My Arduino TFT Touch Screen Project
I’m working on a hobby project where I’m building Arduino gadgets.
The biggest problem working on Arduinos is that they are more or less experimental and finding drivers and software packages can be quite challenging. Often, it becomes the most time consuming part of any Arduino project.
Arduino TFT LCDs
Recently, I’ve started experimenting with Arduino TFT LCDs and what a joy it is to find all the missing libraries and “How-To” resources to pull this off.
I’m posting this information because it helped me with the issue I was having.
Sometimes it is not just the drivers, but the software to makes Arduino hardware run that often sends you down the rabbit hole. Often, you’ll spend hours troubleshooting your project over a code bug but never being 100% sure you hardware isn’t failing.
Once I finally found the right drivers and a couple of code tweaks, I finally got the 2.4 inch TFT LCD to work a bit and even a drawing app that let you draw with your finger or stylus.
You can find more detailed information and some sample code on Arduino’s Liquid Crystal page.
Arduino Code Example: TFT LCD
(lcd.ino)
As you can see in the code example below, #include <LiquidCrystal.h>
LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2);
void setup() {
lcd.begin(16, 2);
lcd.print("hello, world!");
}
void loop() {
}
Arduino Code Example: TFT LCD
(lcd_clear.ino)
This example is similar but we added a line to “setCursor”.
I saved this file as lcd_clear.ino then pushed it to the Arduino and it ran.
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2);
void setup() {
lcd.begin(16, 2);
lcd.setCursor(2, 1);
lcd.print("TGIF!!!");
}
void loop() {
}Troubleshooting Arduino TFT LCDs
Below are some videos that were helpful to me in troubleshooting my Arduino TFT LCD problems. Use these video along with the resources I reference earlier and I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it all work.
