{"id":583,"date":"2013-03-03T17:56:52","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T15:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lallafa.de\/blog\/?p=583"},"modified":"2013-06-01T21:18:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T19:18:04","slug":"watterott-display-on-raspberry-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lallafa.de\/blog\/2013\/03\/watterott-display-on-raspberry-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"Watterott Display on Raspberry Pi"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really like my Raspberry Pi, but what I am missing is a tiny display matching the size of the board that can be used as primary display, the boot console or some graphics later on.<\/p>\n

A very nice and cheap TFT display is the\u00c2\u00a0MI0283QT-Adapter<\/a> (note: I got the -2 version not the newer -9 version that has another display driver chip!) sold by Watterott<\/a>. Its mainly focused to be an add on for the Arduinos, but it should work on every embedded system providing SPI access.<\/p>\n

For the Linux running on the Raspberry Pi a framebuffer driver for the display would be the best solution, as it allows you to use it as a boot console and then you can run everything that runs on a framebuffer device (e.g. X11, SDL, mplayer, …).<\/p>\n

First I thought about writing a fresh driver from scratch but some google-fu showed me that there already exists a nice solution: user notro<\/strong> has written fbtft<\/a>, a driver framework that allows to simplify writing an own driver for those tiny TFTs.<\/p>\n

For the R61505u<\/strong> display chip found on my display board, there was no driver available, but thanks to notro’s powerful framework and Watterott’s example code (Thanks to Markus for porting the code to the Raspi), I was able to derive a new driver for this chip in a few hours: See my cloned fbtft Git Hub repository<\/a> for the source.<\/p>\n

It works really nice: with 32 MHz SPI clock I can run 25 frames per second and even watch movies with smooth display:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Playing Big Bug Bunny with MPlayer's fbdev output<\/p><\/div>\n

If you compile the driver directly in your kernel (i.e. no modules) then you can use the display directly as the boot console of your board:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Linux Boot Console running on display<\/p><\/div>\n

If you want to build this setup yourself then read on…<\/p>\n

Build this yourself<\/h3>\n

The following notes should guide you through the task of setting up the display yourself. Its not a step by step manual but rather a collection of hints and tips. It is assumed you are familiar with low-level stuff like building and setting up a new kernel for the Raspi, so you have been warned \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Hardware<\/h4>\n