tft lcd pcb free sample

Focus Displays offers a wide range of standard full color TFT displays. 64 million unique colors, high brightness, sharp contrast, -30C operating temperature, and fast response time are all good descriptions of a TFT display. This is why TFT technology is one of the most popular choices for a new product.

Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display technology can be seen in products such as laptop computers, cell phones, tablets, digital cameras, and many other products that require color. TFT’s are active matrix displays which offers exceptional viewing experiences especially when compared to other passive matrix technologies. The clarity on TFT displays is outstanding; and they possess a longer half-life than some types of OLEDs and range in sizes from less than an inch to over 15 inches.

CCFL’s are still available, but are becoming a legacy (obsolete) component. TFT displays equipped with a CCFL require higher MOQs (Minimum Order Quantities) than displays with LED backlights.

The majority of TFT displays contain a touch panel, or touch screen. The touch panel is a touch-sensitive transparent overlay mounted on the front of the display glass. Allowing for interaction between the user and the LCD display.

Some touch panels require an independent driver IC; which can be included in the TFT display module or placed on the customer’s Printed Circuit Board (PCB). Touch screens make use of coordinate systems to locate where the user touched the screen.

Resistive touch panels are the lowest cost option and are standard equipment on many TFT modules. They are more common on smaller TFT displays, but can still be incorporated on larger modules.

Contrast ratio, or static contrast ratio, is one way to measure the sharpness of the TFT LCD display. This ratio is the difference between the darkest black and the brightest white the display is able to produce. The higher the number on the left, the sharper the image. A typical contrast ratio for TFT may be 300:1. This number ratio means that the white is 300 times brighter than the black.

TFT LCD displays are measured in inches; this is the measurement of the diagonal distance across the glass. Common TFT sizes include: 1.77”, 2.4”, 2.8”, 3”, 4.3”, 5”, 5.7”, 5.8”, 7”, 10.2”, 12.1 and 15”.

TFT resolution is the number of dots or pixels the display contains. It is measured by the number of dots along the horizontal (X axis) and the dots along the vertical (Y axis).

Certain combinations of width and height are standardized and typically given a name and a letter representation that is descriptive of its dimensions. Popular names given to the TFT LCD displays resolution include:

Transmissive displays must have the backlight on at all times to read the display, but are not the best option in direct sunlight unless the backlight is 750 Nits or higher. A majority of TFT displays are Transmissive, but they will require more power to operate with a brighter backlight.

A primary job of the driver is to refresh each pixel. In passive TFT displays, the pixel is refreshed and then allowed to slowly fade (aka decay) until refreshed again. The higher the refresh frequency, the sharper the displays contrast.

The TFT display (minus touch screen/backlight) alone will contain one controller/driver combination. These are built into the display so the design engineer does not need to locate the correct hardware.

If you do not see a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) Display module that meets your specifications, or you need a replacement TFT, we can build a custom TFT displays to meet your requirements. Custom TFTs require a one-time tooling fee and may require higher MOQs.

Ready to order samples for your TFT design? Contact one of our US-based technical support people today concerning your design requirements. Note: We can provide smaller quantities for samples and prototyping.

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.

This 3.5" EVE TFT bundle has everything you need to get started with this powerful display. The development kit consists of a 3.5" display mounted on an EVE2 graphically accelerated PCA, a Seeeduino, an EVE breakout board, jumper wires, USB cable and 6-inch ribbon cable.

With a resistive touch screen, full color, and a 6 o"clock viewing angle the display is a great way to offer a full user experience. For more information about the display, including its detailed datasheet, check out the 320x240 3.5" Touch Screen Color TFT page.

The EVE chip really makes this TFT module really shine. EVE (embedded video engine) is a cool new technology from FTDI/Bridgetek that simplifies the process of displaying videos and text in an embedded project. All display, touch sensing, backlight, and audio features are controlled by the FTDI FT810 EVE which appears to host the MCU as a memory-mapped SPI device. The host MCU sends commands and data over the SPI protocol. The module can support both SPI and Quad-SPI.

This is a quick video showing our new 1.3 inch TFT LCD. This is a small, full-color TFT. It"s controlled via 4-wire SPI. It has a ST7789H2 controller. This display runs off a single 3.3v supply which controls the logic and backlight.

