ADAFRUIT RASP PI 2.8TD C Datasheet

Adafruit 2.8" PiTFT - Capacitive Touch

Created by lady ada

Last updated on 2016-11-26 04:43:44 AM UTC

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Guide Contents

Guide Contents Overview Assembly Easy Install Ready to go image DIY Installer script Step 1. Expand Filesystem Step 2. Install new Kernel Step 3. Enable & Configure the PiTFT Detailed Installation Before you start Download & Install Kernel Capacitive Touchscreen Configuration

If you are running FT6236 driver If you are running FT6X06 driver

Event Testing TSLIB calibration X11 Calibration Calibration for other rotations Console Configuration Turn off Console Blanking

Raspbian Jessie Raspbian Wheezy

Playing Videos How To Play Videos Converting/Resizing Videos Displaying Images Using FBCP Backlight Control Extras! Tactile switch as power button

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Making it easier to click icons in X Boot to X Windows on PiTFT Right-click on a touchscreen Gesture Input

Installation Usage

PiTFT PyGame Tips Install pip & pygame Ensure you are running SDL 1.2 F.A.Q. Downloads Files Schematic for Pi 1 Version Schematic for PiTFT Plus (B+/Pi 2 shape) Fabrication Print (Pi 1 Version) Fabrication Print (B+/Pi 2 Version)

Overview

Our best-selling PiTFT just got a fancy upgrade, now we have a version with a capacitive touchscreen! That's right, instead of a resistive touchscreen, which requires a fingernail or

stylus, you can now use a fingerpad. The screen looks much nicer, with a black bezel and glass overlay.

Featuring a 2.8" display with 320x240 16-bit color pixels and a capacitive touch overlay. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top!

Uses the hardware I2C Pins (SDA & SCL), SPI pins (SCK, MOSI, MISO, CE0) as well as GPIO #25 and #24. All other GPIO are unused. Since we had a tiny bit of space, there's 4 spots for optional slim tactile switches wired to four GPIOs, that you can use if you want to make a basic user interface. For example, you can use one as a power on/off button. See below for the link to get the optional tact switches, they're not included.

The screen is the same size as the resistive type so you can use this with the PiTFT PiBow or any other enclosure you may already have. We also use the same SDL device and signals so PyGame and X11 based programs can be swapped in with no changes in code.

It's designed to fit nicely onto the Pi Model A or B rev 2 but also works perfectly fine with the Model B+ as long as you don't mind the PCB overhangs the USB ports by 5mm, see the photos above. Model B rev 1 have an older layout for the I2C pins and won't be able to use the touch screen

This version comes as a mini-kit, with a 2x13 extra-tall female header (to connect the plate to the Pi) and a 2x13 male header that can be used to connect an IDC cable or cobbler from the side. The photos above also show the optional installed slim tactile buttons. The tactile

buttons are not included, but you can pick up a pack of 20 here. (http://adafru.it/1489) Some

basic soldering is required to install the headers. You can also pick up an extra-long Pi

stacking header if you want to install that instead of the 2x13 female header installed. (http://adafru.it/1112)

Assembly

We are now selling these displays pre-assembled - skip this step if your PiTFT is not a minikit

This section is identical to the PiTFT Resistive 2.8" so please visit that page to complete assembly of this Pi Plate

Visit the 2.8" Resistive PiTFT Assembly Page

http://adafru.it/dDQ

Easy Install

The PiTFT requires kernel support and a couple other things to make it a nice stand-alone display. We have a detailed step-by-step setup for hackers who want to tweak, customize or understand the PiTFT setup. If you just want to get going, check out the following for easyinstall instructions!

Ready to go image

If you want to start with a fresh image, we have two for Raspbian. There's the larger 'classic Jessie' image that will boot into X by default, and requires a 8G image, it has a lot more software installed. There's also the smaller 'Jessie Lite' that will boot into the command line, and can be burned onto a 2G card! Click below to download and install into a new SD card.

