Datasheet

How come OMX-Player and Minecraft and other programs don't appear on the PiTFT display?

Some programs are graphics-optimized, particularly the video playback tools and some other programs like

Minecraft. They write 'directly' to the HDMI output, and cannot write to the PiTFT so there is no way to directly make

them work. However, you

can

have the output go to HDMI and then mirror the HDMI onto the PiTFT with fbcp. Using

the Easy Installer, select Mirror HDMI

Why doesn't the tactile button on GPIO #21 work?

On some older PiTFTs we had one of the buttons labeled #21 - that's the original RasPi name for that pin. If you're

using a V2 (chance is, you are!) that is now called #27.

All the PiTFT's we ship now have the button labeled #21 and #27

I want better performance and faster updates!

You can change the SPI frequency (overclock the display) by editing /boot/config.txt and changing the dtoverlay

options line to:

dtoverlay=pitft28r,rotate=90,speed=62000000,fps=25

Or whatever you like for speed, rotation, and frames-per-second. BUT, here's the thing, the Pi only supports a

fixed

number

of SPI frequencies. So tweaking the number a little won't do anything. The kernel will round the number to

the closest value. You will always get frequencies that are 250MHz divided by an even number. Here's the only SPI

frequencies this kernel supports

15,625,000 (a.k.a 16000000 = 16 MHz)

17,857,142 (a.k.a. 18000000 = 18 MHz)

20,833,333 (a.k.a 21000000 = 21 MHz)

25,000,000 (= 25 MHz)

31,250,000 (a.k.a 32000000 = 32MHz)

41,666,666 (a.k.a 42000000 = 42MHz)

62,500,000 (a.k.a 62000000 = 62MHz)

So if you put in 48000000 for the speed, you won't actually get 48MHz, you'll actually only get about 42MHz

because it gets rounded down. We tested this display nicely with 32MHz and we suggest that. But you can put in

42MHz or even try 62MHz and it will update faster

You can tweak fps (frames per second) from 20 to 60 and frequency up to 62MHz for tradeoffs in performance and

speed. Reboot after each edit to make sure the settings are loaded properly. There's a trade off that if you ask for

higher FPS you're going to load the kernel more because it's trying to keep the display updated.

How can I take screenshots of the little screen?

We took the screenshots for this tutorial with fbgrab

wget http://fbgrab.monells.se/fbgrab-1.2.tar.gz

tar -zxvf fbgrab*gz

cd fbgrab/

make

./fbgrab screenshot.png