It's easy to use display breakouts with Python and the Adafruit CircuitPython RGB Display module. This module allows you to easily write Python code to control the display.
Since the PiTFT comes preassembled, all you need to do is place it onto the GPIO pins.
Since there's dozens of Linux computers/boards you can use we will show wiring for Raspberry Pi. For other platforms, please visit the guide for CircuitPython on Linux to see whether your platform is supported.
Connect the display as shown below to your Raspberry Pi.
For the 1.14":
For the 1.3":
Setup
You'll need to install the Adafruit_Blinka library that provides the CircuitPython support in Python. This may also require enabling SPI on your platform and verifying you are running Python 3. Since each platform is a little different, and Linux changes often, please visit the CircuitPython on Linux guide to get your computer ready!
If you have already installed the kernel module, you will need to remove it by editing your /boot/firmware/config.txt file before proceeding.
Python Installation of RGB Display Library
Once that's done, from your command line run the following commands:
pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-rgb-display
If your default Python is version 3 you may need to run 'pip' instead. Just make sure you aren't trying to use CircuitPython on Python 2.x, it isn't supported!
If that complains about pip3 not being installed, then run this first to install it:
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
DejaVu TTF Font
Raspberry Pi usually comes with the DejaVu font already installed, but in case it didn't, you can run the following to install it:
sudo apt-get install fonts-dejavu
This package was previously calls ttf-dejavu, so if you are running an older version of Raspberry Pi OS, it may be called that.
Pillow Library
We also need PIL, the Python Imaging Library, to allow graphics and using text with custom fonts. There are several system libraries that PIL relies on, so installing via a package manager is the easiest way to bring in everything:
sudo apt-get install python3-pil
NumPy Library
A recent improvement of the RGB_Display library makes use of NumPy for some additional speed. This can be installed with the following command:
sudo apt-get install python3-numpy
That's it. You should be ready to go.
This button test demo will test to make sure you have everything setup correctly. Go ahead and save the file to your Raspberry Pi in your home directory as rgb_display_minipitfttest.py.
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021 ladyada for Adafruit Industries
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
import digitalio
import board
from adafruit_rgb_display.rgb import color565
from adafruit_rgb_display import st7789
# Configuration for CS and DC pins for Raspberry Pi
cs_pin = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.CE0)
dc_pin = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D25)
reset_pin = None
BAUDRATE = 64000000 # The pi can be very fast!
# Create the ST7789 display:
display = st7789.ST7789(
board.SPI(),
cs=cs_pin,
dc=dc_pin,
rst=reset_pin,
baudrate=BAUDRATE,
width=135,
height=240,
x_offset=53,
y_offset=40,
)
backlight = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D22)
backlight.switch_to_output()
backlight.value = True
buttonA = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D23)
buttonB = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D24)
buttonA.switch_to_input()
buttonB.switch_to_input()
# Main loop:
while True:
if buttonA.value and buttonB.value:
backlight.value = False # turn off backlight
else:
backlight.value = True # turn on backlight
if buttonB.value and not buttonA.value: # just button A pressed
display.fill(color565(255, 0, 0)) # red
if buttonA.value and not buttonB.value: # just button B pressed
display.fill(color565(0, 0, 255)) # blue
if not buttonA.value and not buttonB.value: # none pressed
display.fill(color565(0, 255, 0)) # green
Go ahead and run it with this command:
python3 rgb_display_minipitfttest.py
Once it is running, push the buttons. The top button should make the display light up Red, the bottom Blue, and pressing both at the same time should make it Green.
Modifications for the 1.3" Display
To get the stats.py example to display properly on the 1.3" TFT Display, you will need to make some changes due to the different geometry of the display. The parameters you will need to adjust are the height, width, x_offset, y_offset, and rotation.
The new values should be:
height = 240width = 240x_offset = 0y_offset = 80-
rotation = 180
The easiest way to replace them may be to copy the following code block and replace it in the above code.
# Create the ST7789 display:
disp = st7789.ST7789(
spi,
cs=cs_pin,
dc=dc_pin,
rst=reset_pin,
baudrate=BAUDRATE,
width=240,
height=240,
x_offset=0,
y_offset=80,
)
# Create blank image for drawing.
# Make sure to create image with mode 'RGB' for full color.
height = disp.width # we swap height/width to rotate it to landscape!
width = disp.height
image = Image.new("RGB", (width, height))
rotation = 180
Text editor powered by tinymce.
