Skip to content
Chicago Electronic Distributors has become part of the PiShop family. Please place orders through PiShop.us, as we are no longer taking orders through this site. More details are in our blog!
Chicago Electronic Distributors has become part of the PiShop family. Please place orders through PiShop.us, as we are no longer taking orders through this site. More details are in our blog!

Add some jazz & pizazz to your project with a color touchscreen LCD. This TFT display is big (3.5" diagonal) bright (6 white-LED backlight) and colorful! 480x320 pixels with individual RGB pixel control, this has way more resolution than a black and white 128x64 display, and double our 2.8" TFT. As a bonus, this display has a resistive touchscreen attached to it already, so you can detect finger presses anywhere on the screen.

This display has a controller built into it with RAM buffering, so that almost no work is done by the microcontroller. The display can be used in two modes: 8-bit or SPI. For 8-bit mode, you'll need 8 digital data lines and 4 or 5 digital control lines to read and write to the display (12 lines total). SPI mode requires only 5 pins total (SPI data in, data out, clock, select, and d/c) but is slower than 8-bit mode. In addition, 4 pins are required for the touch screen (2 digital, 2 analog).

Of course, Adafruit wouldn't just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!". Check out their detailed tutorial for wiring, test and example code!  For 8-bit interface fans they have written a full open source graphics library that can draw pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, text, and more. For SPI users, there is a library as well, it is separate from the 8-bit library since both versions are heavily optimized. Adafruit also has a touch screen library that detects x, y and z (pressure) and example code to demonstrate all of it.

Technical Details

Specifications:

  • 3.5" diagonal LCD TFT display
  • 320x480 resolution, 18-bit (262,000) color capable - our code uses only 16-bits since its faster.
  • 8 bit digital interface, plus 4 or 5 control lines (12 pins minimum) or SPI mode with 4 or 5 SPI data/control lines (4 pins minimum) - not including the touch screen.
  • 5V compatible! Use with 3.3V or 5V logic such as an Arduino
  • Onboard 3.3V @ 150mA LDO regulator
  • 6 white LED backlight with DC/DC constant-current boost. You can PWM dim the backlight
  • 1x20 headers for easy breadboarding
  • 4-wire resistive touchscreen
  • Datasheets, PCB CAD files, and Fritzing object in the tutorial

Dimensions:

  • Screen: 56mm x 85mm x 4mm / 2.2" x 3.4" x 0.2"
  • PCB: 56mm x 97mm x 2mm / 2.2" x 3.8" x 0.1"
  • Weight: 52g
    RoHS 2 2011 65 EU CompliantRoHS 2 2015 863 EU Compliant

    Compare products

    0 of 3 items selected

    Select first item to compare

    Select second item to compare

    Select third item to compare

    Compare