Hey gang, Tim here at Core Electronics , and here is a tiny GPIO LCD screen for a Raspberry Pi. So let's put them together and make it work.

There is a whole range of sub 4-inch displays that can directly attach to the GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi palm-sized computer. Many of them attach devices and increase the usability of your Raspberry Pi while basically making no size sacrifices from the original Raspberry Pi. They all go through a very similar process to set up and running effectively on your Raspberry Pi board, only takes a couple of steps.

So this guide is the specific process to set up the Waveshare 3.5-inch LCD 480 by 320 for the Raspberry Pi, which is honestly the perfect example piece to demonstrate diving into this world. For scenarios where a higher frame rate is desired, I highly recommend using the IPS version of this particular screen. But for situations where you only want a simple UI like light switches or solenoid controls, this screen is the perfect choice.

The GPIO creates a very rugged and sturdy connection, and when connected with the Pi, it makes for a compact nugget of practical computing power. On the table before me is everything you need to make this work. You're going to need an LCD display board, like I said before, I'm using the 3.5-inch Waveshare, a Raspberry Pi with a microSD card flashed with the Raspberry Pi OS. In my particular case, I'm using the Raspberry Pi 4, but this is definitely going to work with earlier versions of the Raspberry Pi.

You're also going to need a power supply so you can get power to the Raspberry Pi and your tiny screen, and for the setup, we're going to connect it to a monitor, so an HDMI cord is important.And we're also going to need a keyboard and mouse. Start by connecting the Raspberry Pi 4 model B to the screen by lining up the GPIO pins and carefully pressing the two together.

With that complete, we're going to insert our SD card which has been flashed with the Raspberry Pi OS. We're going to connect our Raspberry Pi to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and then we're going to power on our system. And there you go, as soon as we put in that USB-C, your attached GPIO screen is going to display all bright white as the Raspberry Pi 4 model B boots up as it should.

At this stage, connect the Raspberry Pi 4 model B to the internet using the Wi-Fi button on the top right of the screen and supply it with your country and Wi-Fi details.

With that now complete, you are ready to open up the terminal. The terminal can be opened up by using the black button located on the top left of the Raspberry Pi OS screen. It's here that we will download from the internet several important drivers and tell the Raspberry Pi 4 to display to the Waveshare screen.

If you're using a Waveshare screen product, check out this wiki page linked down below. Here you're going to be able to find all the terminal details that you need. Each GPIO screen manufacturer for Raspberry Pi has a very similar wiki to this, often almost identical in formatting, and this is where all the cheat codes to enter into your terminal can be found.

So, having found our model, knowing that it's the 3.5 inch Waveshare, and knowing that we need to type and enter the following into our terminal, let's crack in and do it. So doing this now is going to download all the information needed for this Waveshare screen.With that complete, we're going to type and enter these next three lines into the terminal. First, type "cd lcd-show" followed by a backslash. Then, type "chmod plus x lcd35-show". Finally, type a backslash followed by "lcd35-show". As soon as you enter that third command, the system is going to reboot and you're going to have the Raspberry Pi OS displayed on both your monitor and your GPIO screen. Sweet!

Now, if your screen is upside down from the direction that you want, a quick terminal command is going to fix you right up. If you want to do a full 180-degree rotation, type the following into a new terminal: "cd lcd-show/" and then "lcd35-show 180". Replace that "180" with "90" or "270" if you want the other orientations.

Now, with the Raspberry Pi OS displaying on your mini screen and facing the right way, the next step naturally is to get the resolution correct on your new little monitor. This Waveshare 3.5-inch screen has a more uncommon 15 by 9 size ratio, so it does not automatically go to the optimal size when you switch it across.

The fastest way to change this is to click the top left toolbar button, the one with a little Raspberry Pi symbol on it. Then, hover on down to "Preferences" and click on the "Raspberry Pi Configuration" button. With this open, navigate to the "Display" tab. In this browser, you will see two important settings.

First is "underscan". Set this to "disabled" so that way, no matter what, your display is not going to have black borders. Next is "set resolution". Click this and select your resolution. In this case, for the Waveshare 3.5-inch screen, select the CEA mode 109 as this one is 480 by 320, just as it's meant to be.

Now, this didn't affect me, but if...You are having problems accurately selecting objects on your 3.5 inch touchscreen. That problem can be quickly rectified by running a touch calibration. First, we're going to need to install the X-Input Calibrator Wizard, which will allow us to run this application. You're going to want a keyboard for this section.

First, we're going to open up the terminal and then we're going to type and enter the following into this new terminal window to download the program: "sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator". This will download the program for us.

With that complete, you can then find the calibration program by first clicking on the top left toolbar button, which has that Raspberry Pi symbol on it. Then hover on down to preferences and click on the calibrate touchscreen button. This is going to boot up a quick wizard, which, when completed, will correctly calibrate your screen perfectly.

So, using that stylus that came with the screen, I'm going to calibrate it by clicking exactly in the middle of each red X as they appear. Nice.

This guide is showing you how you can set up these screens on your Raspberry Pi directly, but you can definitely go through this whole process headless. Check out the description for a guide on how to run things headlessly.

A little extra addition, if you want some advanced tweaks to increase the speed and frames per second of this particular Waveshare screen, check the article page down below.

So, with our Raspberry Pi with a tiny screen fully functioning, until next time, stay cozy.