Unzip and follow the classic SD card burning tutorials (http://adafru.it/aMW)

This image is customized for the CAPACITIVE touch 2.8" TFT, also known as PID #1983! Not for PID #1601

Download Jessie-based PiTFT 2.8" Capacitive Image for Pi 1, Pi 2 and Pi 3 (Sept 23, 2016)

http://adafru.it/saM

Download Jessie Lite-based PiTFT 2.8" Capacitive Image for Pi 1, Pi 2 and Pi 3 (Sept 23,

2016)

http://adafru.it/saN

Older images:

Raspbian Jessie 2016-03-25-based image (http://adafru.it/mAc) Raspbian Jessie Lite 2016-03-25-based image (http://adafru.it/mAd) Raspbian Jessie 2015/09/24-based image (http://adafru.it/iDy) Raspbian Wheezy 2015/09/24-based image (http://adafru.it/idz) Raspbian 2014/09/18-based image (http://adafru.it/e11) Raspbian 2014/06/20-based image (http://adafru.it/dSO) Raspbian image from 2015/03/03 (http://adafru.it/eUI)

DIY Installer script

If you don't want to download an image, you can run our installation package helper from inside your existing Raspbian install. It will download the kernel add-ons, and configure your

Pi for PiTFT joy

The helper is available for perusal here (http://adafru.it/eIn) if you are interested in how it

works

Step 1. Expand Filesystem

Start by expanding the filesystem This is required!!!

sudo raspi-config (expand filesystem) sudo reboot

Step 2. Install new Kernel

Then, once the filesys is expanded, download and install t he new kernel by running the following commands:

curl -SLs https://apt.adafruit.com/add-pin | sudo bash sudo apt-get install -y raspberrypi-bootloader adafruit-pitft-helper raspberrypi-kernel

The first command adds apt.adafruit.com to your repository list, so you can grab code directly from Adafruit's servers, and tells apt that it should give a very high priority to packages installed there.

The next line does the actual download and installation, it'll take a while because there's a lot of software to replace for PiTFT support.

It's normal for the Pi to pause and/or take a while at this step for many minutes, theres a lot of kernel software to replace

Step 3. Enable & Configure the PiTFT

OK now the kernel and helper are installed, all you have to do is run the helper which will configure the kernel device tree overlays and add the few configurations to make the console show up, etc.

sudo adafruit-pitft-helper -t 28c

This will install the "2.8 Capacitive" type of PiTFT into the current install.

At the end you will be prompted on whether you want the text console to appear on the PiTFT. Answer Y or N depending on your personal desires!

You will also be prompted on whether you want one of the tactile buttons to act as an 'on off' switch. Answer Y or N depending on your personal desires!

Thats it!

Run sudo reboot to try out your fancy new PiTFT :)

Detailed Installation

If you've grabbed our Easy Install image, or use the script, this step is not required, it's already done! This is just for advanced users who are curious on how to configure and customize the kernel install

In the next few steps we'll cover the detailed installation procedure. Chances are, you should grab the Easy Install image or script. If you have some interest in the details of how we install the PiTFT setup, read on!

In order to add support for the 2.8" TFT and capacitive touchscreen, we'll need to install a new Linux Kernel. Lucky for you, we created a kernel package that you can simply install over your current Raspbian (or Raspbian-derived) install instead of needing a whole new image. This makes it easier to keep your install up-to-date.

To use our kernel .deb files you must be using Raspbian or derivative. This wont work with Arch or other Linux flavors. As Raspbian is the official OS for the Pi, that's the only Linux we will support! Others can recompile their own kernel using our

patchfile (http://adafru.it/cY2), but we have no tutorial or support or plans for such.

Before you start

You'll need a working install of Raspbian with network access. If you need help getting that

far, check out our collection of Pi tutorials (http://adafru.it/aWq).

We'll be doing this from a console cable connection, but you can just as easily do it from the direct HDMI/TV console or by SSH'ing in. Whatever gets you to a shell will work!

Also, run sudo apt-get update ! To run these all the setup and config commands you'll need to be logged into a proper Terminal - use ssh, a console cable, or the main text console (on a TV). The WebIDE console may not work.

