Since the PiTFT screen is fairly small, you may need to write custom UI programs. Pygame is the easiest way by far to do this.
Jeremy Blythe has an excellent tutorial here on getting started.
However, before you follow that link you'll want to set up pygame for the best compatibility:
Install Pygame: sudo apt-get install python3-pygame
(this will take a while)
Running SDL 1.2
If you experience issues with the current version of SDL, you can try running an older version.
Some versions of SDL 2.x and SDL 1.2.15-10 have some serious incompatibilities with touchscreen. You can force SDL 1.2 by running a script. (Thanks to heine in the forums!)
Edit a new file with sudo nano installsdl.sh
and paste in the following text:
#!/bin/bash # enable wheezy package sources echo "deb http://legacy.raspbian.org/raspbian wheezy main " > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheezy.list # set stable as default package source (currently buster) echo "APT::Default-release \"stable\"; " > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10defaultRelease # set the priority for libsdl from wheezy higher then the buster package echo "Package: libsdl1.2debian Pin: release n=buster Pin-Priority: -10 Package: libsdl1.2debian Pin: release n=wheezy Pin-Priority: 900 " > /etc/apt/preferences.d/libsdl # install apt-get update apt-get -y --allow-downgrades install libsdl1.2debian/wheezy
run
sudo sh ./installsdl.sh
it will force install SDL 1.2
OK now you can continue with pygame
Using the Capacitive touch screen in PyGame
The 2.8" Capacitive touch screen driver may not work by default in pygame, but this handy script shows how you can capture the device messages in python to create a UI
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