The 1.8" Colour TFT Display Breakout features a 128×160 pixel display with 18-bit colour, SPI connectivity, a microSD card slot and an EYESPI connector, supporting both 3.3V and 5V microcontrollers.
This lovely little display breakout is the best way to add a small, colourful and bright display to any project. Since the display uses 4-wire SPI to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used with every kind of microcontroller. Even a very small one with low memory and few pins available!
The 1.8" display has 128x160 colour pixels. Unlike the low cost "Nokia 6110" and similar LCD displays, which are CSTN type and thus have poor colour and slow refresh, this display is a true TFT! The TFT driver (ST7735R) can display full 18-bit colour (262,144 shades!). And the LCD will always come with the same driver chip so there's no worries that your code will not work from one to the other.
The breakout has the TFT display soldered on (it uses a delicate flex-circuit connector) as well as a ultra-low-dropout 3.3V regulator and a 3/5V level shifter so you can use it with 3.3V or 5V power and logic. They also had a little space so we placed a microSD card holder so you can easily load full colour bitmaps from a FAT16/FAT32 formatted microSD card. The microSD card is not included.
This display breakout also features an 18-pin "EYESPI" standard FPC connector with flip-top connector. You can use an 18-pin 0.5mm pitch FPC cable to connect to all the GPIO pins for when you want to skip the soldering.
Of course, Adafruit wouldn't just leave you with a datasheet and a "good luck!" - we've written a full open source graphics library that can draw pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, text and bitmaps as well as example code and a wiring tutorial. The code is written for Arduino but can be easily ported to your favourite microcontroller!
Breadboard, cables, controller and adapter are not included.
Features
1.8" diagonal LCD TFT display
128x160 resolution, 18-bit (262,144) colour
4 or 5 wire SPI digital interface
Built-in microSD slot - uses 2 more digital lines
5V compatible! Use with 3.3V or 5V logic
Onboard 3.3V @ 150mA LDO regulator
2 white LED backlight, transistor connected so you can PWM dim the backlight
1x10 header for easy breadboarding
4 x 0.9"/2mm mounting holes in corners
Overall dimensions: 1.35" x 2.2" x 0.25" (34mm x 56mm x 6.5mm)
Current draw is based on LED backlight usage: with full backlight draw is ~50mA
Revision History
As of December 30, 2022 - we've updated this TFT breakout with an EYESPI connector to make cabling easier with an 18-pin FPC. We also used Adafruit Pinguin to make a lovely silkscreen. The board is otherwise the same size, pinout, and functionality.
