ILI9xxx TFT LCD Series

Models

With this display driver you can control the following displays:

  • GC9A01A

  • ILI9341

  • ILI9342

  • ILI9481

  • ILI9481-18 (ILI9481 in 18 bit, i.e. 262K color, mode)

  • ILI9486

  • ILI9488

  • ILI9488_A (alternative gamma configuration for ILI9488)

  • M5STACK

  • S3BOX

  • S3BOX_LITE

  • ST7735

  • ST7796

  • ST7789V

  • TFT 2.4

  • TFT 2.4R

  • WAVESHARE_RES_3_5 (Waveshare Pico-ResTouch-LCD-3.5)

More display drivers will come in the future.

Usage

This component is the successor of the ILI9341 component supporting more display driver chips from the ILI and related families.

The ILI9xxx display platform allows you to use ILI9341 (datasheet, Aliexpress) and other displays from the same chip family with ESPHome. As this is a somewhat higher resolution display and requires additional pins beyond the basic SPI connections, and a reasonable amount of RAM, it is not well suited for the ESP8266.

Note

Use of 16 bit colors requires double the amount of RAM as 8 bit, and may need PSRAM to be available.

../../_images/ili9341-full.jpg

ILI9341 display

# Example minimal configuration entry
display:
  - platform: ili9xxx
    model: ili9341
    dc_pin: GPIOXX
    reset_pin: GPIOXX
    invert_colors: false
    show_test_card: true

Configuration variables:

All graphical display configuration options are available, plus the following.

  • model (Required): The model of the display. Options are:

    • M5STACK, TFT 2.4, TFT 2.4R, S3BOX, S3BOX_LITE, WSPICOLCD

    • ILI9341, ILI9342, ILI9486, ILI9488, ILI9488_A (alternative gamma configuration for ILI9488)

    • ILI9481, ILI9481-18 (18 bit mode)

    • ST7789V, ST7796, ST7735

    • GC9A01A, CUSTOM

  • dc_pin (Required, Pin Schema): The DC pin.

  • reset_pin (Optional, Pin Schema): The RESET pin.

  • cs_pin (Optional, Pin Schema): The CS pin.

Note

A DC pin is always required, the CS pin and RESET pin will only be needed if the specific board has those pins wired to GPIOs.

  • color_palette (Optional): The type of color pallet that will be used in the ESP’s internal 8-bits-per-pixel buffer. This can be used to improve color depth quality of the image. For example if you know that the display will only be showing grayscale images, the clarity of the display can be improved by targeting the available colors to monochrome only. Options are:

    • NONE (default)

    • GRAYSCALE

    • IMAGE_ADAPTIVE

  • color_order (Optional): Should be one of bgr (default) or rgb.

  • color_palette_images (Optional): A list of image files that will be used to generate the color pallet for the display. This should only be used in conjunction with -color_palette: IMAGE_ADAPTIVE above. The images will be analysed at compile time and a custom color pallet will be created based on the most commonly occuring colors. A typical setting would be a sample image that represented the fully populated display. This can significantly improve the quality of displayed images. Note that these images are not stored on the ESP device, just the 256byte color pallet created from them.

  • dimensions (Optional): Dimensions of the screen, specified either as width x height (e.g 320x240) or with separate config keys. If not provided the dimensions will be determined by the model selected.

    • height (Required, int): Specifies height of display in pixels.

    • width (Required, int): Specifies width of display.

    • offset_width (Optional, int): Specify an offset for the x-direction of the display, typically used when an LCD is smaller than the maximum supported by the driver chip. Default is 0

    • offset_height (Optional, int): Specify an offset for the y-direction of the display. Default is 0.

  • invert_colors (Required): Specifies whether the display colors should be inverted. Options are true or false - if you are unsure, use false and change if the colors are not as expected.

  • pixel_mode (Optional): Allows forcing the display into 18 or 16 bit mode. Options are 18bit or 16bit. If unspecified, the pixel mode will be determined by the model choice. Not all displays will work in both modes.

  • rotation (Optional): Rotate the display presentation in software. Choose one of 0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°. This option cannot be used with transform.

  • transform (Optional): Transform the display presentation using hardware. All defaults are false. This option cannot be used with rotation.

    • swap_xy (Optional, boolean): If true, exchange the x and y axes.

    • mirror_x (Optional, boolean): If true, mirror the x axis.

    • mirror_y (Optional, boolean): If true, mirror the y axis.

