esp8266 tft display factory
// https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/3-2-TFT-LCD-Display-module-Touch-Screen-Shield-board-onboard-temperature-sensor-w-Touch-Pen/1199788_32755473754.html?spm=2114.12010615.0.0.bXDdc3
A number of display resolutions are supported. Assembled 480 x 320 TFT’s that have an SPI interface are rare. The 480 x 320 display supported by the library is an ILI9486 display designed for the Raspberry Pi by Waveshare. Clones are available 3.5″ and 4.0″ for circa $15. This RPi board design uses a 16 bit shift register (2x 74HC4094), a counter (1 x 74HC4040) and a hex inverter (74HC04). Many other RPi interface designs are sold that are not of this design so be careful if you are looking to buy a display!
Performance is reasonable but the display circuit design limits the SPI clock rate to 20MHz. An image in the library “Tools” folder of the library shows a hack to add a write strobe that boosts the speed for block writes (e.g. clear 480×320 screen in 24ms) and faster rendering Run Length Encoded fonts (1.2ms for 72 pixel height digit). The hack also delays the Write strobe from the 74HC4040 just enough to let the circuit run at a higher 27MHz SPI clock rate too.
The ILI9341 is typically a 320 240 TFT, these display drivers are good and almost work at 80MHz SPI clock rate (data sheet spec. is 25MHz). Expect some duff pixels at 80MHz but they seem to work reliably at 40MHz.
I was excited to see a game "engine emulator and compiler readily available for the ESP8266. It"s pretty neat! You can make your game using corax89"s repository and upload it to the ESP8266 to play. I actually used a fork of corax89"s code under mali1741 where he uses a nunchuk instead of the PCF8574 button matrix or I/O expander. However, implementing the hardware wasn"t as straightforward as I thought it would be. Implementing it directly from corax89"s repository resulted in a repeated flashing screen and MCU reset. The instructions to do it isn"t as fleshed out as well. So I cobbled together my own configuration in hopes that it will help others to implement theirs. Here we go!
We"ll be using the files found in the repository and the zipped libraries. The project uses theNintendoExtensionCtrl,coos, andTFT_eSPIlibraries. Make sure to use the ones zipped because the new versions of these libraries are not compatible. I found this out the hard way after trying several versions of each library from their respective repositories.
SanityCheck#1:ILI9341 SPI TFT LCD Screen (240x320)// Demo based on:// UTFT_Demo by Henning Karlsen// web: http://www.henningkarlsen.com/electronics/*The delay between tests is set to 0. The tests run so fast you will need tochange the WAIT value below to see what is being plotted!This sketch uses the GLCD and font 2 only.Make sure all the required fonts are loaded by editting theUser_Setup.h file in the TFT_eSPI library folder.############################################################################### DON"T FORGET TO UPDATE THE User_Setup.h FILE IN THE LIBRARY ############ TO SELECT THE FONTS YOU USE, SEE ABOVE ###############################################################################*/// Delay between demo pages#define WAIT 0 // Delay between tests, set to 0 to demo speed, 2000 to see what it does!#define CENTRE 240#include
Use this sketch by Henning Karlsen to check that your TFT wiring and libraries are working properly. It should display some graphics and cycle through them intermittently.
