pin connection between the Arduino and the TFT display is mapped out below:

We will use two libraries from Adafruit to help us easily communicate with the LCD. The libraries include the Adafruit GFX library which can be downloaded here and the Adafruit ST7735 Library which can be downloaded here.

We will use two example sketches to demonstrate the use of the ST7735 TFT display. The first example is the lightweight TFT Display text example sketch from the Adafruit TFT examples. It can be accessed by going to examples -> TFT -> Arduino -> TFTDisplaytext. This example displays the analog value of pin A0 on the display. It is one of the easiest examples that can be used to demonstrate the ability of this display.

The second example is the graphics test example from the more capable and heavier Adafruit ST7735 Arduino library. I will explain this particular example as it features the use of the display for diverse purposes including the display of text and “animated” graphics. With the Adafruit ST7735 library installed, this example can be accessed by going to examples -> Adafruit ST7735 library -> graphics test.

The first thing, as usual, is to include the libraries to be used after which we declare the pins on the Arduino to which our LCD pins are connected to. We also make a slight change to the code setting reset pin as pin 8 and DC pin as pin 9 to match our schematics.

Next, we create an object of the library with the pins to which the LCD is connected on the Arduino as parameters. There are two options for this, feel free to choose the most preferred.

adafruit tft lcd datasheet quotation

DescriptionAdafruit 1.14" Color TFT Display w/ MicroSD Card Breakout features a 1.14" diagonal length display that is packed with RGB pixels for building very small high-density displays. This breakout board offers a 4-wire SPI interface for communication and its own pixel-addressable frame buffer. This allows the board to be used with a wide range of microcontrollers or microcomputers. The breakout board features the ST7789 TFT driver, ultra-low-dropout 3.3V regulator, and a 3V/5V level shifter. The level shifter makes sure that the breakout board can be used with 3.3V or 5V power and logic. This breakout board consists of a microSD card holder that helps in loading full-color bitmaps from a FAT16/FAT32 formatted microSD card. The breakout board is RoHS2 compliant and is available in 32mm x 27.8mm x 5.7mm dimensions.

adafruit tft lcd datasheet quotation

With four bright white LED backlight and 240 x 320 pixels with individual RGB pixel control, this colour 2.4in. TFT display features a resistive touchscreen for fingertip detection across the entire screen surface. The workload is lifted from the microcontroller by a built-in controller equipped with RAM buffering, and the display board has two modes: 8-bit and SPI.

adafruit tft lcd datasheet quotation

The Adafruit 2.8in. TFT LCD Touchscreen Display brings QVGA graphics to your next project using only 5 x SPI pins or 12 x GPIO pins if you can spare them. The screen is bright with a 4-LED backlight and can display 18-bits of colour (262,000 colours). There"s a display controller built in so your microcontroller doesn"t need to get involved in refreshing the screen, it just has to write the pixels once then it can move on to other tasks. SPI mode uses less pins but is slower while 8-bit mode uses more pins and is faster, the choice is up to you. Adafruit have software and tutorials to support you whichever mode you decide to use, see the links below. The board also has a micro-SD card socket that you can use to store files and images.

Visit https://learn.adafruit.com where Adafruit provide a free tutorial for the Raspberry Pi, and another tutorial for the Arduino. They also have an open source library to drive the display in 8-bit mode, and another to use SPI mode. Please note that while the screen is capable of 18-bit colour, the Adafruit code uses 16-bits for efficiency. It"s highly unlikely that you"ll ever notice any difference.

adafruit tft lcd datasheet quotation

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (2.8" diagonal) bright (4 white-LED backlight) and colorful (18-bit 262,000 different shades)! 240x320 pixels with individual pixel control. It has way more resolution than a black and white 128x64 display. As a bonus, this display has a resistive touchscreen attached to it already, so you can detect finger presses anywhere on the screen.

adafruit tft lcd datasheet quotation

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (7" diagonal) bright (14 white-LED backlight) and colorfu 800x480 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a optional resistive touch panel with controller XPT2046 attached by default.

Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!" - we"ve written a full open source graphics library at the bottom of this page that can draw pixels, lines, rectangles, circles and text. We also have a touch screen library that detects x,y and z (pressure) and example code to demonstrate all of it. The code is written for Arduino but can be easily ported to your favorite microcontroller!