raspberry pi gpio lcd screen quotation

There are two ways of connecting a display to a Raspberry Pi - via the HDMI port or the GPIO pins/DSI cable. Depending on your project you may want to go one way or the other, to free up those valuable GPIO pins or have something compact and cable-free.

This section contains all of our GPIO and DSI connected Raspberry Pi displays. Almost every display here is connected via your Raspberry Pi GPIO pins, which usually means they"re more compact and remove the need to use an HDMI cable - which can keep your project nice and tidy when fitting into an enclosure or similar.

GPIO-connected Raspberry Pi displays aren"t always small either, we have GPIO/DSI screens ranging from ~2" up to ~7", giving you more choice and flexibility for your project.

I got a 7" LCD from Wavefront that comes with an small junction board, an FPC cable and a "RGB LCD HAT" card (pic attached). I know the 50-pin cable is something called a "reverse" or "flipped" FPC cable (meaning that the ends of the cable are flipped...not blue/blue-bare/bare but blue/bare-bare-blue).

I would like to find out if there are other 7" LCDs compatible with this setup and if there is a place to obtain the junction board/cable/RGB LCD HAT" combo if subsequent screens I get do not come with these (or uses that separate complete board that seems so popular that needs it"s own power and outputs HDMI to the the Pi via its HDMI connector).

I have scoured the Internet and can"t find much info. I"m hoping someone here has already traveled this path and can give me some bread crumbs. Thanks!

The Gert doesn"t really look much like the RGB LCD HAT image that I posted. My HAT uses a 40-pin GPIO ribbon cable for connecting to the LCD, not a VGA connector. About the only thing the Gert and the HAT have in common is the GPIO connector. I"ve attached another picture showing the opposite side (top) of the RGB LCD HAT.

I guess what my real question is--is there a way to tell from specs which LCD displays are compatible with the RGB LCD HAT as shown in my original post?

You need to work out the pinout of the FPC connector on that Waveshare board. The Gert VGA and your RGB LCD HAT are both using https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... /README.md The sync, clock and enable GPIOs are fixed but you can select different colour depth settings which varies the number and arrangement of GPIO connections. The Gert VGA adapter has a simple resistor ladder DAC whilst your board is a passive wiring adapter that passes each line through.

The HDMI controller boards for bare LCD panels are available on eBay. You need to select your panel first and then search for the controller as the controller must state it is compatible with your chosen panel. They need to program it for your panel and supply the correct wiring harness.

Just FYI, I have attached the schematic for the RGB LCD HAT, but I think your suggestion is probably the best one--settle on a display and then find an adapter based on the display model number.

basically any lcd that matches the fpc pinout that the driver can support should work, as this board drives the panels directly instead of using resistors to generate an analog vga signal

The Gert doesn"t really look much like the RGB LCD HAT image that I posted. My HAT uses a 40-pin GPIO ribbon cable for connecting to the LCD, not a VGA connector. About the only thing the Gert and the HAT have in common is the GPIO connector. I"ve attached another picture showing the opposite side (top) of the RGB LCD HAT.

I guess what my real question is--is there a way to tell from specs which LCD displays are compatible with the RGB LCD HAT as shown in my original post?Raspberry-Pi-RGB-LCD-driver-board-DPI-driver-5-inch-7-inch-10-1-inch.jpg

When you say "driver" I guess I"m thinking of drivers in the traditional sense. And the RGB LCD HAT scenario doesn"t have a "driver," per se. The instructions indicate modding the config.txt file to add:

Edit: BTW, the RGB LCD HAT attaches to the GPIO (40 pins) and the cable coming off the RGB LCD HAT going to the LCD is 50 pin. Apparently, the RGB LCD HAT is doing some sort of 40-to-50 conversion.

When you say "driver" I guess I"m thinking of drivers in the traditional sense. And the RGB LCD HAT scenario doesn"t have a "driver," per se. The instructions indicate modding the config.txt file to add:

Edit: BTW, the RGB LCD HAT attaches to the GPIO (40 pins) and the cable coming off the RGB LCD HAT going to the LCD is 50 pin. Apparently, the RGB LCD HAT is doing some sort of 40-to-50 conversion.