You can also use different pinouts, you"ll just have to changeUser_Setup.hfound in theTFT_eSPIlibrary in Arduino sketchbook folder/directory (this may vary depending on your setup. For example for mine, it"s found inDocuments/Arduino/libraries/TFT_eSPI). It should have something like this:// Only define one driver, the other ones must be commented out#define ILI9341_DRIVER#define TFT_CS PIN_D3 // Chip select control pin D3#define TFT_DC PIN_D4 // Data Command control pin#define TFT_RST -1 // Reset pin
You can check the size of your memory using the sketch by Markus Setller if you"re not sure:/*ESP8266 CheckFlashConfig by Markus SattlerThis sketch tests if the EEPROM settings of the IDE match to the Hardware*/void setup(void) {Serial.begin(115200);}void loop() {uint32_t realSize = ESP.getFlashChipRealSize();uint32_t ideSize = ESP.getFlashChipSize();FlashMode_t ideMode = ESP.getFlashChipMode();Serial.printf("Flash real id: %08X\n", ESP.getFlashChipId());Serial.printf("Flash real size: %u bytes\n\n", realSize);Serial.printf("Flash ide size: %u bytes\n", ideSize);Serial.printf("Flash ide speed: %u Hz\n", ESP.getFlashChipSpeed());Serial.printf("Flash ide mode: %s\n", (ideMode == FM_QIO ? "QIO" : ideMode == FM_QOUT ? "QOUT" : ideMode == FM_DIO ? "DIO" : ideMode == FM_DOUT ? "DOUT" : "UNKNOWN"));if (ideSize != realSize) {Serial.println("Flash Chip configuration wrong!\n");} else {Serial.println("Flash Chip configuration ok.\n");}delay(5000);}
We have it working but no games? It"s because we haven"t uploaded the games to theESP8266"s SPIFFS. There are numerous ways to do it, but we can use this Arduino plugin:https://github.com/esp8266/arduino-esp8266fs-plugin..The installation instructions can be found on the repository. It"s easy to follow, but I"ll break it down here:
So get yourself acquainted with how things work either through the "help" function, the user guide (https://corax89.github.io/esp8266Game/user_guide/index.html), or going through the code of other games on the web emulator and compiler:https://corax89.github.io/esp8266Game/index.html.Start by choosing a demo game and clicking through here:
A 80*160 pixel color display has the particular advantage that it is small: screen diagonal of 0.96 inch. This makes it attractive for use in (literally) small applications, particularly in scale models: railways, homes, cities. Attached to a ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontroller these displays can produce animations or day/night scenes, illuminated shop windows, traffic boards, advertisement panels and so forth. Here we wire a 0.96’ TFT with ST7735S controller to ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontroller boards
Model railway displays can be made more attractive by the addition of ‘live’ decoration: train station arrival/departure boards, information screens, advertisement boards, etcetera. Another type of decoration is animated shop windows. For this genre of application a miniature display can be an interesting option. All these applications have in common that any display used needs to be small, flat, economical and easy to fit, sometimes as retrofit, into the interior of plastic model structures such as model railway homes and Lego buildings. They even may be placed in structures belonging to model Christmas or Easter villages. The market supplies small monochrome displays, e.g. 0.91 inch diameter, 128*32 pixel OLED, the slightly bigger (0.96 inch), 64*128 pixel OLED, and the recently introduced 0.96’ 160*80 TFT. The OLEDS can be found in different versions (white, blue, yellow monochrome color). Very attractive is the 0.96’ TFT because it is capable of displaying 64k colors. Driven by a powerful ESP8266 or ESP32, animations can be run such as miniature billboards and advertisement boards. Static displays that change between day and night such as shop window illumination, are also among the possibilities. In this article we deal with the connectivity between a 0.96’, 160*80 pixel TFT and ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontroller boards. The TFT’s controller is a ST7735S which is perfectly supprted by Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI library.
Whilst the early ESP8266 development work was done with a configuration consisting of a breadboard with the display on it and with connections through jumper wires such assemblies perform very irregular. The 0.96′ SPI TFT responds very critically to imperfect wiring: one slightly loose jumper wire and the display won’t work. A minibench with soldered pin connectivity was therefore constructed for ESP8266 experiments, designed to support a Wemos D1 mini ESP8266 and a TFT display. The Wemos was selected here because its small footprint makes it easy to hide this microcontroller board inside buildings constructed from Lego blocks. Components of the minibench: a double-sided 60×40 mm soldering prototyping board, three 8-pin headers sockets and wires. The design, wiring scheme and the result are shown in figures 2 and 3.
Connected with an ESP32 the TFT display feels at ease. Maybe this is so because Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI library provides a User_Setup example that did not need tweaking. The display responded immediately, fast and reliable. Hardware SPI pins on the ESP32 are used for clock and data: pin 18 is connected to SCL at the display while pin 23 is connected to SDA of the display (see figure 4). The other pins breathe familiarity as well: RST of the display to D4 of the Wemos, DC to D2 and CS to pin D6. The pin on the display marked BLK remains unconnected; I noted comments on several fora that BLK may be connected to the 3.3V pin, to any pin on the ESP32 that supports pulse width modulation, or that the BLK pin can be set HIGH (backlight ON) or LOW (backlight OFF). The display at hand has no voltage regulator which implies that if one wants to use it with an Arduino Uno the precaution must be followed that control signals to the display run via voltage level conversion.
