arduino tft display project quotation

In this Arduino touch screen tutorial we will learn how to use TFT LCD Touch Screen with Arduino. You can watch the following video or read the written tutorial below.

As an example I am using a 3.2” TFT Touch Screen in a combination with a TFT LCD Arduino Mega Shield. We need a shield because the TFT Touch screen works at 3.3V and the Arduino Mega outputs are 5 V. For the first example I have the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, then for the second example an RGB LED with three resistors and a push button for the game example. Also I had to make a custom made pin header like this, by soldering pin headers and bend on of them so I could insert them in between the Arduino Board and the TFT Shield.

Here’s the circuit schematic. We will use the GND pin, the digital pins from 8 to 13, as well as the pin number 14. As the 5V pins are already used by the TFT Screen I will use the pin number 13 as VCC, by setting it right away high in the setup section of code.

I will use the UTFT and URTouch libraries made by Henning Karlsen. Here I would like to say thanks to him for the incredible work he has done. The libraries enable really easy use of the TFT Screens, and they work with many different TFT screens sizes, shields and controllers. You can download these libraries from his website, RinkyDinkElectronics.com and also find a lot of demo examples and detailed documentation of how to use them.

After we include the libraries we need to create UTFT and URTouch objects. The parameters of these objects depends on the model of the TFT Screen and Shield and these details can be also found in the documentation of the libraries.

So now I will explain how we can make the home screen of the program. With the setBackColor() function we need to set the background color of the text, black one in our case. Then we need to set the color to white, set the big font and using the print() function, we will print the string “Arduino TFT Tutorial” at the center of the screen and 10 pixels  down the Y – Axis of the screen. Next we will set the color to red and draw the red line below the text. After that we need to set the color back to white, and print the two other strings, “by HowToMechatronics.com” using the small font and “Select Example” using the big font.

In order the code to work and compile you will have to include an addition “.c” file in the same directory with the Arduino sketch. This file is for the third game example and it’s a bitmap of the bird. For more details how this part of the code work  you can check my particular tutorial. Here you can download that file:

Displays are one of the best ways to provide feedback to users of a particular device or project and often the bigger the display, the better. For today’s tutorial, we will look on how to use the relatively big, low cost, ILI9481 based, 3.5″ Color TFT display with Arduino.

This 3.5″ color TFT display as mentioned above, is based on the ILI9481 TFT display driver. The module offers a resolution of 480×320 pixels and comes with an SD card slot through which an SD card loaded with graphics and UI can be attached to the display. The module is also pre-soldered with pins for easy mount (like a shield) on either of the Arduino Mega and Uno, which is nice since there are not many big TFT displays that work with the Arduino Uno.

The module is compatible with either of the Arduino Uno or the Arduino Mega, so feel free to choose between them or test with both. As usual, these components can be bought via the links attached to them.

One of the good things about this module is the ease with which it can be connected to either of the Arduino Mega or Uno. For this tutorial, we will use the Arduino Uno, since the module comes as a shield with pins soldered to match the Uno’s pinout. All we need to do is snap it onto the top of the Arduino Uno as shown in the image below, thus no wiring required.

This ease of using the module mentioned above is, however, one of the few downsides of the display. If we do not use the attached SD card slot, we will be left with 6 digital and one analog pin as the module use the majority of the Arduino pins. When we use the SD card part of the display, we will be left with just 2 digital and one analog pin which at times limits the kind of project in which we can use this display. This is one of the reasons while the compatibility of this display with the Arduino Mega is such a good news, as the “Mega” offers more digital and analog pins to work with, so when you need extra pins, and size is not an issue, use the Mega.

To easily write code to use this display, we will use the GFX and TFT LCD libraries from “Adafruit” which can be downloaded here. With the library installed we can easily navigate through the examples that come with it and upload them to our setup to see the display in action. By studying these examples, one could easily learn how to use this display. However, I have compiled some of the most important functions for the display of text and graphics into an Arduino sketch for the sake of this tutorial. The complete sketch is attached in a zip file under the download section of this tutorial.

As usual, we will do a quick run through of the code and we start by including the libraries which we will use for the project, in this case, the Adafruit GFX and TFT LCD libraries.

With this done, the Void Setup() function is next. We start the function by issuing atft.reset() command to reset the LCD to default configurations. Next, we specify the type of the LCD we are using via the LCD.begin function and set the rotation of the TFT as desired. We proceed to fill the screen with different colors and display different kind of text using diverse color (via the tft.SetTextColor() function) and font size (via the tft.setTextSize() function).

Next is the void loop() function. Here we basically create a UI to display the youtube subscribe button, using some of the same functions we used under the void setup() function.

The Adafruit library helps reduce the amount of work one needs to do while developing the code for this display, leaving the quality of the user interface to the limitations of the creativity and imagination of the person writing the code.

That’s it for this tutorial guys, thanks for reading. If you made some cool projects based on this or you just want to ask questions about this tutorial, feel free to reach out via the comment section below.

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 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.

