SainSmart TFT LCD Screen Kit for Arduino Due UNO R3 Mega2560 R3 Raspberry Pi (With Mega Shield + Mega2560 R3, 2.8")

Managed to get this working after looking around for about 2 days. These are the touchscreen versions and do work amazingly well for the price.The pin outs need to be connected as follows for the MEGA 2560:TFT Screen:LED_A -> 5vVCC -> 5vRD -> 3.3vGND -> GNDDB0-DB7 -> D37-D30DB8-DB15 -> D22-D29RS -> D38WR -> D39CS -> D40REST -> D41Touch Screen:T_CLK -> D6T_CS -> D5T_DIN -> D4T_DO -> D3T_IRQ -> D2I suggest using the UTFT and UTouch libraries from here as they are a bit wider supported and more stable. Just import the zips into the Arduino IDE : Sketch -> Include Library -> Add .ZIP Library.http://www.rinkydinkelectronics.com/library.php?id=51http://www.rinkydinkelectronics.com/library.php?id=55Once connected and the libraries installed you should be able to see the new libraries in the Arduino IDE under File -> Examples -> UTFT and UTouch.You will need to change TFT type in the examples to ILI9325C to get the screen to function correctly or you may just end up with a white screen. For example just before void setup(): UTFT myGLCD(ILI9325C,38,39,40,41);Have fun - hope this helps someone out there.

I was torn in deciding how many stars to give this. For starters, I must mention that I own 5 of these things -- 3 of the Mega2560R3 kits and 2 of the Due kits. This review is the collective findings of both varieties.I'm going to start with a key problem and warning that everyone who has bought or is thinking of buying these things should read:WARNING: The configuration jumpers on ALL five of the units I've received were jumpered incorrectly from the factory. The Mega2560R3 boards had both the 5v and 3.3v selection jumpers soldered, meaning if you plug it in as-is, you'll short out the two power supplies. Their pictures of the board all show only the 3.3v jumpers selected, which is correct, but the three Mega boards I received, the LCD shield boards were jumpered wrong with both voltages selected. The two Due boards were also jumpered wrong. However, they didn't have both jumper sets applied, they only had the 5v jumpers applied. Even if the LCD could stand 5v (and would be OK since all of its I/O pins are outputs from the processor), jumping it wrong would also mean powering the touchscreen chip from 5v causing the inputs to the Due processor to see 5v, and the input pins of the SAM micro are NOT 5v tolerant.This problem is likely why some of the other reviewers mentioned processors and things getting hot. So step one, regardless of which board set you get, check your jumpers! The LCD should be configured for 3.3v and only one voltage selection jumper should be applied per option so you don't short out both supply voltages.Of the five units I received, one LCD screen glass was cracked. It still functions, but the crack renders the touchscreen portion somewhat unusable. Another LCD screen apparently has a panel that was wired backwards (between the driver chip and the LCD panel itself). I thought at first it was defective as the screen had the appearance of the old SSAVI style cable scrambling technique with a "torn" picture. But the pre-init white screen looked OK, so I was suspicious that it was functioning, but in a weird way. After some experimenting, I found that if I swapped the sync settings around and the horizontal/vertical addressing modes around it worked, but exactly backwards from what it should -- addressing was going the wrong way and scrolling was backwards, etc... It is usable, but only if I correct for their problem in software. I didn't exchange either one of these because the cost and hassle of doing so wouldn't have been worth it.I was also suspicious that the one screen that was behaving backwards simply had a different LCD driver chip. But, I read the Device ID out of all of them and they all reported 9325. So they should have all functioned the same. And, for what it's worth, the LCD driver chip at least thinks it's a 9325.As for software and support, I don't understand the reviews that say there's no software or support out there, as the item description posted on Amazon even has a link to a zip file from SainSmart with the CTE UTFT libraries already preconfigured for these screens (maybe those reviews were done before that was posted?). And in any case, this is a clone of the CTE (Cold Tears Electronics) boards and there's plenty of documentation and software for it, including schematics and even board layouts, if you Google it.One reviewer mentioned it not being a true "CTE" board because no SPI Flash chip was installed. Well, even the original CTE boards don't come with the flash chip by default -- that's an optional add-on (as per their "official" website). This clone certainly has the pads, just get a chip and solder it on... Though you'll probably still want to read the font data out and store it in memory, as the latency of reading it from flash every time text is rendered would serious slow down performance. So why not just put the font you want in the main flash of the micro? Though I guess you could use the chip to store anything you want and aren't limited to just fonts.Another thing to look out for on the board is solder splash and cold solder joints, specifically on all of the through-hole parts. Two of my boards had a solder splash on the power input connector, shorting it out had I not seen and removed it. Various through-hole connectors were marginally soldered and needed some touch-up work. So expect to do some soldering right out of the gate. And be sure to look your board over thoroughly and fix these things before using it.The processor boards (apart from a couple of soldering issues) were fairly functional and I guess a decent value for the price. But, the Mega, for example, has a old bootloader version installed. One of the first things you'll want to do is reflash it (via the ISP port) with the current stk500v2 bootloader. Also, it didn't have the lock bits sets, meaning you could easily accidentally overwrite the bootloader during programming and end up with a brain-dead board until you reflashed the bootloader via the ISP port... So I suggest flashing the current bootloader and setting the lock fuses first thing.I'm suspicious, though, that the ATmega2560 processor is a counterfeit chip as the efuse bits don't seem to want to stay set. You can program them, and they seem to program OK, even verify correctly, but later on will occasionally randomly read back as 0xFF. I have only seen that happen with the efuse bits, which is primarily just brownout voltage threshold setting, so it isn't too critical (compared to the other fuse bits), but makes me wonder about the integrity of the processor as a whole and wonder if it's possibly a "counterfeit chip".I haven't done as much checking of bootloader code on the Due board, or its ARM micro. It came up and talked to the bossa loader without any issues, so I haven't had a need to analyze it to the extent I have the Mega boards. Plus, being a newer Arduino board, it's more likely to have a new bootloader and also the different nature of the programming process on the ARM of the Due isn't as likely to have flash overwrite issues as the Mega does.The LCD screens themselves are decent, assuming yours isn't cracked or wired backwards, but be aware that this 9325 chip, at least the way it's configured on this LCD panel, does NOT support hardware scrolling in the vertical direction when in landscape mode. It does do hardware scrolling, but only vertical for portrait mode (or horizontal for landscape). If your project needs hardware scrolling in the vertical direction of landscape mode (as my project needs), this LCD screen won't do it!The touchscreen, however, I found to work quite well -- but ONLY after you've calibrated it. It didn't work at all until I did the calibration. Perhaps the reviewers saying they couldn't get touchscreen to work didn't calibrate it? You first need to get your LCD working with their demo. Then, load their UTouch calibration program and follow the prompts on the screen for creating the calibration parameters. Then plug those parameters into the UTouch source code, et voila. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the touchscreen seemed to function for the money -- it had good response, was accuracy and seemed repeatable, and didn't require a lot of excess pressure, etc. From some of the other reviews I've seen on this screen, I wasn't sure what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised to find the touchscreen performing well (at least on the screens I received -- maybe they too have quality control issues?).The UTFT code isn't the best of code, but is functional and works well on both the Mega and Due. I did tweak it to work a little more efficiently and fix potential memory access faults, and to add hardware scrolling support (the library itself didn't originally support hardware scrolling at all).A better software library to use with the screen is Andy Brown's xmemtft, available on GitHub. To use it, you'll have to use the Gpio16 include files for the ili9325 chip and properly set the port mapping for your processor. Speaking of port mapping, the correct settings on the UTFT library (that's linked in the item description of these boards) for this 2.8" 320x240 TFT LCD in their example code is as follows:Mega:UTFT myGLCD(CTE28,38,39,40);UTouch myTouch(6,5,4,3,2);Due:UTFT myGLCD(CTE28,25,26,27,28);UTouch myTouch(6, 5, 32, 3, 2); (note: it will support "4" in place of the "32", but only if you add a jumper on the adapter shield)So all-in-all, it's usable, but only if you do a little work on them, don't get a bad LCD, and don't need vertical scroll in landscape. It definitely isn't a kit for a novice. Don't expect to plug it together and start using it without doing some soldering and fixing things. And if you are new to programming, you may want to get some experience on a more ready-to-use package, like an Adafruit kit or something, first.But, if you don't mind learning a little and working through the BS and you happen to get lucky and the one you receive isn't defective, this is a decent deal for the money, as most vendors sell just the processor board for the cost of this entire kit.So, as a cheap, knock-off clone, it's usable, but...