Yes, sorry...I did mean Waveshare. The screen in your pic is the one I have. But I am caught between two scenarios. My design is dependent upon using the RGB LCD HAT interface, but I can find a lot of these screens for less than Waveshare wants for theirs, but those screens use a separate interface card (requiring its own 5V power supply) and goofy HDMI-to-HDMI short cable. The Waveshare implementation is much cleaner, IMHO.

So the issue I am facing, and the reason for my post, is that I need to find a way to qualify (pre-purchase) one or more of these other screens and use them with the RGB LCD HAT interface. I would just junk-bin the interface board and 5-button adjustment board and use the RGB LCD HAT interface instead. Of course, as some point I"ll see if I can get a deal for just the screen, which should be even cheaper without the additional boards.

I did buy my 1st such 7" LCD display for summer vacation last year and used it heavily for three weeks, then on and off until again heavily during this summer vacation. Unfortunately the display stopped working after two weeks.

That $34.99 price is probably about right. I just grabbed the full setup on eBay for $37.39. That hat, cable and cable I/F board can"t cost more than a couple of dollars. I"d still be curious (and will try to drill down) about who the first-level manufacturer is. If Waveshare is selling the screen for $35, that means they are probably paying $25 for them. That"s the price I want because I am going to be using a lot of these.

Inky wHAT is a 400x300 pixel electronic paper (ePaper / eInk / EPD) display for Raspberry Pi, a larger version of our popular Inky pHAT display, with more than 5x the number of pixels, and available in three colour schemes - red/black/white,...

A high-resolution 8", IPS, 1024x768, HDMI display, with Pimoroni-made display driver board and keypad, that"s perfect for building into projects like arcade cabinets, or just use it as a handy display for your Raspberry Pi!

Build a full-featured media center capable of playing nearly all of your digital media using any 40 pin Raspberry Pi and the Media Center HAT Raspberry Pi touchscreen display. Native support in...

Inky wHAT is a 400x300 pixel electronic paper (ePaper / eInk / EPD) display for Raspberry Pi, a larger version of our popular Inky pHAT display, with more than 5x the number of pixels - red/black/white version.

If you"re looking for the most compact li"l color display for a Raspberry Pi B+, Pi 2, & Pi 3 (most likely a Pi Zero) project, this might be just the thing you need!

In honour of Raspberry Pi"s 10th birthday, we"ve fused a RP2040 microcontroller with an EPD display to make a stylishly monochrome, maker friendly, e-paper badge(r)...

Pico Inky Pack features the speedy 2.9" e-paper display that you can find on Badger 2040, coupled with three handy buttons for interfacing. Equip it to the back of your...

John Jay based in Georgia, USA, is a retired engineer who designed some boards for the Raspberry Pi to help his partner learn Raspberry Pi. Although at first, it was a small act just for his friends, with the growing number of people in the open-source community participating, more and more people find that these packages really work. So, he decided to release these kits. Cooperated with Elecrow, these packages have been produced quickly. And herewith Elecrow, we not only ensured the quality but also released and collected the usage or Experiences of these kits, to help more people enter the world of Raspberry Pi as quickly as possible

This Read Your Pi Kit is an easy assemble kit designed to integrate a 16 x 2 LCD screen onto your Raspberry Pi. The board enables the LCD screen to plug directly into the GPIO connector on the Raspberry Pi and features four pushbuttons for user input! The kit is compatible with both C and Python.

I"m using it to run a lighting and irrigation system for my house. The color graphical interface allows me to use BMP images of my house and yard for control screens, and its built into an enclosure set into the wall for a slick professional look. I even put an access from the backside of the wall for wiring it without having to remove the Pi or the touchscreen.

Great responsiveness, inexpensive, can"t beat 10-finger multi touch! The python demos are really neat, too. Only gripe is that the screen isn"t oleophobic, but for the price I"ll take it!

This was easy to install and it looks good. The Touchscreen is responsive and clear, but you might want to use a stylus. The only issue i had is finding a case for it. You"ll want to get one right away, unless you have a 3D printer to make one yourself. The screen is really thin, so I didn"t want to carry it around without some protection. Overall, it"s a great touchscreen, especially for the price, and I like that it is Raspi-branded.

