Hello,
I bought a 3.5" touch screen on ebay, but unfortunately I only received the screen, without the controller board(please see attached).
Is there any way I could buy the controller board separately?
Thanks in advance for your help !
Turn it upside down. You will see the TFT screen. You will never see the controller. It is an unpackaged chip bonded to the TFT panel.
You require a breakout pcb e.g. with a ZIF ribbon socket and 2.54mm spaced header pins.
Dismantle any "TFT shield" and you will see a panel like your photo. Ribbon like your photo.
Ribbon is either soldered directly to the shield pcb or via a ZIF connector.
However "cheap" your Ebay purchase was, it is painful to connect to an Arduino.
Oh. If you want to use a 5V Uno, Nano, Mega, ... you will need level shifter chips too.
David.
Hi David,
Thank you for your reply !
The screen was advertised as being also with the board needed to connect to a raspberry pi, but the seller only sent the screen. Now paypal does not cover because they say I need to send it back for the refund, which in my case means the shipping is more expensive than the item itself.
I was hoping that I might be able to source that missing board myself, but so far it seems that it's not that easy.
Dismantle any "TFT shield" and you will see a panel like your photo. Ribbon like your photo.
Ribbon is either soldered directly to the shield pcb or via a ZIF connector.
If you want help, you should post a link to the original sale page.
As a general rule bare panels come as either Parallel or SPI. i.e. you don't have access to all of the IM# pins.
The RPi does not have enough header sockets for Parallel. The Hats tend to be SPI.
If the panel is 8080-16 Parallel, you need a shift register abortion like Waveshare Hats.
If the panel is SPI, you just need to connect ribbon signals to the Hat socket.
Life is much simpler if you buy a Hat for RPi or a Shield for Arduino.
Buying bare panels might be cheap but you need hardware skills (and possibly software skills)
David.
Hi David,
Unfortunately the original sale page is no longer available.
But it was similar to this one:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5-TFT-Touch-Screen-Monitor-LCD-Display-Case-Heatsink-For-Raspberry-Pi-3-2-B-B-/192811000635
My intention was never to buy the bare panel.
Your link shows a pcb:
I am not a RPi person. But the single TQFP chip on the pcb looks very different to the Waveshare shift register 4-chip abortion.
I suggest that you cut your losses and buy a Hat.
David.
Hi David,
I think you are right, might be better to just buy a Hat.