raspberry pi tft lcd setup made in china

There are plenty of small TFT LCD touch screens which mount on top of a Raspberry Pi out there, but ITEAD Studio"s "RPi 2.8 TFT Add-on V2.0" (snappy name, eh?) caught my eye because it has a pass-through for the Pi"s GPIO pins (out to the side, because you wouldn"t want to mount another board on top of a display...) and brings the I2C and serial ports out to "Grove"-style connectors - so, it"s not only a nice display, it"s maker-friendly.

Only one problem - like a lot of Chinese suppliers, ITEAD don"t exactly hold your hand when it comes to documentation. Their wiki page includes a schematic so the detail is there, and they have a pointer to notro"s wonderful framebuffer drivers - but it"s not at all clear after that exactly which drivers apply and how to get it running. And although there are plenty of LCD touch screen tutorials out there, they"re written for other displays (including V1 of this display, which has different connections) and it"s not obvious what has to be changed, where, to get this display up and running. And quite a few tutorials are outdated, now that we live in device tree land....

So I"ve written a detailed, but hopefully clear, guide to getting this LCD touch screen display working: http://www.gooligum.com.au/blog-section/TFT-28-setup

Connecting an LCD to your Raspberry Pi will spice up almost any project, but what if your pins are tied up with connections to other modules? No problem, just connect your LCD with I2C, it only uses two pins (well, four if you count the ground and power).

In this tutorial, I’ll show you everything you need to set up an LCD using I2C, but if you want to learn more about I2C and the details of how it works, check out our article Basics of the I2C Communication Protocol.

There are a couple ways to use I2C to connect an LCD to the Raspberry Pi. The simplest is to get an LCD with an I2C backpack. But the hardcore DIY way is to use a standard HD44780 LCD and connect it to the Pi via a chip called the PCF8574.

The PCF8574 converts the I2C signal sent from the Pi into a parallel signal that can be used by the LCD. Most I2C LCDs use the PCF8574 anyway. I’ll explain how to connect it both ways in a minute.

I’ll also show you how to program the LCD using Python, and provide examples for how to print and position the text, clear the screen, scroll text, print data from a sensor, print the date and time, and print the IP address of your Pi.

Connecting an LCD with an I2C backpack is pretty self-explanatory. Connect the SDA pin on the Pi to the SDA pin on the LCD, and the SCL pin on the Pi to the SCL pin on the LCD. The ground and Vcc pins will also need to be connected. Most LCDs can operate with 3.3V, but they’re meant to be run on 5V, so connect it to the 5V pin of the Pi if possible.

If you have an LCD without I2C and have a PCF8574 chip lying around, you can use it to connect your LCD with a little extra wiring. The PCF8574 is an 8 bit I/O expander which converts a parallel signal into I2C and vice-versa. The Raspberry Pi sends data to the PCF8574 via I2C. The PCF8574 then converts the I2C signal into a 4 bit parallel signal, which is relayed to the LCD.

Before we get into the programming, we need to make sure the I2C module is enabled on the Pi and install a couple tools that will make it easier to use I2C.

Now we need to install a program called I2C-tools, which will tell us the I2C address of the LCD when it’s connected to the Pi. So at the command prompt, enter sudo apt-get install i2c-tools.

Next we need to install SMBUS, which gives the Python library we’re going to use access to the I2C bus on the Pi. At the command prompt, enter sudo apt-get install python-smbus.

Now reboot the Pi and log in again. With your LCD connected, enter i2cdetect -y 1 at the command prompt. This will show you a table of addresses for each I2C device connected to your Pi:

We’ll be using Python to program the LCD, so if this is your first time writing/running a Python program, you may want to check out How to Write and Run a Python Program on the Raspberry Pi before proceeding.

There are a couple things you may need to change in the code above, depending on your set up. On line 19 there is a function that defines the port for the I2C bus (I2CBUS = 0). Older Raspberry Pi’s used port 0, but newer models use port 1. So depending on which RPi model you have, you might need to change this from 0 to 1.

The function mylcd.lcd_display_string() prints text to the screen and also lets you chose where to position it. The function is used as mylcd.lcd_display_string("TEXT TO PRINT", ROW, COLUMN). For example, the following code prints “Hello World!” to row 2, column 3:

On a 16×2 LCD, the rows are numbered 1 – 2, while the columns are numbered 0 – 15. So to print “Hello World!” at the first column of the top row, you would use mylcd.lcd_display_string("Hello World!", 1, 0).

You can create any pattern you want and print it to the display as a custom character. Each character is an array of 5 x 8 pixels. Up to 8 custom characters can be defined and stored in the LCD’s memory. This custom character generator will help you create the bit array needed to define the characters in the LCD memory.