Note

The rotation variable will do a software based rotation. It is better to use the transform option to rotate the display in hardware. Use one of the following combinations: - 90 degrees - use swap_xy with mirror_x - 180 degrees - use mirror_x with mirror_y - 270 degrees - use swap_xy with mirror_y

With 90 and 270 rotations you will also need to swap the height and width in dimensions (see example below.

  • init_sequence (Optional): Allows custom initialisation sequences to be added. See below for more information.

To modify the SPI setting see SPI bus . The default data_rate is set to 40MHz and the spi_mode mode is MODE0 but some displays require MODE3 (*).

Note: The maximum achievable data rate will depend on the chip type (e.g. ESP32 vs ESP32-S3) the pins used (on ESP32 using the default SPI pins allows higher rates) and the connection type (on-board connections will support higher rates than long cables or DuPont wires.) If in doubt, start with a low speed and test higher rates to find what works. A MISO pin should preferably not be specified, as this will limit the maximum rate in some circumstances, and is not required if the SPI bus is used only for the display.

Additional inititialisation sequences

The init_sequence option allows additional configuration of the driver chip. Provided commands will be sent to the driver chip in addition to, and after the chosen model’s pre-defined commands. It requires a list of byte sequences:

init_sequence:
  - [ 0xD0, 0x07, 0x42, 0x18]
  - [ 0xD1, 0x00, 0x07, 0x10]

Each entry represents a single-byte command followed by zero or more data bytes.

CUSTOM model

The CUSTOM model selection is provided for otherwise unsupported displays, and requires both dimensions: and init_sequence: to be specfied. There is no pre-defined init sequence.

Configuration examples

To use hardware rotation, use both dimensions and transform, e.g. this config will turn a landscape display with height 320 and width 480 into portrait. Note that the dimensions are those of the final display.

transform:
  swap_xy: true
  mirror_x: true
dimensions:
  height: 480
  width: 320

To utilize the color capabilities of this display module, you’ll likely want to add a color: section to your YAML configuration; please see color for more detail on this configuration section.

To use colors in your lambda:

color:
  - id: my_red
    red: 100%
    green: 3%
    blue: 5%

...

display:
    ...
    lambda: |-
      it.rectangle(0,  0, it.get_width(), it.get_height(), id(my_red));

To bring in color images:

image:
  - file: "image.jpg"
    id: my_image
    resize: 200x200
    type: RGB24

...

display:
    ...
    lambda: |-
      it.image(0, 0, id(my_image));

To configure a dimmable backlight:

# Define a PWM output on the ESP32
output:
  - platform: ledc
    pin: GPIOXX
    id: backlight_pwm

# Define a monochromatic, dimmable light for the backlight
light:
  - platform: monochromatic
    output: backlight_pwm
    name: "Display Backlight"
    id: back_light
    restore_mode: ALWAYS_ON

To configure an image adaptive color pallet to show greater than 8 bit color depth with a RAM limited screen buffer:

image:
  - file: "sample_100x100.png"
    id: myimage
    resize: 100x100
    type: RGB24

display:
  - platform: ili9xxx
    model: ili9341
    dc_pin: GPIOXX
    reset_pin: GPIOXX
    rotation: 90
    id: tft_ha
    color_palette: IMAGE_ADAPTIVE
    color_palette_images:
      - "sample_100x100.png"
      - "display_design.png"
    lambda: |-
      it.image(0, 0, id(myimage));

Using the transform options to hardware rotate the display on a Lilygo T-Embed. This has an st7789v but only uses 170 pixels of the 240 width. This config rotates the display into landscape mode using the driver chip.

display:
  - platform: ili9xxx
    model: st7789v
    dimensions:
      height: 170
      width: 320
      offset_height: 35
      offset_width: 0
    transform:
      swap_xy: true
      mirror_x: false
      mirror_y: true
    color_order: bgr
    invert_colors: true
    data_rate: 80MHz
    cs_pin: GPIOXX
    dc_pin: GPIO13
    reset_pin: GPIO9

For Lilygo TTGO Boards if you move from the st7789v to this you need the following settings to make it work.

display:
  - platform: ili9xxx
    model: st7789v
    #TTGO TDisplay 135x240
    dimensions:
      height: 240
      width: 135
      offset_height: 40
      offset_width: 52
    # Required or the colors are all inverted, and Black screen is White
    invert_colors: true

See Also