[Tutorial] Connect an ST7735 1.8" TFT SPI display to Intel Galileo

Hi,

In this tutorial, you will understand how to connect a ST7735 1.8" TFT Display module using the Windows IoT and the Intel Galileo Gen1 platform.

Pre-requisit:

• Intel Galileo Gen 1 hardware
• Visual Studio 2013 with Windows IoT plugin
• A git tool to get access to the source code repository
• A ST7735 module (from adafruit or compatible model)

Hardware wiring:

The ST7735 module should be wired as following.

ST7735 connection to the Intel Galileo Gen1

Software:

You can pickup the sample source code from bitbucket repository in folder :  Software / Display_ST7735 .

The ST7735 library included inside this project is inherited from https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-ST7735-Library, and minor adaptations has been added in order to make it working in the Windows IoT environment.

Setup function

The setup function is in charge of the initialization of the platform and is a good place for the Adafruit_ST7735 class object.

tft.initR(INITR_BLACKTAB);

The initialization of the display panel differ depending on the reference of the panel that you are using. The screen protection tab identify the version of the panel controller that you have. If you already removed the screen protection and have no idea on the revision you are using then you can test the different available configuration within the source code. There is no risk of breaking the panel at this time.

loop function

The loop function does nothing. only sleeping :-)

Known issues:

Right now the SPI interface usage is not optimized and therefore it takes ages to fill the content of the screen. The next project step could be the optimization of the AdaFruit library in order to send block of data instead of doing it pixel per pixel.

Conclusion:

The access to the TFT Panel using an existing Arduino sketch is really straightforward on the Windows IoT platform, and the whole development took 60 mins.

Intel Galileo Gen1 with ST7735 module

-Nicolas