sainsmart 1.8 tft display factory

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.

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:

#define sclk 4 // SainSmart: SCL#define mosi 5 // SainSmart: SDA#define cs 6 // SainSmart: CS#define dc 7 // SainSmart: RS/DC#define rst 8 // SainSmart: RES

#define sclk 13 // SainSmart: SCL#define mosi 11 // SainSmart: SDA#define cs 10 // SainSmart: CS#define dc 9 // SainSmart: RS/DC#define rst 8 // SainSmart: RES

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)

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).

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. ");

The 1.8" TFT LCD SPI-bus display modules available from Adafruit and SainSmart are functionally equivalent, except that the SainSmart unit can be driven at a much faster SPI bus rate than the Adafruit (32 MHz vs. 4 MHz in my testing). Fabien Royer has shown that this is due to a slow level shifter in the Adafruit unit.

* My version of the st7735fb_map driver allows either CE0 (SPI 0.0) or CE1 (SPI 0.1) to be configured. ** My version allows the configuration of any GPIO pin for D/C and RESET. *** Since I"m not using the MicroSD card device on the back of the display modules, the remaining pins are left unconnected.

The st7735fb driver supports fbcon which attaches the display as tty1 and/or other VT"s so the standard getty login will appear without any additional configuration. The following alternate method using fbterm also works, but is more complex to configure.

The board supports multiple different 1.8" panel pinouts including Adafruit and SainSmart, and sports mounting pads for three GPIO buttons. Very nice!

This video gives an overview of the 1.8" color LCD, where to purchase and how to wire it to your Arduino. A detailed description of the pin outs are included for both the "fast" and "slow" wiring method. Also, I compare the write speed for both methods which demonstrates the performance of each.

Hi, I am having issues with my Sain Smart tft screen to work with the spark. Was wondering if there were any updates to this thread. I have connected the screen and using the code provided here but I only see a blank screen. Any help is appreciated. I am a novice and not sure where I am going wrong. Thanks

Is there a difference between the NANO and MEGA that would account for ST7735 displays working on NANO and not working on MEGA? I"m using the same pins on both....

Reason: The hooks on the backight of ER-TFT032-3.1 is always complained by most customers for inconvenient assembly. So we cancel the hooks in the new version of ER-TFT032-3.2.That"s the only difference for these two versions.

ER-TFT032-3.2 is 240x320 dots 3.2" color tft lcd module display with ILI9341 controller and optional 4-wire resistive touch panel and 3.2 inch capactive touch panel with controller FT6236,superior display quality,super wide viewing angle and easily controlled by MCU such as 8051, PIC, AVR, ARDUINO ARM and Raspberry PI.It can be used in any embedded systems,industrial device,security and hand-held equipment which requires display in high quality and colorful image.It supports 8080 8/16-bit parallel,3/4-wire serial interface. FPC with zif connector is easily to assemble or remove.Lanscape mode is also available.

Of course, we wouldn"t just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!".Here is the link for 3.2"TFT Touch Shield with Libraries, Examples.Schematic Diagram for Arduino Due,Mega 2560 and Uno . For 8051 microcontroller user,we prepared the detailed tutorial such as interfacing, demo code and development kit at the bottom of this page.

We covered the basics of accelerometer previously inUsing Arduino with Parts and Sensors – Accelerometer Part 1andUsing Arduino with Parts and Sensors – Accelerometer Part 2. Today we’ll be testing KX022-1020 accelerometer using TFT liquid crystal panel. We’ll discuss how to control the TFT LCD in more detail in the next article. In addition, we’ll further exploreArduino Create. For more information about Arduino Create, please refer back tothisarticle.

After adding the library, attach the accelerometer to the Sensor Shield (I2C I/F) and try running the sample program. The accelerometer should be set to 1.8V or 3.0V.

Now the sample program is working fine, let’s try to display the values on a 1.8 inch TFT LCD monitor. Although this TFT liquid crystal monitor has a resolution slightly smaller than 126 x 160 px, it’ll be quite useful when displaying numbers or letters with Arduino etc.

In the past, we used 7-segment LED to display numerical values only. But this time, I tried to display the graph along with the values obtained from the accelerometer.

When using the TFT monitor, the connection method and the library used in the program may be different depending on the specification of each TFT monitor. The TFT monitor used in this tutorial is a monitorSainSmart ST7735R. In addition to Arduino, the monitor is also compatible with Raspberry.

In order to use the monitor to run the program in Arduino, we’ll have to modify the downloaded library a little bit.We’ll go over how to control the TFT LCD in more detail in the next article. Once everything is set, you will be able to output numerical values in the monitor as shown in the video below:

In the next part, we’ll create a simple device using the same accelerometer and TFT monitor. We’ll show how to create graphs and display the values obtained from the accelerometer on the TFT monitor.

The DT018ATFT does not support 4-Wire SPI (also known as "4-line Serial Interface Protocol", 8-bit data, which includes a separate D/C signal line). DT018ATFT does not support this since the signal in ILI9163C datasheet called "SPI4" is hard coded to 0. However, a custom version of the FPC can be tooled to expose the proper 4-Wire SPI signals - please contact us for more details.

The provided display driver example code is designed to work with Microchip, however it is generic enough to work with other micro-controllers. The code includes display reset sequence, initialization and example PutPixel() function.

TFT displays are full color LCDs providing bright, vivid colors with the ability to show quick animations, complex graphics, and custom fonts with different touchscreen options. Available in industry standard sizes and resolutions. These displays come as standard, premium MVA, sunlight readable, or IPS display types with a variety of interface options including HDMI, SPI and LVDS. Our line of TFT modules include a custom PCB that support HDMI interface, audio support or HMI solutions with on-board FTDI Embedded Video Engine (EVE2).