Adafruit 1.8″ Color TFT Shield w/microSD and Joystick (v2) (ID: 802) Adafruit

DESCRIPTION

This lovely little shield is the best way to add a small, colourful and bright display to any project. They took the popular 1.8″ TFT breakout board and remixed it into an Arduino shield complete with a microSD card slot, a 5-way joystick navigation switch and three selection buttons! Since the display uses only 4 pins to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used easily to add a display & interface without exhausting the memory or pins.

The 1.8″ display has 128×160 colour pixels. Unlike the low cost “Nokia 6110” and similar LCD displays, which are CSTN type and thus have poor colour and slow refresh rates, this display is a true TFT! The TFT driver (ST7735R) can display full 18-bit colour (262,144 shades!).

The shield has the TFT display soldered on (it uses a delicate flex-circuit connector) as well as an ultra-low-dropout 3.3V regulator and a 3/5V level shifter so its safe to use with 3V or 5V Arduino compatibles. They also had some space left over so placed a microSD card holder (so you can easily load full colour bitmaps from a FAT16/FAT32 formatted microSD card), a 5-way navigation switch (left, right, up, down, select) and three tactile buttons marked A, B and C. 

If you just want to display text, shapes, lines, pixels, etc the shield uses the SPI pins (SCK/MOSI/MISO), I2C pins (SDA & SCL) and digital #8. For the microSD card, you’ll also give up Digital #4. This shield works with any Arduino UNO and compatibles, Mega, Zero, etc. If it’s shield compatible, you’re good to go.

Comes as a fully assembled and tested shield with a display, microSD card holder and nav switch as well as a stick of 0.1″ header. To finish up and use, you will need to solder the header onto the shield PCB, a quick 10 minute task.

Please Note:

• This shield is updated to be ‘Arduino R3’ format compatible so you can now use it with any and all Arduinos or Metros – including the Metro M0 or M4, Arduino Mega, Zero, etc. 
• It also uses Adafruit SeeSaw for the TFT backlight, TFT reset, and button inputs – you can query the buttons and joystick over I2C now, so only 2 pins are needed to communicate with all 8 switches.
• MicroSD card and Arduino are not included.
• Some soldering is required

FEATURES

• 1.8″ diagonal LCD TFT display
• Physical dimensions: 2.71″ (69mm) width, 2.1″ (53.5mm) height, 0.27″ (6.94mm) thickness (top of joystick)
• 128×160 resolution, 18-bit (262,144) colour
• 4 wire SPI digital interface
• Built-in microSD slot – uses 2 more digital lines
• 5V compatible! Use with 3.3V or 5V logic Arduinos
• Onboard 3.3V @ 150mA LDO regulator
• 2 white LED backlight, transistor connected. PWM controlled via I2C seesaw chip
• Comes with some header (this requires soldering)!
• Display current draw is mostly based on the backlight, with a full backlight, the current draw is ~100mA, this does not include the SD Card. SD cards can draw 20-100mA based on read/write. Measure current draw in the circuit to get precise numbers.

RESOURCES

• Overview and Learn
• Datasheets and Libraries