I purchased 5 touchscreen. Two before and three in January. Touch and display quality is superb. After two-three month of use (no rough use; handled with care), display LCD and front touchpanel (black bezel) break apart. They both are connected using a thin double sided tape. I was planning to use in industrial environment but after such issue, I dropped my plan to use it in industrial environment.

Five of two displays are not in good condition. First display"s touch-panel and display LCD was break apart after two-three month. The second among five displays had another issue. Display LCD was mounted slightly right side of the touchpanel. Once you power-up display, it is easily be seen that LCD panel was a bit off-side. The other display"s screen guard having so many scratches on them which seems mishandling.

I got a couple of these for several RPi projects that Im developing and they are working amazingly well for the application. If these fit your application needs I wouldn"t hesitate to recommend them.

This screen worked right out of the box! Touch worked great with my new pi 3! However aside how fragile the (non functional) edges are, the only real issue I see is upon shutdown of the pi... The screen goes through a series of screen washes/whiteouts and never really shuts off.. I have to pull power to get it to turn off.. I"ve even tried usb/provided jumper wires.. And both results in the same thing. Not sure if this an issue per se, but it is bothersome.. I can just turn the unit off, I need to unplug it too..

I am using Raspberry Pi 3. The display came up with no problems. I am just waiting for the Smarti Pi Touch enclosure (pre-ordered after the Kickstarter project closed) before continuing to work with it.

Basically, it "does what it says on the tin". It"s bright, relatively responsive and has acceptable color. Haven"t played much with the touch screen part of it yet, but very pleased so far!

The only question(s) that I have are regarding what sort of additional processor power is inside the screen, and whether powering it from the micro-usb connection whilst also bridged from the RPi3 is an issue (it hasn"t hurt anything, yet!).

I WAS DISAPOINTED THAT THE UNIT DISPLAYS EVERYTHING UPSIDE DOWN. I HAD TO USE THE LCD_ROTATE=2 COMMAND IN CONFIG.TXT TO FIX IT. THE INITIAL BOOT IS STILL UPSIDE DOWN BUT I GUESS AFTER IT READ THE CONFIG.TXT, IT FLIPS. SHOULDN"T IT COME STANDARD RIGHT SIDE UP?

With so many, phone and tablets that have hi res screens, this is disappointing. It does what it"s supposed to, but has a retro look. Non techy relatives are not impressed.

The must annoying feature is the bright white screen when it loses signal as the OS shuts down. The touch input is inconsistent as input. I was using the I2C for a device was not able to get it going on the alternate I2C, but fortunately the required clock and data are on the DSI cable ... wasted hours finding that out. An OLED display, higher res, and lower current draw would be really nice in the next version.

I forgot to check that this LCD touchscreen don"t have a case. Much better that you have a notification (e.g. recommending the user to purchase also a case) when purchasing this kind of product. But thank you for this product, I will purchase again soon.

The only minor drawback that everyone should be aware (which is to be expected, honestly) is that the display draws quite a noticeable amount of current. The SmartiPi case comes with an splitter USB cable for the power source, but if you expect to use that, be prepared with a (very) beefy power supply, else you"ll get the thunder icon on the screen all the time and a very reduced performance (Just discovered that the RPi3 reduces its own clock when power is low).

I currently power this with a separate 1.5Amp supply for the screen and a 2Amp supply for the RPi3 and everything works just nice. This totals to a whopping 3.5A, which may be overkill, but keep that in mind as a reference.

I am impressed with this screen, I also got the mating case (SmartPi Touch) and it assembled nicely. With the separate case, the included jumpers and cable are not needed. The PCB was already attached with the standoffs. The packaging was super! The screen is slightly larger than 7 inches. I measured it as 7 5/8" wide X 4 3/8 high with a diagonal measurement of 8 9/16.

This official Raspberry Pi 7" touchscreens now come with the display controller already connected and mounted to the back of the display. You still need to be careful pulling forward the small black tab ends that connect a ribbon cable to the RPi.

I bought the companion enclosure as well. This Touchscreen works exactly as described. I am very pleased with the display. I ended up using a mouse anyway as the icons (while clear are very tiny) and selection areas are a bit small for fat fingers.

