Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • State Suggested Answer
  • Replies 25 replies
  • Answers 5 answers
  • Subscribers 30 subscribers
  • Views 2174 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Hi Ben, long time watcher of the TBHS. Love it & you. Need Help with Raspberry pi 2 & LCD please!

Former Member

Super new to the raspberry pi scene been watching you do various projects with them and figured it would be something new and cool to check out. got my noobs installed perfect now running raspbian.

been moving along following different tutorials trying out new things.

 

I finaly got stuff working on my Raspbian good and I'm starting to get a little more comfortable doing stuff on my Pi like, 1.) Installed apache and MySQL got wordpress working. (been tinkering around with it a little) also got a working copy of minecraft server vrs.1.8.4 working on my Pi.

 

Recently wanted to make it a bit more portable.

So I bought the 3.5" TFT LCD from Waveshare spotpear.

thought it was a no brainer plug N play with the Gpio

I pretty sure it is. but I cant seem to get or find proper soft ware, & or documentation to easily install it. there was no software when I got my lcd. it told me to go to few sites which were for the older pi.

I've read through few pages of peoples post seems a lot of new and regulars on the  Pi scene are having similar problems with lcd installations.

Currently My pi is running on hdmi to tv.

 

Best Related web page related info I could find so far Is http://www.wvshare.com/product/3.5inch-RPi-LCD-A.htm

 

image

image

 

Please say you can help figure this out.

 

Also, if anyone else who reads this if you also have a raspi2 w/ the 3.5" tft lcd Waveshare Spotpear addon card let us know if you got it working right and if so let  us know what you did or didn't do, please also provide software as I have been unable to find it.

  • 0 in reply to colecago

    what do you mean backpack?

     

    it has the lcd touch panel and rear of it (not sure if its glued together or just clipped together, but has a pcb board with chips and gpio femal connection.

    Added images of what it looks like. to help with discussion.

  • 0

    That's what I meant, I didn't know what controller it had with it if any.

     

    Your question is probably better suited for the Pi forums, I've found a few threads on that specific TFT

    https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=98069

  • 0 in reply to colecago

    nope still no luck there. image and it seems a lot of people are having same problem with my exact product they get a white screen and cant get past that.

    Hope someone knows a way to fix this.

  • 0 in reply to Former Member

    Did you try that person's custom image?  It looks like someone got it working near the end of that thread.  It's definitely more a question for Pi forums and not Ben Heck forums, I'm not sure we have any Pi guru's on here.

  • 0 in reply to colecago

    Apparently its only for the 3.2 drivers not sure if anyone's created 3.5 drivers for the pi2 yet... which may be the problem.

    Was just hoping for someone to see this maybe, and help. Appreciated your posts the articles were nice to read to understand a bit better, so for that thank you.

    I'll leave this open, but think ill have till few paychecks from now and try this http://www.sainsmart.com/sainsmart-3-5-inch-tft-lcd-320-480-touch-screen-display-for-raspberry-pi-2-b-b.html

    its supposed to for sure work with the pi 2. maybe I can resell my 3.5" waveshare, to recoup my losses on it.

  • 0

    I have that same screen, ordered from china off e-mail for around $20.

     

    Ill start by saying that you get what you pay for. It is not as easy to install but it works great!

     

    These instructions should get it up and running on the Pi.

     

    However, getting it to rotate was a pain and I ended up using bits and pieces of the Adafruit instructions as well.

     

    You have to do quite a bit of mucking with the /boot/config.txt to include the fbtft device entries and some work on the X11Config to get it all rotated and the touch working correctly.

     

    Hope it helps, If not drop me a line and Ill help you get it working.

  • 0 in reply to Former Member

    well tried your options, think I'm just not doing something right. As I'm still only getting a white screen. nothing else.

    is it possible for you to zip a fresh image with it all installed. and I can install that image on to my 16gb micro sd class 10 card.

    and see if it at least gets the screen to work?

     

     

    ====================================================================================================

    Found someone with same screen (they had a image) but they have old Raspberry pi. Do not know if that matters or not in this case.

    I had spare micro SD card so I applied the image to it. and it booted right up. not sure how but everything sort of works. But as this is I wont be able to use my own image or fresh copy of raspbian, or Ubuntu if I wanted to. I would not know how to make that work.

     

    So if I want to use this 3.5" lcd it looks like I'm stuck using this guys image. image

    But image  happy image to find out that the LCD does work so does the tft part. the windows in the desktop environment are really hard to navigate due to resolution not sure how to make the windows

    fit the 320 x 480 resolution.

    Also another bummer with this image is I can not use the HDMI port anymore. image

    not sure how to make both work at same time or if they can even do that.

     

    Tried to attach the image so you guys could check it out. but the size is over a 1gb even after I Rared it. image

     

    any ideas on any of these issues would be great. thanks for all the help so far.