Download & Install Kernel

The only way we're distributing the PiTFT kernel packages right now is thru apt.adafruit.com so you'll still need to run:

curl -SLs https://apt.adafruit.com/add-pin | sudo bash

To add apt.adafruit.com to your list of software sources and make it the default source for packages it hosts

Then install the kernel with

sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-bootloader

This will take a up to 20 minutes so go make a sandwich or coffee. It takes longer than it used to because there's now 2 kernels (v6 and v7 arm) and 2 kernel module directories.

OK since you're not going to run the helper, lets add the device tree overlay manually. Edit /boot/config.txt with

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

and add the following lines at the end:

[pi1] device_tree=bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb [pi2] device_tree=bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb [all] dtparam=spi=on dtparam=i2c1=on dtparam=i2c_arm=on dtoverlay=pitft28c,rotate=90,speed=32000000,fps=20

The rotate= variable tells the driver to rotate the screen 0 90 180 or 270 degrees.

0 is portrait, with the bottom near the "Adafruit Logo" 90 is landscape, with the bottom of the screen near the buttons. 180 is portrait, with the top near the "Adafruit Logo" 270 is landscape, with the top of the screen near the buttons.

You can change this file with nano and reboot to make the change stick.

The speed= variable tells the driver how to fast to drive the display. 32MHz (32000000) is a pretty nice 20 FPS rate but if your screen is acting funny, try taking it down to 16MHz (16000000)

Save the file. Now we'll just reboot to let it all sink in.

sudo shutdown -h now (if you don't have the TFT installed, shutdown, place

the TFT on the Pi and re-power)

or

sudo reboot (if you have the TFT plate installed already)

When the Pi restarts, the attached PiTFT should start out all white and then turn black. That means the kernel found the display and cleared the screen. If the screen did not turn black, that means that likely there's something up with your connection or kernel install. Solder anything that needs resoldering!

Now that you're rebooted, log back in on the console/TV/SSH. There's nothing displayed on the screen yet, we'll do a test to make sure everything is perfect first!

Run the following commands to startx on the /dev/fb1 framebuffer, a.k.a PiTFT screen:

sudo mv /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf ~ export FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 startx

You should see the Pi desktop show up on the TFT! Congrats, you've completed the first test perfectly.

Hit Control-C in the console to quit the X server so we can continue configuration

Next up we'll add support for the touch screen automatically on boot. Edit the module list with

sudo nano /etc/modules

and add ft6x06_ts on a line at the end

Save the file and reboot the Pi with sudo reboot and look at the console output (or run dmesg in the console window after logging in) you will see the modules install. Look in particular for the FT6206 (a.k.a. FT6x06) detection and the ILI9340 screen frequency as highlighted here

We can set up the touchscreen for rotate=90 configuration by doing the following (for more delicate calibration or for other rotate=XX values, see the next section) Create the directory and new calibration configuration file:

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-captouch.conf

and enter in the following lines, then save.

Section "InputClass" Identifier "captouch" MatchProduct "ft6x06_ts" Option "SwapAxes" "1" Option "InvertY" "1" Option "Calibration" "0 320 0 240" EndSection

You can now try to run X again with

FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 startx

The touchscreen now works, you can try it out!

Type Control-C to quit X

If you don't ever want to have to type FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 before startx, you can make it a default state by editing your profile file: sudo nano ~/.profile and adding

export FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1

near the top and saving the file. Then reboot to reload the profile file. It will now always assume you want to use /dev/fb1

Capacitive Touchscreen Configuration

If you've grabbed our Easy Install image, or use the script, this step is not required, it's already done! This is just for advanced users who are curious on how to configure and customize the touchscreen

The nifty thing about capacitive touch screens is that they do not require calibration! The calibration is done 'in chip' on the screen itself. However, we still do need to tell the Pi how to read the capacitive chip.

Before we start, we'll make a udev rule for the touchscreen. That's because the eventX name of the device will change a lot and its annoying to figure out what its called depending on whether you have a keyboard or other mouse installed.

