Interfacing a WaveShare SpotPear (A) V3 display for RPi with an Arduino

Has anyone managed to interface a WaveShare SpotPear (A) V3 display with an Arduino? I have such a display and wanted to make use of it rather than buying an Arduino specific one but have not been able to get it going. The connections look straightforward enough once you realise that CD=DC=RS, it needs power (5V/GND), SPI SI and CLK and three control pins. I am using a Micro because it is a 3.3V board and a 5V feed to the TFT display 5V pin.

The driver library is a little more complicated. It has an XPT2046 touch controller, but I am not concerned with that at the moment. as I am not sure whether is an ILI9341 or ILI9486. I did come across this thread:

This shows the circuit which consists of the touch drive IC and 4 x 74HC040 chips a 74HC040, a couple of 74CH4040 and a 74HC4049 chips. I have tried several drivers, including MCUFRIEND, Adafruit_IL9341, Icglib, the ILI9486 mentioned in the above thread and some others but all I get each time is a white screen. I am unsure what I am missing.

Since this forum does not seem to accept images, I have posted a photo here, although I am not sure how long it will stay there for:

I should also add that I don't have a shield so am wiring it directly.

OOH! Aparently I deleted my topic although I have no idea how! It is fortunate that forum allows the deletion to be undone!

It does!
Screenshot_20220304-132622-050

Can you share a link to the specs of this display? I googled for "WaveShare SpotPerl" and the first got was this forum topic!

but you are certain it is one of those two?

I was surprised that you did not get an answer from one of the known TFT experts of this forum.
But the reason is simple: you need to provide enough information!

A link to the display would be helpful. Better: locate your display on the Waveshare website!

Your picture doesn't show enough to identify your display. But it does show that the Waveshare SPI Kludge is used, a conversion circuit to convert SPI commands and data to the parallel interface of the controller.

There are multiple libraries that can handle this, most prominent is https://github.com/Bodmer/TFT_eSPI, which now also supports RP2040, I think I have seen.

Jean-Marc

Added: I thought I had read RP2040 in your post. But I may have mixed up posts.
If you use a processor that is not supported by TFT_eSPI, you could try ILI9486_SPI. It has less functionality, but can be used with most processors.

It appears to be one of these:
Waveshare SpotPear

I dug out an RPi 2 board today, hooked it up and installed the WaveShare driver following the instructions provided in the link. Unfortunately I also get a white screen only on the Pi as well. I know the drivers worked fine last time I used it, so either it has either become faulty or I have toasted it somehow when connecting it to the Arduino. A bit odd, as all the ICs seem to be at least 5V tolerant. I dare say it could perhaps be repaired by tracing and replacing whichever chip might have failed. Not sure whether it is worthwhile as the touch overlay is cracked. The lower display layer seems to be OK.

Could be. I have several of these.

One of the first TFTs I bought. The first was the version for Arduino MEGA, direct connectable shield.

But there may be variants, e.g. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32855219581.html

It is ALWAYS wise to post a link to the actual Display that you have bought.

It removes all ambiguity. And we can probably even advise the exact User_Setup_## file to use with TFT_eSPI.

You select the appropriate ready-made User_Setup_## file.
Wire with exactly the same scheme.
You run the examples.

If you have a problem, quote User_Setup number. quote the example sketch by name.

If you have custom wiring, copy-paste any wiring changes. Post a photo of your actual wiring.

David.

Mine came with a couple of Pi boards that I purchased. I managed to crack it while trying to fit it into a cheap Pi case made with multicoloured layers. The fit was very poor. Was well miffed and ended up aborting the project I had in mind at the time.

I have just purchased an Arduino I2C TFT display as a replacement.

Please don't make up some vague English description.
Just copy-paste the actual link. e.g. Ebay sale page.

You could try with different SPI bitrates. I had problems when I last tested these displays on different processors. I did not find out the reason. But the "translation" of bitrate to SPI speed is board package dependent. It looked like lower bitrates didn't work.

Jean-Marc

It didn't seem relevant to the display under discussion, so I didn't think it necessary to put a link to it, however, I guess it might have been helpful to add one. This is the display I have now purchased as a replacement.

It seems costs have gone up a fair bit because when I looked at replacing my cracked 3.5in display with a like-for -like, a replacement could be had for £17. Now one costs £27. As it is, I decided to go for a slightly bigger 5in one. Its still has the same resolution as the 3.5in one though.

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