There are two major libraries supporting ST7735 controller-based TFTs: the Adafruit_GFX.h library and Bodmer’s TFT_eSPI.h library. My experience with the Adafruit_GFX.h library is that although the common graphic functions perform well, support of animations via a series of instructions ‘drawBitmap ()’ is relatively slow. Adafruit_GFX seems to be created for 160*128 displays. The library does not support the instruction ‘pushImage ()’. By contrast the TFT_eSPI.h library supports graphics as good as the GFX library while animations perform perfectly and at high speed, both with ‘drawBitmap ()’ and ‘pushImage ()’ functions. We further discuss here the TFT_eSPI library and keep Adafruit_GFX.h in storage for future experiments.
The TFT_eSPI library is different from most libraries, e.g. Adafruit_GFX and U8G2 in the sense that the ‘constructor’ is inside a special file whose name is ‘Setup_xxxx.h’ that resides in the folder ‘User_setups’. These special files are ascii which makes them endlessly tweakable with a common ascii text editor. The specific Setup_xxxx.h is called in another setup file named User_Setup_Select.h that resides in the library’s main directory. Consider Bodmer’s ‘constructor’ systematics as a kind of two-stage rocket. Both stages need to be edited befor launch. The first stage is User_Setup_Select.h and the second stage is Setup_xxxx.h. After the editing has been done successfully the display will indeed perform ‘as a rocket’!
The display was with both platforms tested with graphical tests that are available for everyone in the Arduino IDE through File → Examples, while I also ran several of my own graphical tests as well that I created c-arrays of pictures and displayed these supported by the TFT_eSPI.h library. I recommend here to upload example TFT_Meter_5 available in the TFT_eSPI library ensemble (in the Arduino IDE: File → Examples → TFT_eSPI → 160×128 → TFT_Meter_5). Brilliant!
Below follows the complete listing of ‘Setup_FW_ESP8266_ST7735_TFT_017.h’. For intimi: this is a modified Setup43_ST7735.h. I post here a screen capture because the WordPress editor has problems with the character ‘#’.
One way to demonstrate what one can do with a small display that runs animations is to make it part of a building, let’s say a shop window or something similar. Fortunately the 0.96′ display nicely fits in portrait orientation a front door in the Lego plastic building block system. So I scooped up some material from my children’s Lego assortment and constructed a Swiss chalet that features in the front door the 160*80 TFT display. This display is powered by an ESP32WROOM32. The rooms were fitted with white leds that can be switched on and off. Switching is controlled by an Arduino Nano and is completely separate from all the action happening at the front door. For the purpose of preparing Figure 5 I replaced the animation by a static 160*80 Panda bear image – “there’s a bear at the front door, mama!”.
What you’ll build in less that 20 minutes of soldering is a device, that (with demo sketch for Arduino IDE) is able to connect to your WiFi and fetch current WeatherStation data for pre-defined location. On first start, it will require to calibrate touch display used to control the device.
Even though it might not be visible at first sight, there’s a tremendous amount of work behind this thing (and by ‘thing’ is meant a combination of software and hardware). When you start installing the sample Weather Station sketch, it appears that you need to install some libraries, all of them by Daniel Eichhorn: ESP8266 WeatherStation which is a WeatherUnderground client, Json Streaming Parser that helps keeping low memory profile while getting huge API responses, and Mini Grafx library that implements a VSYNC equivalent through framebuffer for embedded devices.
The Arduino sketch has 438k built so there’s still plenty of room to add more features. However, I’m looking to dive deeply into existing example code in order to reuse as much as possible. There’s NNTP, visual WiFi display, display carousel, icons, fonts, colours and last but not least the touch screen support.
By these two functions, You can find out the resolution of the display. Just add them to the code and put the outputs in a uint16_t variable. Then read it from the Serial port by Serial.println();. First add Serial.begin(9600); in setup().
In this guide we’re going to show you how you can use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino. You’ll learn how to wire the display, write text, draw shapes and display images on the screen.
