Cheap and Easy to Use ESP32 Screen!

this is currently my favorite device to build projects with everything you need is built into this one package so it's really easy to use it is cheap yellow and since its actual name is something you will never remember I propose we call it the cheap yellow display or Cyd for short so why do I like it so much it comes with an ESP 32 microcontroller a powerful Arduino compatible chip that includes what Wi-Fi and Bluetooth it has a 320x 240 resolution LCD display with a touchscreen if you're thinking about this resolution in terms of TVs or even phones this doesn't sound like much but in Arduino terms it's actually quite High there are higher resolution displays available but this is on the upper end of the scale it has USB for powering and programming so it's easy to use and has a bunch of other goodies such as an SD card slot speaker connector an RGB LED and some additional pins broken out it does have some limitations of course the touchscreen is resistive so it's a bit old school but it does work okay it will be perfectly fine for touching larger buttons but I wouldn't like to type on it the speaker output isn't the best quality it's way too loud and there are quite limited free gpio pins although we do have some tricks to get around this but the best part about this device is it only costs about $15 including delivery so it's really excellent value for money this is pretty similar to what a display and an esp32 would cost individually and then you need to wire them up so the Cyd is pretty nice Hardware at a cheap price but of course there is a drawback the software instructions and support around it is pretty poor it's just a single link to a pretty large zip file on a random non https website you but I think we can fix this a couple of years ago I released the esp32 Trinity an open- Source esp32 board for controlling these Hub 75 Matrix panels I think the main benefit people got out of the Trinity was not the hardware but the documentation I wrote for it people now had this standardized platform with a bunch of example code and ready tog go projects that they could get started with and even over time as more people started creating projects for the Trinity the pool of examples got even bigger I'm no longer creating Hardware products but I do think it would be interesting if we could sort of adopt an existing product and create the same kind of community around it where people can share share examples and projects made specifically for this display with the help of people on my Discord we've created a GitHub page for the Cyd that contains everything you need to get started with this board from a full list of basic examples that show you how to use the different Hardware features to full projects it's the dream an AliExpress price product with actual decent documentation having working examples for each bit of functionality is really useful as you can adapt these to make make up parts of your projects in the future it doesn't have to be just for code either there are some constraints of working with the Cyd such as the limited free gpio pins for connecting sensors and peripherals but this can be a great place for people to share solutions to these problems like for example using a Wii nunchuk as an input device which needs only two gpio pins and gets you an analog stick two buttons and an accelerometer or using a micr SD sniffer board to access the pins of the micro SD card reader also contained is a collection of Parts 3D cases and stands and add-ons that are compatible with the Cyd there are even some Hardware mods for improving different aspects of the board if you're feeling adventurous with the GitHub page up and running I see the Cyd being really useful for the following types of people the first are people just getting started working with Hardware you're not just learning how to code this type of device but you need to learn how to wire projects up maybe even learn how to solder before you can even run your first example but with the Cyd everything is already connected so it's a great way to get a taste of building stuff with hardware and if you're enjoying it you can move on to all that other fun stuff too next I think it will be useful for people who are familiar with working with Hardware but are lazy like me but sometimes you just want to build a project with without having to assemble any hardware and then finally people who aren't really looking to learn anything but just want to build some cool things sometimes this is me too I see a cool project that I would like to build but I don't want to commit the time to it and if you were one of the people building these projects having a single device that you can point your audience to is a lot simpler than trying to give them a shopping list of components and instructions how to build it the GitHub page will also be a great place to contain a list of full projects that run on the Cyd I've started the ball rolling with some projects of my own a Spotify display I'm calling the DIY thing which connects to your Spotify account and displays your currently playing track you can also use the touchcreen to control your music a Formula 1 Notifier that gets the session times of the next race and displays them in your local time zone on a side note I really like this project because I have the same code base working on the Cyd and the Trinity a version of Tetris that can be controlled with a Nintendo Wii nunchuk a blue e yes no button something my youngest randomly asked me to make out of the blue e while I'm waiting for parats to make a physical one I true together a version using the Cyd in about an hour yes yes no no a member of the community has also made this really cool fluid simulation project some of these can be flashed directly from the browser so you can really easily try them out and finally not something I wrote but the awesome galago which is a project that emulate some classic arcade games this unfortunately can't be web flashed for legal reasons so there is a little bit more involved in getting this running so I might explain this in detail in a future video but because the Cyd is a standard platform I was able to submit a pull request to the project so from a config point of view all you need to do is uncommon on line I also added some instructions to that project's GitHub page if you want to get started building one now I really want this to be a collaborative thing so if you want to get involved that would be great a great place to get started would be joining the discussion on the cheap yellow display channel on my Discord feel free to ask any questions there or to share what you've made one thing to look out for is there are a bunch of similar looking boards with different displays and features but the cheap yellow display refers to this exact board the ESP 3224 3220 28 or now you know why I called it the cheap yellow display maybe if there is demand we can create similar Pages for some of these different boards I'm actually genuinely really excited about what we can make with these boards do you have any ideas what you would make a huge thanks to my GitHub sponsors whose support enables me to try out cool new stuff and share it back with you all Salan

Channel: Brian Lough

Views: 120,527

Keywords: arduino, esp8266, electronics, maker

Id: 0AVyvwv0agk

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023