spi tft lcd display st7735 128x128 free sample

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.

The schematics for this project is fairly easy as the only thing we will be connecting to the Arduino is the display. Connect the display to the Arduino as shown in the schematics below.

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.

Next, we move to the void setup function where we initialize the screen and call different test functions to display certain texts or images.  These functions can be edited to display what you want based on your project needs.

testdrawtext("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. ", ST7735_WHITE);

Uploading the code to the Arduino board brings a flash of different shapes and text with different colors on the display. I captured one and its shown in the image below.

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

ER-TFTM1.44-2 is 128x128 pixel 1.44 inch color tft lcd display panel with ST7735S controller and breakout board,superior display quality,wide viewing angle,super 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"s 4-wire serial spi interface with pin header connection.It"s 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,medical and hand-held device.

I just purchased a few of these displays through Amazon.com. I initially had quite a few problems with this display since I was using MakerFocus instructions to use the code from the YouTube link on the product page. I finally realized that the included libs were outdated and buggy so I deleted them and got the libs used fresh from github. Here is my code that works fine with this display (link included in the code). This is only a text example with a Joystick, I"ve added code comments as if I am explaining the whole process to the best of my ability.

EDIT: I found a great graphics library for this display on Instructables the library download link is here. You need to modify one line 21 with your pinouts, I am using the same pinout as my code here. If you have it connected the same as my code, the line should read:

// Adafruit_ST7735 tft = Adafruit_ST7735(TFT_CS, TFT_DC, TFT_MOSI, TFT_SCLK, TFT_RST); // must use this line if you want software SPI and define CLK and MOSI above

This is a graphics library for the family of small colour TFT displays based on the ST7735 and ST7789 driver chips. These are really nice displays; bright, colourful, available in a variety of useful sizes, and available at low cost from suppliers like Adafruit, AliExpress, or Banggood:

This library allows you to plot points, draw lines, draw filled rectangles, and plot text with an optional scale factor. I"ve included a demo histogram-plotting program that adjusts itself to fit each of the displays I"ve supported.

Unlike most other TFT display libraries this one doesn"t require a memory buffer, allowing it to be run on any processor down to an ATtiny85. The displays are SPI and require four pins to drive the display, leaving one pin free on an ATtiny85 to interface to another device, such as a temperature sensor. If you need more pins choose a larger chip, such as the ATtiny84; see Using the library with other AVR chips at the end of the article for information about how to convert the code for different chips.

I"ve published a library for a colour OLED display in a previous article: Colour Graphics Library. The main difference between the colour TFT displays and the colour OLED displays is that the TFT displays are not self-illuminating, and so need a backlight; they therefore have a slightly higher power consumption. However, they are exceedingly cheap, and they are available in larger sizes than the colour OLED displays.

This library will work with displays based on the ST7735 which supports a maximum display size of 132 (H) x 162 (V), or the similar ST7789 which supports a maximum display size of 240 (H) x 320 (V).

The display driver interfaces to the displays with the longer side as the vertical dimension, which is why the rectangular displays are usually listed with the longer dimension second. My library allows you to rotate the image for any desired orientation.

All the Adafruit breakout boards for these displays include level-shifting circuitry, so they will work with either 5V or 3.3V microcontroller boards. They also include an SD card socket, if that"s of interest to you. The Adafruit boards have pullups on the backlight and reset pins, so the display will work if you leave these pins unconnected.

The pullup resistor from the display"s CS pin is optional; it holds the chip select high to prevent the display from being affected by the ISP signals while programming the ATtiny85.

The different displays are catered for by six constants which specify the size of the display, the offsets relative to the area supported by the display driver, whether the display is inverted, and the rotation value; for example:

Note that on some displays you may also have to change the xoff or yoff value when rotating the display. For example, to rotate the image on the 240x240 displays by 180° use the settings:

To check or adjust the values for each display I ran this program, which draws a one-pixel border around the display area, and plots an "F" to show the orientation:

The ATtiny85 and other AVR processors supports toggling of one or more bits in a port, so provided you set all the pins to their disabled state at startup, for speed the display access routines can simply toggle the appropriate pins to enable or disable them.

The InitDisplay() routine first defines the four display pins as outputs, and takes the SCK, DC, and CS pins high (inactive). It then sends the essential configuration commands to the display.

Most published ST7735 libraries have a long list of initialisation parameters, but I found that most of these aren"t necessary, as the default settings work fine, and I"ve whittled the list down to just five commands:

The display memory stores 18 bits per pixel: 6 bits per colour. However, you can write to the display in three alternative modes, with 12, 16, or 18 bits per pixel. I chose the 16 bit mode, which assigns 5 bits to red, 6 bits to green, and 5 bits blue. It"s the most convenient one to work with as you simply send two bytes to define the colour of each pixel.