The 1.8 TFT is a colorful display with 128 x 160 color pixels. The display can load images from an SD card – it has an SD card slot at the back. The following figure shows the screen front and back view.
This module uses SPI communication – see the wiring below . To control the display we’ll use the TFT library, which is already included with Arduino IDE 1.0.5 and later.
The TFT display communicates with the Arduino via SPI communication, so you need to include the SPI library on your code. We also use the TFT library to write and draw on the display.
In which “Hello, World!” is the text you want to display and the (x, y) coordinate is the location where you want to start display text on the screen.
The 1.8 TFT display can load images from the SD card. To read from the SD card you use the SD library, already included in the Arduino IDE software. Follow the next steps to display an image on the display:
Note: some people find issues with this display when trying to read from the SD card. We don’t know why that happens. In fact, we tested a couple of times and it worked well, and then, when we were about to record to show you the final result, the display didn’t recognized the SD card anymore – we’re not sure if it’s a problem with the SD card holder that doesn’t establish a proper connection with the SD card. However, we are sure these instructions work, because we’ve tested them.
In this guide we’ve shown you how to use the 1.8 TFT display with the Arduino: display text, draw shapes and display images. You can easily add a nice visual interface to your projects using this display.
This ST7735S 1.8" TFT Display features a resolution of 128×160 and SPI (4-wire) communication. Integrated with an SD card slot, it allows to easily read full-color bitmaps from the SD card. The module provides users with two wiring methods: pin header wiring and GDI (General Display interface). You can directly use an FPC cable to connect the display to any controller with GDI interface like FireBeetle-M0. Plug and play, easy to wire. Besides, the display supports low refresh rate and offers good display effect and strong versatility. It can be used in applications like sensor monitoring and alarm, Arduino temperature monitor, fan controller, etc.
This product is a breakout module that features SPI communication mode and onboard GDI interface, which could reduce the complexity of wiring. It can easily display the read content from the SD card.
The BasicTest.ino code shows us the basic display functions of the screen: text display, number display, drawing lines, drawing rectangles and other demos.
ESP8266 was popular with hobbyists for a long time. Recently I decided to join the hype and bought this module along with a super cheap color TFT display (ILI9341). In this post I will describe the process of connecting those two, using already available code written for Arduino.
Once Arduino IDE is setup, you need to get the Adafruit ILI9341 library. Currently version 1.0.1 is available through Arduino IDE"s "manage libraries" interface. Unfortunately this version is broken for ESP8266.
Make sure you connect all display"s pins. Some tutorials do not mention RESET and LED pins and it took me some time to figure out that these can not be left floating.
The problem here is that ESP8266 has a watchdog set to one second. The lines test pattern takes longer than one second to execute and therefore the watchdog resets the processor.
The ILI9341 example is already "feeding" the watchdog using the yield(); call. Unfortunately, on the ESP8266, some code between the yield(); calls still takes more than one seconds (this code was written with Arduino in mind). To make this example run, you will have to add additional yield(); calls. Use trial and error method to figure out where to add those.
This is a single-chip controller/driver for 262K-color, graphic type TFT-LCD. It consists of 396 source line and 162 gate line driving circuits. This chip is capable of connecting directly to an external microprocessor, and accepts Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), 8-bit/9-bit/16-bit/18-bit parallel interface.
I want to see If I can connect a simple TFT display to my board to view my sensor distance readings, rather than having to use the ESPHome log viewer or Home Assistant dashboard.
To keep things simple I’ve unplugged my ultrasonic sensor from my board and removed the code for it in my ESPHome config file, so that I can just test the display and the display code by itself, before trying to get my sensor readings to display.
I’ve fallen at the first hurdle and don’t know if its a problem with the GPIO pins I’ve assigned, a hardware issue with the display, or the ESPHome driver.
The first half of the display from left to right is white, however the right half of the screen is showing multicoloured ‘white noise’ - sorry , the best I can describe it!
I know that my display uses the ST7735S controller, and I am referencing the ESPHome native support for the ST7735 controller, so first thoughts, after checking my wiring/connections are ok, is this difference is causing the incompatibility?
Ms.Josey 
Ms.Josey