The code compiles and runs. It was tested with a no-name 1.8" TFT with 128x160 pixel.
This is a port of the Adafruit's ST7735-library for the Pi Pico.
The code is a copy of https://github.com/gavinlyonsrepo/pic_16F18346_projects
with some added features (TFT_ENABLE_*
-defines, rotation) and some modifications.
The code was developed for PIC MCUs, but porting it to the Pico was straightforward.
The library-code is in directory lib-st7735
. A demo and test-program
is in another repository https://github.com/bablokb/pico-st7735-demo.
You can build, run and debug as you do with other projects from within VS-Code, the editor automagically detects that the executable is within a subdirectory instead of within the top-level dir.
The library has many functions and to keep the footprint small, you must selectively
include only the features you need. Currently, the library supports the following
#define
s, which you should set in the CMakeLists.txt
:
TFT_ENABLE_ALL
: enable all featuresTFT_ENABLE_BLACK
: "black"-type TFTTFT_ENABLE_GREEN
: "green"-type TFTTFT_ENABLE_RED
: "red"-type TFTTFT_ENABLE_GENERIC
: "generic"-type TFTTFT_ENABLE_RESET
: use reset-pin during initializationTFT_ENABLE_TEXT
: enable text-functionsTFT_ENABLE_SHAPES
: enable shape-functionsTFT_ENABLE_SCROLL
: enable scroll-functionsTFT_ENABLE_ROTATE
: enable rotationTFT_ENABLE_FONTS
: enable glyph-fonts (see below)TFT_ENABLE_BMP
: enable bitmap-functions (not usable yet)The ST7735-library uses a small standard-font, which is impossible to read unless you are really near the screen. You can scale the font, but the result is ugly.
The solution to the problem are glyph-fonts. They take up a lot of space, too much for most MCUs, but since the Pico has a lot of flash, this is no problem here.
This repository only distributes a single glyph-font
lib-st7735/include/FreeMonoOblique12pt7b.h
, others are available from
the original Adafruit project https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-GFX-Library/.
To use these fonts, you need to #define TFT_ENABLE_FONTS
and set the
font before drawing text. See Test9()
in the demo-program for an
example.
Very often, a complete font is not necessary. The project
https://github.com/bablokb/pic-st7735 provides a
utility to create a subset of the font only with the necessary characters
in the subdirectory fc_subset
. You should read complete instructions in
the above mentioned Adafruit-GFX-library repo (subdirectory fontconvert
).
Handling of subsets needs some care, see Test9A()
for an example. Since
the Pico has a lot of memory, it is usually better to use the complete fonts.