I connected it to a Raspberry Pi 3 B running Stretch and it seems to be working perfectly. I had been previously driving a VGA monitor from HDMI through an adapter. The RPI 7" screen started up just fine without changing or installing anything with the OS.

I connected it to a Raspberry Pi 3 B running Stretch and it seems to be working perfectly. I had been previously driving a VGA monitor from HDMI through an adapter. The RPI 7" screen started up just fine without changing or installing anything with the OS.

Based on other comments here and looking at one of these at a maker space, I bought the smartipi touch case for this; it"s strongly constructed and works great. Only issue was that I"m using this with a model 3 B+, and that takes a different door on the back than comes with the case (this is being fixed by the smartipi folks, but I don"t know the logistics of getting their new cases into Sparkfun)

I have tried other touch screens for the Raspberry Pi. They had complicated assembly and were very difficult to get them to work. This unit was easy to install and get working, is very nice looking. I am very Happy with it.

Right out of the box it worked. Didn"t even have to do anything to the RPi (in fact, both were taken out of the box at the same time, connected, and worked on the first power up). Screen quality is good for price. Also ordered the "SmartPi Touch" case which holds everything together very nicely.

Ordered it, a Raspberry Pi 3 B+, and a power supply. (Had a mouse, keyboard, and uSD on hand.). It came a couple of days ago, and I put together yesterday. Had noticed in the documentation that there"s a micro USB power input, and a standard USB output. In the configuration where the power supply is plugged directly into the Pi and the LCD interface is powered via a USB cable plugged into one of the Pi"s USB ports to the LCD"s micro USB, the LCD won"t light up at all. When the power supply is plugged into the LCD controller board and the USB cable connects power to the Pi, I get "low voltage" warnings (yellow "lightning bold"). When I use the provided F/F jumpers, it works fine, but this will cause problems plugging in other "hats", as well as clearance problems. (In my application, separate power supplies would be a BIG PROBLEM.) BTW, I checked with two different USB cables, and got the same problems as well as when I tried an Adafruit 5.25V power supply. (I was about to try a second RPi3B+ when the original one stopped booting. Fortunately I had another that I"d been using as a "pass-around" sample at talks, and fortunately when I tried it, it still worked, so now the "dead" one will be passed around!) Also, it could prove really useful to know what size those mounting screws are in case they get lost! Ace Hardware recently opened a new store about half a mile from my house!

The screen is portable enough to take with you and the Pi will use it with no configuration change when it"s powered up. Used it to set up several Raspberry Pis in a remote lab. Touch screen is nice but bring along a keyboard if you have to do any setup work. One thing to make it better, replace the jumper wires with a ribbon cable connected to 1x5 and 2x2 pin headers.

I have a Raspberry Pi in each room of my home and they run a Kiosk interface for home automation, cameras and more. I"ve tried some cheaper ones and none have survived. (I"m hard on equipment) I haven"t managed to break one of these yet.

Got a PI3+, 7" touchscreen and SmartPI case for manufacture test. I put these together and booted the latest Raspbian. The LCD and touchscreen connect to the display connector using a short FPC cable. The display booted and the touch screen just worked out of the box. There were some nice but not well documented improvements. They provide a Y USB cable to power both the PI and the LCD. This is a cleaner solution than the jumper wires they provide.I"m not a big fan of using lego blocks in a industrial environment but the case went together easily and does a decent job of protecting the display and the PI. Some reported a inverted display issue but that seems to have been resolved.

A truly plug-and-play display for the Raspberry Pi. Does not steal any additional extension connector pins if you power it with a USB power supply and leaves the I2C1 interface available for other devices.

Big enough for somewhat squinting actual Raspberry PI development and computer work, but really shines for touch screen optimized large button control panels.

You can just install a Pi3 or 4 on the back, but with a 4 you really need some additional airflow. The SmartiPi Touch 2 enclosure works better. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16302

It works fine, no glitches, no problems, no hair pulling moments. Once electrically connected to my RPi 3B+ it"s good to go. I run it with the "lite" version of the Raspberry Pi OS with only xorg drivers installed, no full desktop or windows manager, as part of an in-the-field project with a HQ camera attached. My only complaint is the ribbon cable could stand to be about 6 inches longer.