SainSmart TFT LCD Screen Kit for Arduino Due UNO R3 Mega2560 R3 Raspberry Pi (With DUE Shiled + DUE Board, 2.8")Despite poor documentation from SainSmart, with some research and experimentation I have gotten the display to work properly with the Arduino Due, and have been able to run the various examples that come with the UTFT library by Henning Karlsen. I've spent hours and hours trying to get the UTouch examples and calibration program working, so far without success. I've traced this down through the UTouch code to the line where UTouch polls the touch controller to see if a touch event is available. It always returns false. I currently don't know if this is a code issue, or a bad touchscreen. The example code should work, however, so I'm leaning toward a bad touchscreen.The display looks nice, and on the Due the example programs run pretty quickly (much lower times than I've seen reported on AVR-based Arduinos, like the Mega - the UTFT_Demo_320x240 sketch completes in about 25 seconds on my Due). Without functioning touch, though, the screen will not be suitable for my current project.With the version of the UTFT library linked on the product page, or the current version of UTFT from Henning Karlsen, the author of that library, the following UTFT initialization works on my Due:UTFT myGLCD(CTE28, 25, 26, 27, 28); // this is the correct control pinout for this 2.8" touchscreen working through the SainSmart shield.The file Documents/Arduino/libraries/UTFT/hardware/arm/HW_ARM_defines.h needs to be modified by uncommenting the following line:#define CTE_DUE_SHIELD 1One thing to keep in mind while considering this brand of screen is that Henning Karlsen, the author of the UTFT and UTouch libraries that this product relies on, will not support any SainSmart product, and will not help you if you run into any issues with it. There are other brands of similar, albeit higher-priced screens/shields from other companies that Henning does officially support.