Boards / All-in-one boards

Waveshare ESP32-C5-Touch-LCD-3.5

3.5" 320x480 IPS LCD (ST7796, SPI), FT6336 touch, ES8311 speaker and microphone, TF card, AXP2101, QMI8658, PCF85063.

Design a UI for this board Test my board Read the quick start

Building for it

A project is made for one toolchain, picked when you start it. For this board you can use two of the four:

Toolchain
Arduino (C++)	Every board, every widget and every peripheral here. The most control, and the most to set up. Start a project
MicroPython	The MicroPython export has not been built for this chip yet. It is written for the ESP32, S2, S3, C3 and C6.
ESPHome	This board's display's RST runs through its I/O expander. Waveshare's IO extension is a small microcontroller running their own firmware, and ESPHome has no component that speaks its protocol. Use the Arduino export for this board.
ESP-IDF (C)	Espressif's own framework: esp_lcd, the component registry and idf.py, with nothing of Arduino in it. Start a project

At a glance

Part	Detail
Maker	Waveshare
MCU	ESP32-C5 RISC-V @ 240 MHz, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, 384 KB SRAM, quad PSRAM on some modules
Display	Sitronix ST7796 / ST7796S, 320 x 480 px, SPI (4-wire serial), 16-bit colour
Touch	FocalTech FT6236 / FT6336U (capacitive, I2C)
Backlight	IOExtension pin 8, dimmable (PWM)
Memory	16 MB flash, 8 MB quad PSRAM (N16R8)
Graphics library	GFX Library for Arduino

Display pins

ST7796 / ST7796S on SPI (4-wire serial): SPI clock 60 MHz, host SPI2_HOST, BGR colour order, inversion on.

Signal	Pin
SCK / CLK	GPIO 6
MOSI / SDA	GPIO 7
MISO / SDO	GPIO 2
CS	GPIO 8
DC / RS	GPIO 5
RESET	IOExtension pin 1
Backlight	IOExtension pin 8

Touch pins

FT6236 / FT6336U: I2C address 0x38, 400 kHz, shares the display bus.

Signal	Pin
SDA	GPIO 27
SCL	GPIO 26
INT / IRQ	GPIO 3
RESET	IOExtension pin 0

Also on the board

I2C (GPIO 27 / 26) - SDA GPIO 27, SCL GPIO 26
SPI (panel and TF card) - SCK GPIO 6, MOSI GPIO 7, MISO GPIO 2
IOExtension I/O expander at 0x24, driving the lines marked above
PMIC - AXP2101, at 0x34, on I2C (GPIO 27 / 26)
IMU - QMI8658, at 0x6B, on I2C (GPIO 27 / 26)
RTC - PCF85063, at 0x51, on I2C (GPIO 27 / 26)
SDCard - SD card, on SPI (panel and TF card), CS GPIO 9 (arrives switched off in a new design)
The TF card slot shares the panel's SPI lines (SCK 6 and MOSI 7; MISO 2 and CS 9 are its own), so it arrives switched off: switch it on with the eye beside its name under Hardware > Devices.
BOOTButton - input on GPIO 28

The preset adds these to the Hardware tab with the board, so a sensor can go straight onto the connector.

Check your revision. Pins from Waveshare's demo code, no schematic published yet, (https://github.com/waveshareteam/ESP32-C5-Touch-LCD-3.5 (commit ef03a84788c1157836f1e7fc29f5a24f16cf22ff, 2026-10-22)). Flash: the docs say 32 MB, Waveshare's own FQBN builds for 16M - the preset follows their code (16 MB), which runs on either. Expander chip: the BSP says CH32V003, the Arduino io_extension.h CH32V006; same Waveshare IO-extension firmware and registers either way. On the board and not in this preset: SHTC3: no driver. Compiled; not run on a board here.

Designing for it in LCD Wizard

Choose Waveshare ESP32-C5-Touch-LCD-3.5 on the Hardware tab (or use the button above) and every pin on this page is filled in. The export writes the sketch, lcd_pins.h, the GFX Library for Arduino configuration, lv_conf.h and platformio.ini - a project that builds for this board as it comes.
The FT6236 / FT6336U is capacitive and needs no calibration. The firmware resets it and checks it answers on every boot.
The backlight is dimmable: give a slider or a button a Set backlight action.
With PSRAM the LVGL memory pool can live there, leaving internal RAM for everything else.
Screens are designed for 320 x 480 px in either orientation, with LVGL 9 or LVGL 8.

The parts

ST7796 / ST7796S. The usual 4.0" 320x480 controller. Faster than ILI9488 over SPI (true RGB565).

FT6236 / FT6336U. Register-compatible with the FT6206. Very common on 2.8"-3.5" capacitive TFTs.

ESP32-C5. SPI displays. Quad PSRAM on the -R4/-R8 modules takes GPIO15.

GFX Library for Arduino. Moshi Liu's library. Best QSPI/AMOLED and RGB coverage. Configured in code.

The pinout on one page

Every pin above, laid out to print and keep beside the bench. Generated from this preset, so it says exactly what the designer writes into lcd_pins.h.

Download the pinout (PNG)Open it as SVG

The same pins as data - board.json and pins.csv - are in the open pinout dataset on GitHub, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.

Designs for this board

Nobody has published a design for this board yet. Publish yours from the designer and it appears here and in the gallery.

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Quick start - from an empty screen to firmware on the board
Boards and displays - presets, controllers, pins and touch in the designer
Flashing and configuration - PlatformIO, the Arduino IDE and first-boot checks
Troubleshooting - a white screen, mirrored image or touch that misses