The code below will display data from a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor. Follow this tutorial for instructions on how to set up the DHT11 on the Raspberry Pi. The DHT11 signal pin is connected to BCM pin 4 (physical pin 7 of the RPi).

By inserting the variable from your sensor into the mylcd.lcd_display_string() function (line 22 in the code above) you can print the sensor data just like any other text string.

These programs are just basic examples of ways you can control text on your LCD. Try changing things around and combining the code to get some interesting effects. For example, you can make some fun animations by scrolling with custom characters. Don’t have enough screen space to output all of your sensor data? Just print and clear each reading for a couple seconds in a loop.

Key information: This device"s controller is an ILI9486, which is compatible with ILI9481. The driver for ILI9481 was already in my Raspberry Pi. Here"s what I did to make it work:

The second command sets the console (tty1) to map its output to the framebuffer (buffer 1). That"s why the parameters are 1 1. You can map any tty to the LCD.

I don"t care about the touch-screen, so I didn"t set it up. All I need this is to show me the IP address of the Raspberry Pi so I can connect through SSH. (This is an issue you may encounter only if you find your RPi connecting to WiFi where you cannot control the IP address assignments and with ridiculously short lease times.)

The RPi LCD can be driven in two ways: Method 1. install driver to your Raspbian OS. Method 2. use the Ready-to-use image file of which LCD driver was pre-installed.

2) Connect the TF card to the PC, open the Win32DiskImager software, select the system image downloaded in step 1 and click‘Write’ to write the system image. ( How to write an image to a micro SD card for your Pi? See RPi Image Installation Guides for more details)

3) Connect the TF card to the Raspberry Pi, start the Raspberry Pi. The LCD will display after booting up, and then log in to the Raspberry Pi terminal,(You may need to connect a keyboard and HDMI LCD to Pi for driver installing, or log in remotely with SSH)

1. Executing apt-get upgrade will cause the LCD to fail to work properly. In this case, you need to edit the config.txt file in the SD card and delete this sentence: dtoverlay=ads7846.

This LCD can be calibrated through the xinput-calibrator program. Note: The Raspberry Pi must be connected to the network, or else the program won"t be successfully installed.

3.5inch RPi LCD (A) and 3.5inch RPi LCD (B) are hardware compatible with each other (uses different driver), and can be mutually substituted in most cases. (A) for low cost ver. while (B) for IPS ver. with better displaying.

Why the LCD doesn"t work with my Raspbian?To use the LCD with the Raspberry Pi official image, driver (SPI touch interface only) should be installed first. Please refer to the user manual.

However, for the first testing, you may want to use our image directly (if provided).Why the LCD still doesn"t work with the Waveshare provided image?Make sure the hardware connection is correct and connects fine.

The PWR will keep on and the ACT will keep blinking when the Raspberry Pi starts up successfully, in case both of the two LEDs keep on, it is possible that the image was burnt incorrectly OR the TF card was in bad contact.Which power supply should I use?It is recommended to use a 5V/3A power adapter for the Raspberry Pi other than USB connection, otherwise the Pi may failed to start up because the PC"s USB port might have not enough power.

Since the first-generation Raspberry Pi released, Waveshare has been working on designing, developing, and producing various fantastic touch LCDs for the Pi. Unfortunately, there are quite a few pirated/knock-off products in the market. They"re usually some poor copies of our early hardware revisions, and comes with none support service.

• PCAP size from 1.3”-65”• PCAP & LCD module size: 1.3”-32”• Optical Bonding service : 1.3”-21.5”• HDMI & VGA T-CON Board available• IIC-USB interface Bridge board available•CTP can be Customized with cover glass surface treatment process AG(anti-glare), AR(anti-reflective), AF(anti-fingerprint) • Support touch with 12mm cover glass.• Support touch with water.• Support touch with 5mm gloves.• Custom Highlight TFT (Up to 2300cd/㎡)• Support operating temperature: -40℃-85℃.

-15.6 inch capacitive raspberry pi touch display: the structure of the product is Glass + Glass,multi touch , ILITEK controller IC,USB interface,support operation with gloves, water , and working well with additional 10mm thick tempered glass on the top. Mainly used in industrial, home appliances, medical, outdoor terminals and other fields. Deep customization service supported and a variety of interface converting & drive boards available, which is convenient for customers to use..The display uses LVDS/EDP interface,we can provide HDMI/VGA driver board.

-Our product can be used for raspberry pi through USB and HDMI interface.Touch screen interface I2C and USB optional, TFT display MIPI and HDMI optional.

-This 4 Inch Touch Screen Raspberry Pi supports Operation system like windows, Linux, android and other. Mostly applied in consumer electronics, support special-shaped structure customization, mainly used in handheld terminals, security, medical electronics and other fields, surface treatment AG AR AF and other specific effects processing are supported.