To clear the display the ClearDisplay() routine sends the appropriate number of zero bytes. The routine temporarily switches to 12-bit colour mode, which reduces the time to clear the display by 25%:

The library includes basic graphics routines for plotting points and drawing lines. These work on a conventional coordinate system with the origin at lower left. For example, on the 80x160 display:

My first version of PlotChar() plotted characters by calling PlotPoint() for each pixel. However, I then tried the following alternative approach which defines an area of the display using the CASET (Column Address Set) and RASET (Row Address Set) commands, and then sends a stream of the appropriate bytes to define the character. This turned out to be over three times faster!

14th January 2020: Tested the program with the Adafruit 1.3" 240x240 TFT display, and updated the program to correct a problem when rotating the image on that display.

I wanted to try these ST7735 inexpensive displays that can be found all over the internet, so I ordered a couple for a few euros each. My quick research showed that a number of libraries support them and it turns out that you can display anything you want. Of course, we are not talking about playing modern games on it or watching 4k videos. These are just simple displays that can be really helpful to any project.

And here is how the TFT looks. As you see it also has a port for an SD card if you want to use e.g. for reading images from it. In my case, I didn’t connect it.

Once you have the connections ready next step is to install the TFT library in your Arduino IDE. Go to Tools – > Manage Libraries and then search for TFT_eSPI and click install. Alternatively, crab the lib from here.

After this, you can pick any of the examples from the library to upload to your ESP32 microcontroller. Some of them are really nice. For testing, I connected a DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor and I displayed the readings in the ST7735. Sweet!

Add some dazzle to your project with this 1.45" diagonal graphic TFT display module. This small display packs 128x128 full-color pixels into one square inch of active display area. It is a great choice when you need color and sharp detail while using minimal front panel space. At less than 5 grams, the display adds very little weight to handheld devices.

Thanks to the integrated Sitronix ST7735S or compatible controller, a single 3.3v source powers everything. The SPI host interface allows full read and write control of the display while using only 10 pins. The single bright white LED backlight has anode (A,+) and cathode (K, -) pins brought out on the Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) tail. To connect, all you need is a standard 10-conductor, 0.5 mm ZIF socket such as Omron Electronics

While the SPI interface requires only a few lines to control this TFT LCD module, it is still possible to transfer data at a rate that supports 20 FPS (Frames Per Second) screen updates -- fast enough to play a full-motion video as shown in our videos.

To get started, download the datasheet and SPI sample code. And of course Crystalfontz is always here to help you when you integrate this display into your application.

Add some dazzle to your project with this 1.45" diagonal graphic TFT LCD display module. You"ll often see this display advertised as a 1.44" Color TFT but we rounded up instead. This small display packs 128x128 full-color pixels into one square inch of active display area. It is a great choice when you need color and sharp detail while using minimal front panel space. At less than 5 grams, the display adds very little weight to handheld or wearable devices.

Thanks to the integrated Sitronix ST7735S or compatible controller, a single 3.3v source powers everything. The SPI host interface allows full read and write control of the display while using only 10 pins. The single bright white LED backlight has anode (A,+) and cathode (K, -) pins brought out on the Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) tail. To connect, all you need is a single standard 10-conductor, 0.5 mm SMT ZIF connector.

While the SPI interface requires only a few lines to control this TFT LCD module, it is still possible to transfer data at a rate that supports 20 FPS (Frames Per Second) screen updates -- fast enough to play a full motion video.

To get started, download the datasheet and SPI sample code. And of course, Crystalfontz is always here to help you when you integrate this display into your application.

This new library is a standalone library that contains the TFT driver as well as the graphics functions and fonts that were in the GFX library. This library has significant performance improvements when used with an UNO (or ATmega328 based Arduino) and MEGA.

Examples are included with the library, including graphics test programs. The example sketch TFT_Rainbow_one shows different ways of using the font support functions. This library now supports the "print" library so the formatting features of the "print" library can be used, for example to print to the TFT in Hexadecimal, for example:

To use the F_AS_T performance option the ILI9341 based display must be connected to an MEGA as follows:MEGA +5V to display pin 1 (VCC) and pin 8 (LED) UNO 0V (GND) to display pin 2 (GND)

In the library Font 0 (GLCD font), 2, 4, 6 and 8 are enabled. Edit the Load_fonts.h file within the library folder to enable/disable fonts to save space.

TFT_ILI9341 library updated on 1st July 2015 to version 12, this latest version is attached here to step 8:Minor bug when rendering letter "T" in font 4 without background fixed

This lovely little display breakout is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display on to your project. Since the display size is 1.44-inch and since TFT display has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used with every kind of microcontroller. Even a very small one with low memory and few pins available!

In the below example, Node32-Lite and this 1.44-inch LCD. Please refer to the tutorial here: ST7735S interfacing with ESP32 to make the connections, Arduino library installation, and modification needed for it to works on this LCD.

This Color TFT LCD display has 128 x 128 resolution and 262 color, it uses SPI interface to communicate with controller such Arduino, it is the best upgrading of the Nokia5110.