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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

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