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

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 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 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)
• 128x160 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