First up figure out if you have the FT62X6 driver or FT6236 driver by running dmesg | grep

ft6

If you are running FT6236 driver

Run

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/95-ft6236.rules

to create a new udev file and copy & paste the following line in:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="ft6236", ENV{DEVNAME}=="*event*", SYMLINK+="input/touchscreen"

If you are running FT6X06 driver

Run

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/95-ft6206.rules

to create a new udev file and copy & paste the following line in:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="ft6x06_ts", ENV{DEVNAME}=="*event*", SYMLINK+="input/touchscreen"

Reboot the Pi with sudo reboot

Then type ls -l /dev/input/touchscreen It should point to eventX where X is some number, that number will be different on different setups since other keyboards/mice/USB devices will take up an event slot

(http://adafru.it/dIX)

Event Testing

Even though capacitive touch screens don't require calibration, there are some useful tools we can use to debug the touchscreen. Install the "event test" and "touchscreen library" packages with

sudo apt-get install evtest tslib libts-bin

Now you can use some tools such as

sudo evtest /dev/input/touchscreen

which will let you see touchscreen events in real time, press on the touchscreen to see the

reports.

TSLIB calibration

In order to use TSLIB - basically, the touchscreen without X11 - you'll need to set the calibration for TSLIB in /etc/pointercal

With a resistive touchscreen, you have to calibrate it. Since capacitive touchscreens don't

require calibration you can just input the numbers directly. Run

sudo nano /etc/pointercal

And enter in the following values (there's a single space between each number) and hit return afterwards. Then save

320 65536 0 -65536 0 15728640 65536

Next you can run

sudo TSLIB_FBDEVICE=/dev/fb1 TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/touchscreen ts_test

X11 Calibration

We can also manually enter in the touch calibration edit the file with

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-captouch.conf

and put the following in for rotation=90. For other rotations you may have to tweak SwapAxes and InvertY or InvertX

Section "InputClass" Identifier "captouch" MatchProduct "ft6x06_ts" Option "SwapAxes" "1" Option "InvertY" "1" Option "Calibration" "0 320 0 240" EndSection

Calibration for other rotations

If you rotate the display you need to recalibrate the touchscreen to work with the new screen orientation. Since there's no calibration, you kinda just have to know the values for each rotation. To make it easy, you can run a small Python script which will automatically set a default touchscreen calibration based on the screen orientation.

This helper is automatically installed for you but if you'd like you can check it out here on github (http://adafru.it/eIu)

Run it at the command line with sudo adafruit-pitft-touch-cal it will try to figure out what display you have installed and the rotation it's set up for

By default the script will attempt to read the screen orientation by examining the PiTFT module configuration with modprobe. If the script can read the orientation it will print out the current orientation, the current touchscreen calibration values, and the new touchscreen calibration values baesd on the current orientation. Before updating the calibration the script will ask you to confirm that you'd like to make the change. Press y and enter to confirm.

Console Configuration

If you've grabbed our Easy Install image, or use the script, this step is not required, it's already done! This is just for advanced users who are curious on how to configure and customize the console

One fun thing you can do with the display is have it as your main console instead of the HDMI/TV output. Even though it is small, with a good font you can get 20 x 40 of text. For more details, check out https://github.com/notro/fbtft/wiki/Boot-console (http://adafru.it/cXQ)

First up, we'll update the boot configuration file to use the TFT framebuffer /dev/fb1 instead of the HDMI/TV framebuffer /dev/fb0

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

you can also edit it by putting the SD card into a computer and opening the same file.

At the end of the line, find the text that says rootwait and right after that, enter in:

fbcon=map:10 fbcon=font:VGA8x8 then save the file.

On the next boot, it will bring up the console.

Note that the kernel has to load up the display driver module before it can display

anything on it so you won't get the rainbow screen, a NooBs prompt, or a big chunk of the kernel details since the module is loaded fairly late in the boot process.

I think the VGA8x8 font is a bit chunky, you probably want 12x6 which is what is shown in the photo above. To change the font, run sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup and go thru to select Terminus 6x12

Turn off Console Blanking

You may notice the console goes black after 30 minutes, this is a sort of 'power saving' or 'screensaver' feature.