All the functions called under the void setup function, perform different functions, some draw lines, some, boxes and text with different font, color and size and they can all be edited to do what your project needs.

The complete code for this is available under the libraries example on the Arduino IDE. Don’t forget to change the DC and the RESET pin configuration in the code to match the schematics.

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.

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (5" diagonal) bright (12 white-LED backlight) and colorfu 480x272 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a optional resistive touch panel attached on screen by default.

The shield is fully assembled, tested and ready to go. No wiring, no soldering! Simply plug it in and load up our library - you"ll have it running in under 10 minutes! Works best with any classic Arduino (UNO/Due/Mega 2560).

This display shield has a controller built into it with RAM buffering, so that almost no work is done by the microcontroller. You can connect more sensors, buttons and LEDs.

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!

For 5 inch screen,the high current is needed.But the current of arduino uno or arduino mega board is low, an external 5V power supply is needed. Refer to the image shows the external power supply position on shield ER-AS-RA8875.

If you"ve had a lot of Arduino DUEs go through your hands (or if you are just unlucky), chances are you’ve come across at least one that does not start-up properly.The symptom is simple: you power up the Arduino but it doesn’t appear to “boot”. Your code simply doesn"t start running.You might have noticed that resetting the board (by pressing the reset button) causes the board to start-up normally.The fix is simple,here is the solution.

Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big 4"(3.97" diagonal) bright (6 white-LED backlight) and colorful (18-bit 262,000 different shades)! 480x800 pixels with individual pixel control. As a bonus, this display has a optional resistive touch panel with controller XPT2046 and capacitive touch panel with FT6336.

The shield is fully assembled, tested and ready to go. No wiring, no soldering! Simply plug it in and load up our library - you"ll have it running in under 10 minutes! Works best with any classic Arduino (Due/Mega 2560).

This display shield has a controller built into it with RAM buffering, so that almost no work is done by the microcontroller. You can connect more sensors, buttons and LEDs.

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!

If you"ve had a lot of Arduino DUEs go through your hands (or if you are just unlucky), chances are you’ve come across at least one that does not start-up properly.The symptom is simple: you power up the Arduino but it doesn’t appear to “boot”. Your code simply doesn"t start running.You might have noticed that resetting the board (by pressing the reset button) causes the board to start-up normally.The fix is simple,here is the solution.

The first part of this three-part series discussed common touchscreen technologies and their typical use-cases. Then, the second part investigated a few readily available and affordable touch display options for makers and hobbyists. This article documents how to get started with one of the recommended Arduino-compatible 2.8” resistive touchscreens from part two.

The TFT display I use contains a resistive overlay, which allows users to control an Arduino-based project with touch inputs. The display controller that comes with the touchscreen supports a few different communication methods. However, I’ll only outline two of them as I find these to be the most useful. The first method uses eight parallel communication lines to transmit pixel data from the Arduino to the display. I recommend using this method in multimedia applications where the Arduino needs to transfer a lot of pixel data.

The second method involves using SPI to communicate with the display controller. Doing so saves a few digital I/O lines with the tradeoff of being slower than the parallel communication method. To enable the display’s SPI mode, you have to close these three solder pad jumpers on the bottom side of the board:

Note that I used the SPI method to send data from the Arduino to the display. Either way, in addition to the pixel data lines, you’ll further need to employ two additional digital I/O lines and two more analog pins of the Arduino if you want to add resistive touch detection to your project. In addition, this touchscreen module comes with a built-in micro SD card reader I won’t discuss further in this article.

You have to install two libraries before you can send image data to the TFT display. First, use the Arduino IDE’s built-in library manager to download the Adafruit ILI9341 library. This package handles low-level communication between the Arduino and the display controller IC. Then, download the Adafruit_GFX library. The second library contains helpful code for drawing graphics primitives such as simple shapes and text. I recommend you read this article if you don’t know how to use the library manager in the Arduino IDE.

This short test program first initializes the TFT display in the setup()-function. Then, I defined a few helper methods. The resetAndClearScreen()-method resets the display’s rotation and erases all previously drawn pixels. The next function is drawIntroText(). It prints a short status message in the top left corner of the display. Lastly, drawTouchButton() creates a rectangle at the specified position with the given width and height. Then, the method places a string at the center of the previously drawn rectangle. As the name suggests, I’ll later use these rectangles to detect user inputs. The loop()-method refreshes the screen twice a second. But because there’s no interactivity built into the program yet, users can’t change what the screen displays at this point.

To use the resistive touch capabilities of this display, download the Adafruit_TouchScreen library using the Arduino IDE’s built-in library manager. The example code from above prints a few lines of text and then draws two touch buttons. Next, we’ll have to detect when a user presses one of the buttons. If that happens, the Arduino should refresh the screen and draw all the components using different colors. Therefore, I added the following method to detect whether a user touched one of the buttons:

Before making the previously discussed calls to the various draw-functions, the loop() method also checks whether the user touched the resistive screen. The TSPoint class contains a z-value we can use to determine how hard a user pressed down on the screen. This z-value is also perfect for preventing the Arduino from detecting unwanted inputs. If the z-value is greater than a fixed threshold value, the Arduino detects a touch input. The code then calls the touchedWithin()-function to determine whether the user pressed one of the buttons.

