fritzing ips tft display free sample

I’m mostly finished a modification of the adafruit part to convert it to this. I’m done for tonite and busy tomorrow but a part should be along soon (only pcb and the fzp file to finish). I found board dimensions (if not hole nor header placement which are just guesses) on ebay so it won’t be quite correct unless you can measure the placement of the holes and the pins with calipers but it should do the job. The adafruit part looks to be the alternate layout for this same display (only 10 pins in…

Hi guys, over the past few tutorials, we have been discussing TFT displays, how to connect and use them in Arduino projects, especially the 1.8″ Colored TFT display. In a similar way, we will look at how to use the 1.44″ TFT Display (ILI9163C) with the Arduino.

The ILI9163C based 1.44″ colored TFT Display, is a SPI protocol based display with a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels. It’s capable of displaying up to 262,000 different colors. The module can be said to be a sibling to the 1.8″ TFT display, except for the fact that it is much faster and has a better, overall cost to performance ratio when compared with the 1.8″ TFT display. Some of the features of the display are listed below;

TheTFT Display, as earlier stated, communicates with the microcontroller over SPI, thus to use it, we need to connect it to the SPI pins of the Arduino as shown in the schematics below.

Please note that the version of the display used for this tutorial is not available on fritzing which is the software used for the schematics, so follow the pin connection list below to further understand how each pin of the TFT display should be connected to the Arduino.

When connecting the display, ensure that has a voltage regulator (shown in the image below) before connecting it directly to the 5v logic level of the Arduino. This is because the display could be destroyed if the version of the display you have does not have the regulator.

In order to allow the Arduino to work with the display, we need two Arduino libraries; the sumotoy TFT ILI9163C Arduino library which can be downloaded from this link and the popular Adafruit GFX Arduino library which we have used extensively in several tutorials. Download these libraries and install them in the Arduino IDE.

For today’s tutorial, we will be using the bigtest example which is one of the example codes that comes with the sumotoy ILI9163C Arduino library to show how to use the TFT display.

The example can be opened by going to File–>Examples–>TFT_ILI9163c–>bigtest as shown in the image below. It should be noted that this will only be available after the sumotoy library has been installed.

Next, an object of the ILI9163c library named “display” was created with CS and DC parameter as inputs but due to the kind of display being used, we need to include the pin of the Arduino to which the A0 pin of the TFT display is connected which is D8.

With this done, we move to the void setup() function. Under this function, we issue the commands that initialize the display then create a time variable updated by millis, after which we issue a command to clear the screen and display some random text on it.

Some of the functions which perform actions ranging from displaying fastlines, drawing rectangles etc are then called with a delay after each function so the text or graphics stays long enough on the screen to be visible.

Up next is the void loop function. The void loop function also calls some of the same functions called under the void setup() function to display circles, rectangles etc including the testline function which is essentially used to test the screen.

With the libraries installed, open an instance of the Arduino IDE, open the examples as described initially, don’t forget to make the A0 pin (D8) correction to the code then upload to the Arduino board. You should see different kind of text and graphics being displayed on the screen. I captured the screen in action 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 about the tutorial.

This project uses and Arduino Uno microcontroller, PmodCLS LCD screen from Digilent, and the PmodGPS also from Digilent. The Arduino Uno was encouraged for us to use for easier programming rather than Verilog or some other HDL. Once operational, this project will display the user"s latitude, longitude, altitude, distance to a fixed reference point, angle bearing towards a fixed reference point, speed of the user, as well as other data should the programmer choose to implement as there are many other functions available for the PmodGPS. This system can be powered by a USB connected battery for mobile application. Just program the Arduino Uno, disconnect from your computer, plug in the USB battery, and the Arduino Uno should continue operating as normal. The reference point is set at the time of system reset. This can be manually triggered by pressing the Reset button on the Arduino Uno.

PmodCLS:I used a PmodCLS for my LCD screen simply because it was available, I had example code for using it in the Arduino IDE, and it was simple to implement. The PmodCLS uses a 5V power, ground, and an RX line for receiving data from the Arduino Uno to be displayed. These connections are located on the "top" row of pins in the J2 section. The backside of the PmodCLS indicates which pins are V+, GND, and RX. TX is not needed since the screen will not be sending data back to the Arduino Uno. The RX connects to PIN X on the Arduino.

Below are some sample output displays on the LCD screen. All the components are being held in a fanny pack, as that was part of the bigger project mentioned in the beginning of this project.