Raspbian Jessie

Add the following line to /etc/rc.local

sudo sh -c "TERM=linux setterm -blank 0 >/dev/tty0"

on the line before the final exit 0

Raspbian Wheezy

You can disable this by editing /etc/kbd/config and looking for

BLANK_TIME=30

and setting the blank time to 0 (which turns it off)

BLANK_TIME=0

Playing Videos

How To Play Videos

You can play many types of videos on the screen, using mplayer you don't even need to run X and you can script the movies to play using Python. We'll show you how to just play one video for now. To demo, we'll use an mp4 of Big Buck Bunny for 320 pixel wide screens. Below we show you how to create/resize videos, but to make it easy, just download our version with:

wget http://adafruit-download.s3.amazonaws.com/bigbuckbunny320p.mp4 (http://adafru.it/cXR)

The video is 30MB which is a lot if you haven't expanded your SD card yet. Before you do

this, run sudo raspi-config to expand the SD card so you don't run out of space!

If you don't have mplayer yet, run

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mplayer

to install it. It may take a few minutes to complete

OK now you just have to run:

sudo SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon SDL_FBDEV=/dev/fb1 mplayer -vo sdl -framedrop bigbuckbunny320p.mp4

If your video is not sized for 320 wide, you may need to add a -zoom after -framedrop so that it will resize - note that this is quite taxing for the Pi, so it may result in a choppy or missynced video!

Converting/Resizing Videos

It's possible to play full length videos on the TFT plate, but since the screen is small and the Pi cant use hardware accelleration to play the videos its best to scale them down to 320x240 pixels. This will be easier for the Pi to play and also save you tons of storage space. For this demo, we'll be using the famous Big Buck Bunny (http://adafru.it/cXS) video, which is creative commons and also very funny!

You can download it from the link above, we'll be using the 720p AVI version.

To do the conversion itself, we suggest HandBrake (http://adafru.it/cXT) which works great and is open source so it runs on all operating systems! Download and install from the link. Then run the installed application and open up the AVI file from before. The app will pre-fill a bunch of information about it.

Under Destination click Browse... to select a new MP4 file to save. Then under Picture

change the Width to 320 (the height will be auto-calculated)

Click START to begin the conversion, it will take a minute or two.

That's it! You now have a smaller file. Don't forget to play it on your computer to make sure it plays right before copying it to your Pi

Displaying Images

You can display every day images such as GIFs, JPGs, BMPs, etc on the screen. To do this we'll install fbi which is the frame buffer image viewer (not to be confused with the FBI agency!)

sudo apt-get install fbi will install it

Grab our lovely wallpapers with

wget http://adafruit-download.s3.amazonaws.com/adapiluv320x240.jpg

wget http://adafruit-download.s3.amazonaws.com/adapiluv480x320.png (http://adafru.it/cXU)

For 320x240 PiTFTs (2.2", 2.4", 2.8" or 3.2") view it with

sudo fbi -T 2 -d /dev/fb1 -noverbose -a adapiluv320x240.jpg

or for 3.5" PiTFTs:

sudo fbi -T 2 -d /dev/fb1 -noverbose -a adapiluv 480x320 (http://adafru.it/cXU).jpg

That's it!

Using FBCP

The Ideal: Adafruit’s PiTFT displays are razor sharp. Whereas small composite screens on

the Raspberry Pi usually require some video scaling (resulting in blurriness), PiTFT uses the GPIO header, digitally controlled pixel-by-pixel for a rock steady image. Though not a lot of pixels, it works great for retro gaming (and the display neatly stacks above the board, no side protuberances for video cables).

The Downside: this GPIO link entirely bypasses the Pi’s video hardware, including the graphics accelerator. Many games and emulators depend on the GPU for performance gains. So the PiTFT has traditionally been limited to just a subset of specially-compiled emulators that can work and run well enough without the GPU.

The Solution: our latest PiTFT drivers, along with a tool called fbcp (framebuffer copy), careful system configuration, and (optionally) the more potent Raspberry Pi 2 board open the doors to many more gaming options. Existing emulator packages (such as RetroPie, with dozens of high-performance emulators and ports) — previously off-limits to the PiTFT — can run quite effectively now!

