Adafruit piTFT install

I bought one of these neat modules and am writing up a small digest of the install procedure:

Easy install

wget http://adafru.it/pitftsh
mv pitftsh pitft.sh
chmod +x pitft.sh
sudo ./pitft.sh -t 28r -r

Customisation

This script carries out a lot of adaptations on the system. Details on the install in case you want to roll back a certain part of the install:

Installing screen driver:
sudo modprobe spi-bcm2708
sudo modprobe fbtft_device name=adafruitts rotate=90
export FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1

this happens automatic on load:

sudo nano /etc/modules

added two lines:

spi-bcm2708
fbtft_device

screen configuration saved in modprobe, sets rotation and framerate:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/adafruit.conf

options fbtft_device name=adafruitrt28 rotate=90
frequency=32000000

Calbration configuration is stored like this:

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf

file contents:

Section "InputClass"
  Identifier "calibration"
  MatchProduct "stmpe-ts"
  Option "Calibration" "3800 200 200 3800"
  Option "SwapAxes" "1"
EndSection

start graphc modes in piTFT (FB1), edit this file:

sudo nano ~/.profile

add/change:

export FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1

Screen calibration

This is defined lke this:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/95-stmpe.rules

added:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="stmpe-ts", ENV{DEVNAME}=="*event*", SYMLINK+="input/touchscreen"

Remove and re-install the touchscreen with

sudo rmmod stmpe_ts; sudo modprobe stmpe_ts

Then type

ls -l /dev/input/touchscreen

It should point to eventX where X is some number, that number will be different on different setups since other keyboards/mice/USB devices will take up an event slot

There are some tools we can use to calibrate & debug the touchscreen. Install the “event test” and “touchscreen library” packages with

sudo apt-get install evtest tslib libts-bin

sudo evtest /dev/input/touchscreen

Auto calibration script here:

wget https://github.com/adafruit/PiTFT_Extras/raw/master/pitft_touch_cal.py
sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/
chmod +x pitft_touch_cal.py
sudo ./pitft_touch_cal.py

manual calibration:

sudo TSLIB_FBDEVICE=/dev/fb1 TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/touchscreen ts_calibrate

and test:

sudo TSLIB_FBDEVICE=/dev/fb1 TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/touchscreen ts_test

X-calibration system:

wget http://adafruit-download.s3.amazonaws.com/xinput-calibrator_0.7.5-1_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i -B xinput-calibrator_0.7.5-1_armhf.deb

delete old calibration:

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf

Now you’ll have to run the xcalibrator while also running X. You can do this by startx and then opening up the terminal program and running the xinput_calibrator command (which is challenging to do on such a small screen) OR you can do what we do which is run startx in a SSH/Terminal shell and then run the xinput_calibrator from the same shell, which requires the following command order:

FRAMEBUFFER=/dev/fb1 startx &
DISPLAY=:0.0 xinput_calibrator

Run sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf and copy the

Section "InputClass"
  Identifier      "calibration"
  MatchProduct    "stmpe-ts"
  Option  "Calibration"   "119 3736 3850 174"
  #        Option  "SwapAxes"      "1"
EndSection

Option  "Calibration"   "119 3736 3850 174"

Option  "Calibration"   "3736 119 174 3850"

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt 

fbcon=map:10 fbcon=font:VGA8x8

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

/etc/kbd/config