Shenzhen Wanty Photoelectric Co., Ltd is a factory manufacturer and one stop customization solution provider specializing in R&D and producing Capacitive Touch Screen and TFT LCD Display up to 23.8 inch since established in 2012.

As an one stop customization solution provider, we mainly provide domestic and overseas customers with the customization services on regular or irregular PCAP capacitive touch panel, TFT LCD Display with different brightness, Touch display with HD-MI & USB interface which compatible with raspberry pi etc from 0.91 inch to 23.8 inch.

With mass production, manufacturing refinements, and competition, thin film transistor (TFT) displays have drastically dropped in price while dramatically improving in performance. They are the de facto standard to the point where it is not only expected, it is demanded that any modern user interface be full color, brightly backlit, touch sensitive, and have high video speeds and a good viewing angle.

While simple low-cost 8-bit microcontrollers could easily handle the multiplexed 7- and 14-segment LED and alphanumeric LCD displays, the memory, processor speeds, and peripheral resources needed to drive a TFT are more than most modest microcontrollers can handle. As a result, dedicated controller chips, embedded modules, or faster, denser, and more streamlined processor architectures are needed.

This article looks at the factors that make a good MCU-to-TFT interface. This includes memory depths and architectures, paging, data transfer, signaling levels, interfaces, and on-chip peripherals to look for when selecting a microcontroller for a TFT application. It examines the TFT technology and present day product offerings, which your designs will need to drive. It also looks at some microcontrollers that provide native support for color TFT displays, looking at their techniques, features, trade-offs, and limitations. All displays, microcontrollers, drivers, inverters, and development tools mentioned in this article are available from Digi-Key Corporation.

TFT displays are a type of liquid crystal display in which the transistor controlling the pixel’s crystal is etched into a layer of amorphous silicon deposited on the glass (see Figure 1). As in an IC process, very small transistors are geometrically formed. The small size of the transistor means it will not significantly attenuate the light passing through.

The advantage of TFTs is that they are fast enough for video, provide a large and smooth color palette, and are pixel addressable through an electronic two-dimensional control matrix (see Figure 2). Most low-cost displays use an amorphous silicon crystal layer deposited onto the glass through a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition.

Many versions of TFT technologies have led us to the modern displays. Early complaints like poor viewing angles, poor contrast, and poor backlighting have been addressed. Better light sources, diffusers, and polarizers make many displays very vivid, some even claiming to be daylight readable. Modern day techniques like in-plane switching improve viewing angles by making the crystals move in a parallel direction to the display plane instead of vertically. Better speeds and contrasts of modern display make them high performance for a fairly low cost.

Since TFTs are not emissive devices, they require backlighting. The most commonly deployed backlight technology is cold cathode florescent lighting (CCFL). These devices were designed, chosen, and used because they are very efficient and have very long lives. Typically, a CCFL bulb is rated as having in the ball park of a 50,000 hour ‘half-life. ’ This means that after 50,000 hours, it still works, but with half the intensity when it was new.

Transflective technology is steadily improving and is available in some TFT displays. This is where both a backlight and ambient external light are used to make the display visible. Sunlight may make it viewable, but generally speaking the transflective displays are less transmissive. This means that the backlight will have to be brighter (and require more power) to be on par with a purely transmissive display that requires a backlight all the time.

With TFT and most color display technologies, an individual pixel contains a red, a green, and a blue picture element (pel). The relative intensity of each color will determine the resulting blended color.

Either a gamma correction chip or a lookup table can be inserted into the data stream to do this correction. You should have a consistency of the LCD. Note that many LCD manufacturers do not make their own mother-glass. As such, they are subject to the slight variations from supplier to supplier. Unless you use a supplier that truly manufactures its own glass, this could be an issue later on down the road.

Some displays will use dithering and alternating pixel colors to achieve a better blend of intermediate colors. Higher frame rates are also used since the persistence effect of phosphor-based displays does not carry over to LCDs. Determine the quality and smoothness of the display you will use. Not every frame rate control technique yields flicker- and jitter-free performance, especially at some resolutions. If you notice it, so will your customers and end users of your design.