Click here to go to our FBCP tutorial!

http://adafru.it/fbe

Backlight Control

Unlike the resistive PiTFT, the capacitive version does not have a resistive touch controller chip that we can take advantage of as an extra backlight control pin. Instead, you can set up GPIO #18 as an on/off or PWM control.

Note that if you are playing audio out the headphone jack, you can't use the PWM capabilities of GPIO #18 at the same time, the PWM function is reassigned to do audio. However, you can use it as a simple on/off pin

To enable using GPIO #18 as a backlight, solder closed the #18 backlight jumper on the PiTFT capacitive PCB!

OK now you can use the PWM output on GPIO 18. There's python code available for controlling the PWM pin but you can also just use the WiringPi shell commands.

With these basic shell commands, you can set the GPIO #18 pin to PWM mode, set the output to 100 (out of 1023, so dim!), set the output to 1000 (out of 1023, nearly all the way on) and 0 (off)

gpio -g mode 18 pwm gpio -g pwm 18 100 gpio -g pwm 18 1000 gpio -g pwm 18 0

Try other numbers, from 0 (off) to 1023 (all the way on)!

Extras!

Tactile switch as power button

Its a good idea to safely turn off your Pi with a good sudo shutdown -h now but that often means pulling out a keyboard or connecting to the console. With our kernel we added a cool module that will let you turn any GPIO into a power button. Since there's a couple of tactile switches right there on the front, lets turn one into a power button. Press once to properly turn off the pi, press again to start it up. Isn't that nice?

We'll be using GPIO #23, the left-most button on a PiTFT 2.8", on the 2.4" HAT, #16 is a good choice since its on a tactile button. But, you can use any GPIO you want, really!

You will have to grab a pack of slim tactile switches (http://adafru.it/1489) or otherwise

solder in a button

Add rpi_power_switch to /etc/modules and save

Now create a new conf file or edit our existing one with

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/adafruit.conf

and enter in the line

options rpi_power_switch gpio_pin=23 mode=0

Of course, change the gpio_pin setting to some other # if you wish. mode=0 means its a pushbutton not a switch. If you happen to install an on/off switch, use mode=1

To make it active immediately run sudo modprobe rpi_power_switch

Making it easier to click icons in X

If you want to double-click on icons to launch something in X you may find it annoying to get it to work right. In LXDE you can simply set it up so that you only need to single click instead of double. From LXDE launch the file manager (sorry these pix are grayscale, still figuring out how to screenshot the framebuffer!)

Then under the Edit menu, select Preferences

Then select Open files with single click and close the window (you'll need to drag it over to get to the X button

Boot to X Windows on PiTFT

To enable booting straight to X windows on the PiTFT follow the steps below. First make sure a display configuration which would conflict is not present by executing in a terminal on the Pi:

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

Don't worry if the command fails with an error that the file doesn't exist. This failure is normal and should happen on a good PiTFT install. You can ignore it and move on.

Next run the command below to open the nano text editor as root and create the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-pitft.conf:

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

When the editor loads to a blank file, copy in the text below:

Section "Device" Identifier "Adafruit PiTFT" Driver "fbdev" Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb1" EndSection

Then save the file by pressing Ctrl-O and then enter, and finally exit by pressing Ctrl-X.

The step above will create a configuration file which tells X windows that it should use the PiTFT framebuffer (located at /dev/fb1) by default when it runs.

At this point you can use the raspi-config tool to enable booting to desktop just like normal on the Pi. Run the following command:

sudo raspi-config

Then pick the Enable Boot to Desktop/Scratch option and choose if you want to boot to the console, desktop, or scratch environment. After exiting the tool and rebooting you should see the Pi load X windows on the PiTFT after (be patient it can take around 30 seconds to load).

If you want to disable booting to X, just use the raspi-config command again to choose the console boot option.

Right-click on a touchscreen

Obviously if you have a touchscreen, it cannot tell what finger you are pressing with. This means that all 'clicks' are left clicks. But if you want a right-click, you can do it.