It works great, the colors are beautiful, and finger touch works fine. What I like most is that the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins are all still available - except for one +5v pin and one Ground pin. Both are redundant (i.e. others are available). So, this is not an issue at all. I also like that data connects to the Pi via the IPS ribbon cable. Another thing I like is that power connects to the Pi via two jumper wires. The Pi is fussy about its power supply voltage. So, the jumper wires are better because they are heavier gouge than a small PCB trace.

I connect a Pi v4 and put the whole thing in the SmartPI Touch 2 case from Sparkfun and now it looks pretty professional. Make sure you use a good power supply.

Where is the documentation? This thing is so poorly documented it"s almost a joke. The whole point of the RPi ecosystem is to enable Makers and learning about electronics, so why isn"t this fully documented?

I used this to build a portable utility/testing device for my company. It works fantastic with the SmartiPi Touch Pro Case on Amazon. The touchscreen functions great, only thing is you can"t register mousedown and mouseup events in Chromium (only click). Other than that it"s great!

I got it working the first try, easy to follow instructions. Trying to learn Kivy with Python for touch screen programming, That"s a lot more difficult.

Through the internal programming of Raspberry Pi, the screen can present your Pi board running status at a glance, such as CPU and memory usage, IP address, CPU temperature, etc.

The LCD adopts a 26Pin GPIO compatible design, which makes it compatible with the full series of Raspberry Pi. Inserting the LCD into the Raspberry Pi, the LCD still leads to the occupied pin, which does not affect the secondary use.

The LCD screen is equipped with backlight control. When the Raspberry Pi is used as a server application, the operating status of the motherboard can be seen clearly even in a dark environment. Besides, there is a backlight jumper on the back to allow you to control the backlight by the program.

Through programming, the LCD screen can also be used in experiments to display real-time data, such as ultrasonic distance measurement, temperature, and humidity testing, etc.

Connecting an LCD display to your Raspberry Pi is sure to take any project up a notch. They’re great for displaying sensor readings, songs or internet radio stations, and stuff from the web like tweets and stock quotes. Whatever you choose to display, LCDs are a simple and inexpensive way to do it.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you two different ways to connect an LCD to the Raspberry Pi with the GPIO pins. The first way I’ll show you is in 8 bit mode, which uses 10 GPIO pins. Then I’ll show you how to connect it in 4 bit mode, and that uses only 6 pins. After we get the LCD hooked up I’ll show you how to program it with C, using Gordon Henderson’s WiringPi LCD library.

I’ll show you how to print text to the display, clear the screen, position the text, and control the cursor. You’ll also see how to scroll text, create custom characters, print data from a sensor, and print the date, time and IP address of your Pi.

There’s another way to connect your LCD that uses only two wires, called I2C. To see how to do that, check out our tutorial How to Set Up an I2C LCD on the Raspberry Pi.

Most people probably want to connect their LCD in 4 bit mode since it uses less wires. But in case you’re interested, I’ll show you how to connect it in 8 bit mode as well.

In 8 bit mode, each command or character is sent to the LCD as a single byte (8 bits) of data. The byte travels in parallel over 8 data wires, with each bit travelling through it’s own wire. 8 bit mode has twice the bandwidth as 4 bit mode, which in theory translates to higher data transfer speed. The main downside to 8 bit mode is that it uses up a lot of GPIO pins.

In 4 bit mode, each byte of data is sent to the LCD in two sets of 4 bits, one after the other, in what are known as the upper bits and lower bits. Although 8 bit mode transfers data about twice as fast as 4 bit mode, it takes a longer time for the LCD driver to process each byte than it takes to transmit the byte. So in reality, there isn’t really a noticeable difference in speed between 4 bit mode and 8 bit mode.

If you’ve never worked with C programs on the Raspberry Pi, you may want to read our article How to Write and Run a C Program on the Raspberry Pi first. It will explain how to write, compile, and run C programs.