  • 0 in reply to Former Member

    I got the same screen

    I followed instructions on http://futurice.com/blog/id-like-to-have-some-lcd-on-my-pi and it works !

    the trick is that

    1. it's called Waveshare Spotpear 3.5" RPi LCD (A)
    2. it is not officially supported yet, but with flexfb one can tweak parameters manually

     

    Hope it will work for you !

    Patrick

  • 0 in reply to Former Member

    There is an old saying about giving a man a fish.

     

    Rather than giving you an image, how about I give you step by step instruction with explanations.

     

    Get the latest copy of the Raspbian and boot your pi up. The first time you boot it, there will be a menu to expand the image and do some other stuff. go ahead and set it up as you like. The change is that under Advanced Options you need to turn on "SPI    ENABLE/DISABLE AUTOMATIC LOADING“


    once you are back in and at a command line run the following command


    sudo REPO_URI=https://github.com/notro/rpi-firmware rpi-update


    This will download and update the firmware. Once this process is done it will tell you that you have to reboot. Do do that yet, lets get some other setup out of the way


    edit the /boot/cmdline.txt by doing a


    sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt


    In this file is a single long line that is used during boot. Add the following to the end of it.


    fbtft_device.custom fbtft_device.name=flexfb fbtft_device.gpios=dc:24,reset:25 fbtft_device.bgr=1 fbtft_device.speed=16000000


    This sets up the frame buffer to use the 3.5" screen and tells it to load the device. If you want the 3.5" screen to be your only video device you can add

     

    fbcon=map:1 fbcon=font:VGA8x8

     

    To the end of the line as well. That sets it up so when booting it shows all the boot information on the screen in the correct resolution and font size.

     

    Now save the file and exit.

    Next we need to setup the kernel module. open it by running the command

     

    sudo nano /etc/modules

     

    Now add the following to the end of the file

     

    # WaveShare SpotPear 3.5" LCD

    fbtft_device debug=3 rotate=90 name=flexfb speed=16000000 gpios=reset:25,dc:24

    flexfb  width=320 height=480 regwidth=16 init=-1,0xb0,0x0,-1,0x11,-2,250,-1,0x3A,0x55,-1,0xC2,0x44,-1,0xC5,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,-1,0xE0,0x0F,0x1F,0x1C,0x0C,0x0F,0x08,0x48,0x98,0x37,0x0A,0x13,0x04,0x11,0x0D,0x00,-1,0xE1,0x0F,0x32,0x2E,0x0B,0x0D,0x05,0x47,0x75,0x37,0x06,0x10,0x03,0x24,0x20,0x00,-1,0xE2,0x0F,0x32,0x2E,0x0B,0x0D,0x05,0x47,0x75,0x37,0x06,0x10,0x03,0x24,0x20,0x00,-1,0x36,0xF8,-1,0x11,-1,0x29,-3

     

    # Touchscreen

    ads7846_device model=7846 cs=1 gpio_pendown=17 keep_vref_on=1 swap_xy=0 pressure_max=255 x_plate_ohms=60 x_min=200 x_max=3900 y_min=200 y_max=3900

     

    The above may be wrapped. The file that starts with flexfb should be one single line all the way to the -3 at the end.

    This configures the drives for both the display and the touch screen. Read through those lines carefully as you may need to change the "rotate" on the fbtft driver and you may need to change the "swap_xy=" on the touch screen to make it the way you want it. Personally, I loaded them as is and then went back to adjust later.

     

    Now save that file and open the /boot/config.txt file for editing with the command

     

    sudo nano /boot/config.txt

     

    Add the following line to the bottom of the file

     

    dtoverlay=piscreen,speed=16000000,rotate=90

     

    save and exit the editor. This activates the touchscreen with the same rotation as the fbtft driver.

     

    Go ahead and reboot the unit. when it comes up the screen should go from white to black.

     

    No log back in and we can set up the XWindows system to work with the display.

     

    You need to edit the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf This is the config for the frame Buffer driver in X11.

     

    sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf

     

    look for the line that reads

     

    Option     "fbdev"  "/dev/fb0"

     

    That is what tells it to use the HDMI port. So change that to

     

    Option     "fbdev" "/dev/fb1"

     

    /dev/fb1 is the 3.5" screen. You can now save that file.

     

    The last step is to set the touch screen up. Edit the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.config file with

     

    sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.config

     

    The last entry should read

     

    Section "InputClass"

            Identifier "evdev touchscreen catchall"

            MatchIsTouchscreen "on"

            MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"

            Driver "evdev"

    EndSection

     

    You want to add a line just before Driver that reads

     

    Option      "GrabDevice" "True"

     

    Other useful options include

     

    Option     "InvertY" "True"

    Option     "InvertX" "True"

    Option     "SwapAxes" "True"

     

    Inverts the direction of X/Y or swaps the Axes, which is used if you move your finger up and the courser goes left or right.

     

     

     

    Save that file and you should be ready to startx