I am wondering if anyone can suggest likely displays that are suitable for use with the Pico/Pico2?
I have used the Pimoroni Display Pack 2.0 and 2.8, both of which are based on the ST7789, and also some 2.8 TFT SPI touch screens which LCDWiki seems to think are MSP2807, based on the ILI9341 (some with an XPT2048 touch controller). I am very happy with the Pimoroni ones, although I find the buttons a bit fiddly, and the MSP2807 ones are OK, but of course, the touch part is resistive, and despite calibrating per device, not accurate enough for my needs; I would prefer capacitive touch instead.
These are all 320x240 (or 240x320, depending on how you configure them), with a range of screen sizes from 2.0" to 2.8"
I have a couple of MSP3521s, which are ILI9488 with a 3.5" screen, which are absolute nightmares to work with; they seem only to support 18 bit colour mode (which means transferring 3 bytes/pixel instead of two, and for the life of me, I cannot get the initialisation sequence right so that the display doesn't look awful/washed out, and of course, since it's a higher resolution, sending those extra bytes sometimes means a noticeable lag when updating. (I have tried the init sequences from Bodmer's TFT eSPI library, among others).
I am looking for larger screens, both physically, so 3.5" and upwards, and in terms of resolution, such as 480x320.
Ideally I would have the option of capacitive touch (FT6336U, or a GT part that's similar,so i2c for the touch rather than SPI).
Fairly important, though, is that I can send pixel data to it in RGB565 format (COLMODE 0x5). For this reason, I want to avoid having a board than doesn't support it (like the ILI9488s I already have/hate). Would a ST7796 support this?
I can deal with 24 bit if pushed, my frame buffers are actually either 4 bits or 8 bits per pixel using either a 16 or 256 colour palette, and converted on the fly when updating, so for example, the 320x240 displays use 38400 bytes in 16 colour mode, and 76800 bytes in 256 colour mode, plus some overhead for palette data and conversion buffers.
So, I'm looking for recommendations of ones that people have tried out, not just googled - AliExpress has quite a few on sale, but I don't really want to end up with more screens that I can't use.
Anyone?
I like the look of the Presto https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pres ... 4104019323, which has 480x480 and touch, but because it is a complete system with RP2350B with 16MB flash and 8MB PSRAM, isn't actually what I'm looking for, although it's a nice package.
I have used the Pimoroni Display Pack 2.0 and 2.8, both of which are based on the ST7789, and also some 2.8 TFT SPI touch screens which LCDWiki seems to think are MSP2807, based on the ILI9341 (some with an XPT2048 touch controller). I am very happy with the Pimoroni ones, although I find the buttons a bit fiddly, and the MSP2807 ones are OK, but of course, the touch part is resistive, and despite calibrating per device, not accurate enough for my needs; I would prefer capacitive touch instead.
These are all 320x240 (or 240x320, depending on how you configure them), with a range of screen sizes from 2.0" to 2.8"
I have a couple of MSP3521s, which are ILI9488 with a 3.5" screen, which are absolute nightmares to work with; they seem only to support 18 bit colour mode (which means transferring 3 bytes/pixel instead of two, and for the life of me, I cannot get the initialisation sequence right so that the display doesn't look awful/washed out, and of course, since it's a higher resolution, sending those extra bytes sometimes means a noticeable lag when updating. (I have tried the init sequences from Bodmer's TFT eSPI library, among others).
I am looking for larger screens, both physically, so 3.5" and upwards, and in terms of resolution, such as 480x320.
Ideally I would have the option of capacitive touch (FT6336U, or a GT part that's similar,so i2c for the touch rather than SPI).
Fairly important, though, is that I can send pixel data to it in RGB565 format (COLMODE 0x5). For this reason, I want to avoid having a board than doesn't support it (like the ILI9488s I already have/hate). Would a ST7796 support this?
I can deal with 24 bit if pushed, my frame buffers are actually either 4 bits or 8 bits per pixel using either a 16 or 256 colour palette, and converted on the fly when updating, so for example, the 320x240 displays use 38400 bytes in 16 colour mode, and 76800 bytes in 256 colour mode, plus some overhead for palette data and conversion buffers.
So, I'm looking for recommendations of ones that people have tried out, not just googled - AliExpress has quite a few on sale, but I don't really want to end up with more screens that I can't use.
Anyone?
I like the look of the Presto https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pres ... 4104019323, which has 480x480 and touch, but because it is a complete system with RP2350B with 16MB flash and 8MB PSRAM, isn't actually what I'm looking for, although it's a nice package.
Statistics: Posted by SteveSpencer — Thu Jan 29, 2026 5:37 pm — Replies 1 — Views 33