Just add the following lines into your InputClass of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99- calibration.conf after the calibration section

Option "EmulateThirdButton" "1" Option "EmulateThirdButtonTimeout" "750" Option "EmulateThirdButtonMoveThreshold" "30"

So for example your file will look like:

Section "InputClass" Identifier "calibration" MatchProduct "stmpe-ts" Option "Calibration" "3800 120 200 3900" Option "SwapAxes" "1" Option "EmulateThirdButton" "1"

Option "EmulateThirdButtonTimeout" "750" Option "EmulateThirdButtonMoveThreshold" "30" EndSection

This makes a right mouse click emulated when holding down the stylus for 750 ms.

(Thx adamaddin! (http://adafru.it/fH3))

Gesture Input

With the PiTFT touchscreen and xstroke (http://adafru.it/dD0) you can enter text in applications by drawing simple character gestures on the screen! Check out the video below for a short demonstration and overview of gesture input with xstroke:

Installation

Unfortunately xstroke hasn't been actively maintained for a few years so there isn't a binary package you can directly install. However compiling the tool is straightforward and easy with the steps below. Credit for these installation steps goes to mwilliams03 at

ozzmaker.com (http://adafru.it/dD1).

First install a few dependencies by opening a command window on the Pi and executing:

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential libxft-dev libxpm-dev libxtst-dev

Now download, compile, and install xstroke by executing:

cd ~ wget http://mirror.egtvedt.no/avr32linux.org/twiki/pub/Main/XStroke/xstroke-0.6.tar.gz tar xfv xstroke-0.6.tar.gz cd xstroke-0.6 ./configure sed -i '/^X_LIBS = / s/$/ -lXrender -lX11 -lXext -ldl/' Makefile make sudo make install

If the commands above execute successfully xstroke should be installed. If you see an error message, carefully check the dependencies above were installed and try again.

Once xstroke is installed you will want to add a couple menu shortcuts to start and stop xstroke. Execute the following commands to install these shortcuts:

wget https://github.com/adafruit/PiTFT_Extras/raw/master/xstroke.desktop wget https://github.com/adafruit/PiTFT_Extras/raw/master/xstrokekill.desktop sudo cp xstroke*.desktop /usr/share/applications/

Usage

To use xstroke I highly recommend using a plastic stylus instead of your finger. Also

calibrate the touchscreen for X-Windows (http://adafru.it/dD2) so you have the best control

over the cursor possible. Don't use a ballpoint pen or sharp metal stylus as it could scratch or damage the touchscreen! Start X-Windows on the PiTFT and open the LXDE menu by clicking the icon in the lower left corner. Scroll up to the Accessories menu at the top and notice the new XStroke and XStroke Kill commands.

Click the XStroke menu option to start xstroke. You should see a small pencil icon appear on the bottom right side of the screen. The pencil icon means xstroke is running, however by default it's not yet looking for gesture input.

Open an application that takes text input, such as LXTerminal. To enable gesture input click the xstroke pencil icon. You should see the pencil turn green and the text 'abc' written over top of the icon. You might need to click the icon a few times to get the click to register in the right spot.

When xstroke is looking for gesture input you can drag the mouse cursor in a gesture anywhere on the screen to send specific key strokes. Here's a picture of the possible gestures you can send:

(credit to Carl Worth for the image above)

To draw a gesture from the above image, press anywhere on the screen, start from the circle in the gesture, and follow the gesture pattern towards the arrow. As you draw a gesture you should see a blue line displayed that shows what you've drawn. Lift up the stylus when you get to the end of the gesture at the arrow. If xstroke recognizes the gesture it will send the appropriate key press to the active window. Try drawing a few characters from the image above to get the hang of writing gestures.

A few very useful gestures are backspace (which deletes a character), return/enter, and space. To draw a backspace gesture just draw a line going from the right side of the screen to the left side. The gesture for return/enter is a diagonal line from the top right to bottom left. Finally a space is a straight line from the left to the right.