A key feature when selecting a microcontroller for TFT interfacing is the DMA support. Multi-channel, flexible DMA will make a world of difference, especially when it comes to moving data between pages, character generator and rendering tables, animations and video. Along these lines, a preprogrammed and autonomous DMA functionality will allow you to refresh a display while the core microcontroller goes to sleep. This is a key power-reducing feature that can make a world of difference when operating from batteries.

Very high volume applications may justify using an OEM only for the glass and implementing your own control electronics from the glass up. This is especially true when designing a very small form factor device where the added flexibility of using your own PCB layout is critical to success. For those designing from the glass up, the primary interface will be drivers for the thin film transistors. The stable common voltage reference to which all pixels are referenced is key. This is called VCOM and several discrete and integrated solutions for generating a VCOM signal are available.

One effective solution is to use the National Semiconductor LMH6640MF/NOPB which is a rail-to-rail (up to 16 volts), voltage feedback, high output (up to 100 ma) amplifier optimized for TFT transistor driving. The fast 170 V/µS slew rate yields a 28 MHz full power bandwidth (at five volts) and its small SOT-23 package can be fit into tight spaces (see Figure 3).

Also , the VCOM function and all its subtleties are often times integrated into more encompassing TFT driver chips like Texas Instruments’ LM8207MT/NOPB which combines an 18 channel gamma corrected driver with VCOM referencing buffer (see Figure 4). Note that the built-in VCOM buffer will allow a buffer tree to be created from a single reference for larger displays.

One approach to driving a TFT display without the need for a higher end processor is to use a discrete TFT controller chip that can be interfaced to a processor of lesser horsepower. An example is the Intersil TW8811-LD2-GR TFT controller chip (see Figure 5).

If a single microcontroller can control the task at hand as well as the embedded display, this is usually the most cost-effective solution. Most people will use a TFT module which already houses the VCOM, gamma correction, and TFT transistor drivers. As a result, the interface to the module is TTL, CMOS, or Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS).

Thankfully, to help make TFT design tasks doable in a reasonable amount of time, the chip makers provide solutions targeted at display designs. Typically, these are higher-end, 32-bit, RISC-type processor architectures with streamlined peripherals and resources that handle both display-oriented and non-display-oriented functions such as communications, sensor interfacing, etc.

For example, the NXP Semiconductor LPC2478FBD208,551 is an ARM7™-based 72 MHz high- end microcontroller with LCD control up to 1024 x 768, 24-bit pixel resolutions. In addition to the very flexible DMA functionality, it incorporates USB, four UARTS, I²S, RTC, SD/MMC memory card, Ethernet, I²C, CAN, and more. It is a “Swiss Army Knife” processor that targets integrated, single processor type designs.

Devices like this need development environments and evaluation units and NXP is right there. The DK-57VTS-LPC2478 is a programmer’s development system that includes a 5.7 inch TFT with touch interface as well (see Figure 6). Note the 2M x 32 SDRAM for page buffering and graphic manipulations. NXP also offers the DK-57TS-LPC2478 which aims at sensor-based applications.

NXP Semiconductors is not alone by any means. Renesas Electronics America also provides processors with built-in support for TFTs. Take for example the DF2378RVFQ34V, an H8-based processor with advanced block transfer functionality built into the DMA. Like the NXP parts, it incorporates a slew of peripherals, Flash, memory interfaces, and I/O.

Not every processor needs to have a dedicated TFT interface to make it a viable candidate. For example, the TI TMS470R1B1MPGEA is a RISC-based 60 MHz ARM7 processor that can easily interface to a slew of TFT modules that are driven via a digital interface. While some modules need constant refreshing, others can be loaded with display data and generate all the timing and display data movement internally unburdening the host CPU. The CPU must be fast enough to keep up with any animations or video if this is the case.

With the integration of Bridgetek’s next generation EVE3 BT815/BT816 Embedded Video Engine IC, Matrix Orbital EVE3 SPI TFT"s deliver clean, crisp, full color TFT screens for interactive menus, graphing, graphics and even video..

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.

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 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.

This 240x320 resolution LCD TFT is a Sunlight Readable display with 8-bit or 16-bit parallel interface. This LCD display is equipped with a powerful backlight, providing visibility in bright lighting conditions including the direct sun. The Liquid Crystal Display also has a built-in ST7789Vi controller, FFC ZIF I/O connection, is RoHS compliant and has a 4-wire resistive touchscreen.