waveshare 1.3inch LCD Display HAT for Raspberry Pi 4B/3B+/3B/2B/Zero/Zero W/Zero WH, IPS Screen 240x240 Pixels RGB, 65K Display Color with Embedded Controller Communicating via SPI Interface

The media could not be loaded. I managed to get this to work with my XIAO ESP32S3 Sense board, which I was super happy about. So far I’ve only managed to draw shapes and print text on the screen but it’s very bright and the colors are crisp for such a cheap display. I’m not a fan of the cable that comes with it. It’s hard to push into the connector on the board and the DuPont connectors on the other end are female. It would have been nice for the DuPont connectors to be male so I can plug them into a breadboard. Alternatively, it would have been nice to include some header pins which I could solder. It’s only a minor inconvenience for a product which pretty much delivers in all other aspects.

In the past, the main drawback of TFT technology has been the low contrast. Using In-Plane-Switching (IPS), the color is induced in the same plane as the backlight (The term would be wrong in this case, as the light plane is no longer behind the color plane), resulting in very high contrast. This display looks like an OLED display, without the drawbacks of color-fading over time, and price. Driver software is widely available - in the picture I'm using the sample from circuitpython for this chip. So far I have only driven the SPI at 24 Mhz, which the driver chip handles without hiccup. With the high contrast, this 2 inch display is as readable as bigger displays. The resolution of 240x320 gives fine detail, but obviously requires longer for screen refresh, so it's a trade off. For me, IPS displays will be the choice if available, and this display does not disappoint. The board allows for through-hole soldering of your own wires, and the supplied connector with breadboard friendly wires makes prototyping a snap, no soldering required. I will probably use this display for my final result, but will take the connector off, as it requires too much space below the display board.I tested several displays of different sizes and technologies. So far this is my favorite. What I haven't done yet is a power consumption comparison. When only few pixels are "active", OLED would usually consume less power, but I will see how it pans out.

When I plugged this into my pi w2 I saw someone on the screen and he waved at me but the power wasn’t plugged in. I’m not sure what’s going on he’s still there and it’s creeping me out

It seems like they opted to not support the software for this anymore. It takes quite a bit of figuring to get even their test/demo code running, and in the documentation there's a lot of "doesn't work with 64 bit os" or "doesn't work with bookworm" which is the latest raspbian version. From what I understand it barely worked in the previous version and that's only because raspbian hadn't depricated the drivers this works with to make the "live view" work.That being said, it still can be used for my purpose which is to be a small desktop status display. it'll just require me to write more python code. The display will largely be static but updated through any code that I will have to write.TL:DR: This doesn't seem to be supported as well as it should be so avoid this unless you have hours to burn writing code.

Aside from the fact that their instructions are ungodly confusing and all over the place, the device doesn't work even after following their instructions. Demo code doesn't compile. Following YouTube tutorials made me realize that the screen just doesn't work.

Displays things. Works great.

Great for calling a server api to view server stats

I want to give this more stars but I just can't. I feel I am already being kind giving it 2 stars. After several days of web searches, AI and typing in hundreds of lines of commands and "sudo apt installs" the BEST I could get this thing to do is show me a default wallpaper using Python.Though I am fairly new to Raspberry Pi, I have been playing with Linux since the 1990's and most recently using the RPi02W as hotspots for DMR radio. Needless to say I am a fairly technical person having been in the IT industry and a Ham operator for over 20 years.The issue is that Wave Share still has outdated instructions on their wiki page, so one needs to find alternative downloads for certain packages. The instructions just have you installing all kinds of packages for the various drivers and libraries, but no where does it explain in detail what they are for, just "open terminal and run the following command". Nowhere does it tell you to make sure have all the prerequisites such as git and a compiler installed or if you don't have one, here is how to do it. The URL's they tell you to use come back with an Error 404: Not found.If you search for the file to download you can find them on GitHub, but the steps listed there are different to get the package installed, similar, but just different enough it creates a whole new set of problems and issues.I then found another site with instructions that allegedly solved the installation and configuration issues, but upon going through those steps, yep, more issues and errors. The commands are shown as one long string, so you need decipher when and where the breaks are, but even then you get a certain point and the configurations fail with no explanation of how to get past them.My setup is as follows:Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (quad core)Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit (lite) (updated/upgraded)Makerspot Hub Hat for Raspberry Pi Zero v1.3 & Pi Zero WWaveshare 1.44 inch LCD HAT