Open the Arduino Library manager

Install the Adafruit GFX Library

If using an older version of the Arduino IDE (pre-1.8.10), also locate and install the Adafruit_BusIO library (newer versions do this automatically when using the Arduino Library Manager).

Adafruit ST7735 Library

Adafruit seesaw Library

You can read more about installing libraries in our tutorial.

Restart the Arduino IDE.

1.8" Shield with seesaw

If your shield looks like this, you have the 1.8" seesaw version (the most recent) which will work with just about any/all boards. For this version load up the seesaw_shield18_test example

Upload to your microcontroller, and open the serial port watcher at 9600 baud:

The sketch waits until the serial port is opened (you can make it auto-start once you know things are working by removing the while (!Serial); line

Check that the seesaw chip is detected, you should see text display on the TFT after a quick draw test.

If you don't have an SD card inserted, it will fail to init the SD card, that's ok you can continue with the test

Once you've gotten this far try pressing all the buttons on the board (except for RESET) to activate the invert-blinking loop.

The graphics don't look identical to the below but you should still press all the buttons as shown!

For more details about seesaw, check out our guide - we made a nice wrapper for the 1.8" TFT to control the backlight and read buttons but it still might be useful to know the underlying protocol