Arduino-compatible touchscreens allow you to quickly add a touchscreen to your existing or new DIY projects. Simple-to-use libraries let you get the display up and running in practically no time. The screen I used offers a few ways for devices to send pixel data to it. A parallel interface allows you to achieve higher screen refresh rates, which might be essential in multimedia applications. The parallel interface is also perfect for MCUs with a large number of I/O pins. The SPI method, on the other hand, is a bit slower compared to parallel communication. It, however, allows you to cut down on the number of required I/O pins, which is the preferred option in most Arduino projects.

While in theory an Arduino can run any LCD, we believe that some LCDs are particularly suited to being an Arduino LCD display. We"ve currated this list of LCD displays that will make any Arduino-based project shine.

First is the interface. All of these displays support SPI. Builders often ask themselves (or us) "which interface uses the fewest GPIO pins? AND is that interface fast enough to update the screen at an acceptable rate for my application?" When using the relatively small procesor of the Arduino, SPI is usually the best interface because it takes few wires (either 3 or 4) however it does limit the overall size (number of pixels) that can be quickly controlled. I2C is another choice of interface to leave GPIOs open. We tend to recommend SPI over I2C for Arduino displays because SPI is quicker and better at handling more complex data transfer, like pulling image data from an SD card.

Which brings us to the second factor in choosing an Arduino display: the number of pixels. We typically recommend a display with a resolution of 320x240 or less for use with Arduino. Take for example a 320x240 24-bit display. Such a display takes 230,400 bytes *(8 + 2) = 2,304,000 bits for a single frame. Divide that by 8,000,000 (Arduino SPI speed of 8MHZ) = 0.288 seconds per frame or 3.5 frames per second. 3.5 fps is fast enough for many applications, but is not particularly quick. Using fewer bits-per-pixel or a display with fewer pixels will result in higher frame rates. Use the calculator below to calculate the frame rate for a display using SPI with an Arduino.

Third, we want to recommend displays that are easy to connect to an Arduino. Each of these displays has a ZIF tail or easily solderable throughholes, so no fine pitch soldering is needed. These displays can either be brought up on the CFA10102 generic breakout board, or with a custom CFA breakout board.

Most character displays can be run via Parallel connection to an Arduino. You"ll want to make sure you can supply enough current to operate the backlight.

Let"s get started with this creative Arduino project, where you"ll learn about the TFT LCD touch screen and how to use it to create your own colourful calculator. For a basic understanding of touch screen & LCD, a cheap TFT 2.4" Arduino shield is used to create this project. For creating a similar project, one should follow the steps and edit the code for better understanding.

The shield connects ILI9341"s data pins 0-7 to Arduino"s digital pins 2-8 (allowing parallel communication, not SPI. ILI9341"s RESET goes to Arduino analog pin A4. CS (chip select) to A3. RS (CD command/data) to A2. WR and RD to A1 and A0.

ILI9341 is integrated inside the display. It drives the display and has nothing to do with the touchscreen (Although the shield connects some pins of ILI9341 together with pins of the touchscreen).

To read a byte from ILI9341 after sending a read command (e.g. 09h - Read Display Status) set RD from HIGH to LOW, so ILI9341 outputs data until RD returns HIGH.

Now, open Arduino IDE and select Sketch -> Include Library -> Add .ZIP library. A browser window will open navigate to the ZIP file and click “OK”. You should notice “Library added to your Libraries” on the bottom-left corner of Arduino, if successful.

You can also find an SD card slot at the bottom of the module shown above, which can be used to load an SD card with BMP image files, and these images can be displayed on our TFT LCD screen using the Arduino Program.

The 2.4” TFT LCD screen is a perfect Arduino Shield. You can directly push the LCD screen on top of the Arduino Uno and it will perfectly match with the pins and slid in through. However, as matters of safety cover the programming terminal of your Arduino UNO with some insulator, just in case if the terminal comes in contact with your TFT LCD screen.

I just wrote some code that allows you to use your mega or uno as an oscilloscope to make it work on the uno you must removes the pins that cover a4 and a5 and make sure you are only removing those pins and be sure to triple check that they are the ones that say unused on the wiki (link below) or else you will break your screen or at least touch screen support even thought the lcd appears to take up all the analog pins on the uno it does not according to the wiki seeedstudio.com/wiki/2.8%27%27_T … on_Arduino

I have no idea how much EMC the board produces. The biggest culprit is probably the Arduino. I"ve never had an Arduino interfere with a TV or cellphone but I suppose it might.

In theory, you should put the circuit in a Faraday cage and worry about what wires go in and out. In practice, I don"t suppose you"ve ever thought about EMC when you build an Arduino circuit, have you?

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:

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)

#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)

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. ");