WiringPi is a C module that makes it easy to program the LCD. If you already have WiringPi installed on your Pi, you can skip this section. If not, follow the steps below to install it:

WiringPi has it’s own pin numbering system that’s different from the Broadcom (BCM) and RPi physical (BOARD) pin numbering systems. All of the programs below use the WiringPi pin numbers.

To use different pins to connect the LCD, change the pin numbers defined in lines 5 to 14. You’ll need to convert the WiringPi pin numbers to the physical pin numbers of the Raspberry Pi. See here for a diagram you can use to convert between the different numbering systems.

To use the LCD in 4 bit mode, we need to set the bit mode number to 4 in the initialization function (line 20 below). The following code prints “Hello, world!” to the screen in 4 bit mode:

By default, text is printed to the screen at the top row, second column. To change the position, use lcdPosition(lcd, COLUMN, ROW). On a 16×2 LCD, the rows are numbered from 0 to 1, and the columns are numbered from 0 to 15.

The function lcdClear(lcd) clears the screen and sets the cursor position at the top row, first column. This program prints “This is how you” for two seconds, clears the screen, then prints “clear the screen” for another two seconds:

Notice how the first string is printed to the top row, second column (the default position). Then after clearing the screen, the second string is printed to the top row, first column.

Each LCD character is a 5×8 array of pixels. You can create any pattern you want and display it on the LCD as a custom character. Up to 8 custom characters can be stored in the LCD memory at a time. This website has a nice visual way to generate the bit array used to define custom characters.

To print a single custom character, first define the character. For an example of this see lines 12 to 19 below. Then use the function lcdCharDef(lcd, 2, omega) to store the character in the LCD’s memory. The number 2 in this example is one of the 8 locations in the LCD’s character memory. The 8 locations are numbered 0-7. Then, print the character to the display with lcdPutchar(lcd, 2), where the number 2 is the character stored in memory location 2.

Here’s an example of using multiple custom characters that prints the Greek letters omega, pi, and mu, plus thermometer and water drop symbols for temperature and humidity:

As an example to show you how to display readings from a sensor, this program prints temperature and humidity readings to the LCD using a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor. To see how to set up the DHT11 on the Raspberry Pi, see our article How to Set Up the DHT11 Humidity Sensor on the Raspberry Pi.

Hopefully this helped you get your LCD up and running on your Raspberry Pi. The programs above are just basic examples, so try combining them to create interesting effects and animations.

If you have any problems or questions about installing the LCD or programming it, just leave a comment below. And don’t forget to subscribe to get an email when we publish new articles. Talk to you next time!

The Raspberry Pi Foundation wanted to make sure you have the perfect display screen. And here it is. Offering a number of possibilities, you can use the Raspberry Pi 7” touchscreen as a visual display screen or a simple input device. Easy to set up, you’ll be creating IoT projects in no time all thanks to the 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 24-bit RGB colour and 60 fps. All of this with no electronic interference – grab your Raspberry Pi 7″ touch screen today.

The 7” Touch screen Monitor for Raspberry Pi gives users the ability to create all-in-one, integrated projects such as tablets, infotainment systems and embedded projects. The 800 x 480 display connects via an adapter board which handles power and signal conversion. Only two connections to the Pi are required; power from the Pi’s GPIO port and a ribbon cable that connects to the DSI port present on all Raspberry Pi Boards.

The official 7” Touchscreen Monitor for Raspberry Pi gives users the ability to create all-in-one, integrated projects such as tablets, infotainment systems and embedded projects. The 800 x 480 display connects via an adapter board which handles power and signal conversion. Only two connections to the Pi are required; power from the Pi’s GPIO port and a ribbon cable that connects to the DSI port present on all Raspberry Pi’s. Touchscreen drivers with support for 10-finger touch and an on-screen keyboard will be integrated into the latest Raspbian OS for full functionality without a physical keyboard or mouse.Kit Contents:- 7” Touchscreen Display- Adapter Board- DSI Ribbon cable- 4 x stand-offs and screws (used to mount the adapter board and Raspberry Pi board to the back of the display-4 x jumper wires (used to connect the power from the Adapter Board and the GPIO pins on the Pi so the 2Amp power is shared across both units)Perspex layer frame in your choice of colour!* Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi 4 only. Not compatible with Pi 400. *