ESP8266 Community Forum

- Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:14 pm #30991 Hi this is my first post, really enjoying the esp8266 for various projects.

I have a bunch of these "QDtech" 1.8 inch LCDs that I really wanted to get working with Arduino ESP, so I modified the Adafruit_ST7735 Library to work with them. These displays use a Samsung S6D02A1 chip that is very similar to the ST7735. I have made the Library available on Github here: https://github.com/norm8332/QDTech_8266 . Attached is a picture of the board this applies to in case your not sure. The writing on the boards varies from vendor to vendor but they all look the same and are available cheap on ebay. They are clear, crisp and bright - and they are 10 times faster in the ESP8266 than on an arduino!
Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG-Dcr0BFBc
If you have any questions let me know. Have fun!

-Norm

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

- Mon Feb 08, 2016 10:03 pm #40755 Do you know if this code still works with a recent (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-GFX-Library/commit/9ec1f6d4ee40421edeab716c10effaffee86a81a) version of the Adafruit GFX library? I bought two of these boards, soldered the J1 bridge to work on 3V3 and hooked it up to a NodeMCU v2 as follows:

Code: Select allDisplay Pin    NodeMCU Pin
RST            D0 / GPIO16
CS             D8 / GPIO15
D/C            D1 / GPIO5
DIN            D7 / GPIO13 / MOSI
CLK            D5 / GPIO14 / SCLK
VCC            3V3
BL             3V3
GND            GND


Your example sketch compiles using the latest https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/commit/04c66091af998172fdee34cc31d6f63df6da13b0 ESP8266 core for Arduino release running on Arduino 1.6.5 but just displays a series of colored lines on the display. I know the displays are ok because they display the https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/TFTDisplayText sketch correctly when hooked up to a 3V3 Arduino Pro Mini running at 8MHz. The TFT library bundled with 1.6.5 uses what looks like a fairly old version of Adafruit_GFX and Adafruit_ST7735 and this is the only code I have gotten to work on the AVR platform using these displays as well. -- Jeff

- Tue Feb 09, 2016 10:18 am #40792 I have never gotten this Qtech1802 blue PCB to work. Fortunately the red PCB similar ST7735 LCD's work just fine. It could be most of these Qtech 1802's are duds if so I have 3 of them or they have different controllers with quirky inits.
It would be nice if the PCB assembly contained an EEPROM with the init for the controller they are using.
The issue with adafruit libraries is that they are only going to maintain code for the LCD they sell. It is often safer to rewrite their libraries to avoid dependencies especially if the esp8266 IDE is used.

- Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:23 pm #40818

I have never gotten this Qtech1802 blue PCB to work. Fortunately the red PCB similar ST7735 LCD's work just fine. It could be most of these Qtech 1802's are duds if so I have 3 of them or they have different controllers with quirky inits.

I was thinking maybe an ILI9341-based controller might have better support these days for non-AVR processors based on the number of posts I've seen along with http://nailbuster.com/?page_id=341 and https://github.com/pingumacpenguin/STM32-O-Scope/wiki/Construction-part2. Haven't found something as small as 1.8" with this controller, though.

The issue with adafruit libraries is that they are only going to maintain code for the LCD they sell. It is often safer to rewrite their libraries to avoid dependencies especially if the esp8266 IDE is used.

Now that they are selling a couple of their own ESP8266 boards I am hoping that this situation will change somewhat for the better.