Note that when xstroke is looking for gestures you might not be able to click or control the cursor as you normally would expect. To stop xstroke's gesture recognition carefully press the xstroke pencil icon again until the 'abc' text disappears. I've found this process can be a

little finicky as the icon is very small and any movement will be interpreted as a gesture. Use a light touch and try a few times to click the icon.

If you get stuck completely and can't disable xstroke by clicking the icon, connect to the Raspberry Pi in a terminal/SSH connection and run 'killall xstroke' (without quotes) to force xstroke to quit. The normal way to stop xstroke is to navigate to the Accessories -> XStroke Kill command, but you might not be able to do that if xstroke is listening for gesture input.

Have fun using xstroke to control your Pi by writing gestures on the PiTFT screen!

PiTFT PyGame Tips

Since the PiTFT screen is fairly small, you may need to write custom UI programs. Pygame is the easiest way by far to do this.

Jeremy Blythe has an excellent tutorial here on getting started. (http://adafru.it/saw)

However, before you follow that link you'll want to set up pygame for the best compatibility:

Install pip & pygame

Install Pip: sudo apt-get install python-pip

Install Pygame: sudo apt-get install python-pygame

(this will take a while)

Ensure you are running SDL 1.2

SDL 2.x and SDL 1.2.15-10 have some serious incompatibilities with touchscreen. You can force SDL 1.2 by running a script. (Thanks to heine in the forums! (http://adafru.it/sax))

Edit a new file with sudo nano installsdl.sh and paste in the following text:

#!/bin/bash

#enable wheezy package sources echo "deb http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian wheezy main " > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wheezy.list

#set stable as default package source (currently jessie) echo "APT::Default-release \"stable\"; " > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10defaultRelease

#set the priority for libsdl from wheezy higher then the jessie package echo "Package: libsdl1.2debian Pin: release n=jessie Pin-Priority: -10 Package: libsdl1.2debian Pin: release n=wheezy Pin-Priority: 900 " > /etc/apt/preferences.d/libsdl

#install apt-get update

apt-get -y --force-yes install libsdl1.2debian/wheezy

run

sudo chmod +x installsdl.sh

sudo ./installsdl.sh

it will force install SDL 1.2

OK now you can continue with pygame

F.A.Q.

The display works, but the capacitive touch part doesnt

Check that you installed the right image, there's one for resistive and one for capacitive PiTFT's

If that doesn't help, you can verify your RasPi model number with the command cat /proc/cpuinfo, if it's revision # 0002 or 0003 that means it's a rev 1 Model

B, (http://adafru.it/dXg) and will not work due to the I2C pins changing.

Does this screen do multi-touch? Nope! This capacitive touch screen is single-touch only. Hey...I was looking at the FT6206 datasheet and it looks like it can support multitouch (two points)! The chip does in fact support multitouch, but the screen layout itself is single-touch. We'll keep looking for a low cost multitouch screen, but we found that at the small size of this screen, single-touch is pretty good! Also, very few linux programs support MT. How do I automatically boot to X windows on the PiTFT?

Check out the 2.8" resistive PiTFT FAQ (http://adafru.it/dJ2) for an answer to this common question.

I have some more questions! Check out the 2.8" Resistive PiTFT FAQ page for some other questions you may want answered

Visit the 2.8" Resistive PiTFT FAQ page

http://adafru.it/dJ2

Downloads

Files

The latest kernel fork that adds all the TFT, touchscreen, and other addons is here on github (http://adafru.it/aPa) Datasheet for the 'raw' 2.8" TFT display (http://adafru.it/sEt) FT6206 Datasheet (http://adafru.it/sEu) & App note (http://adafru.it/dRn) (capacitive

chip)

EagleCAD PCB files on GitHub (http://adafru.it/oYC)

Schematic for Pi 1 Version

Schematic for PiTFT Plus (B+/Pi 2 shape)

Fabrication Print (Pi 1 Version)

Dimensions in Inches

Fabrication Print (B+/Pi 2 Version)

Dimensions in mm

ADAFRUIT RASP PI 2.8TD C Datasheet

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual