Boards / All-in-one boards

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.8B

2.8" 480x640 IPS panel (ST7701, RGB) with GT911 touch, a TF card slot, QMI8658 IMU, PCF85063 RTC and battery sense. A TCA9554 expander handles the panel's reset and chip select and the touch reset.

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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	Its panel is brought up by its maker's own register load, which only the Arduino export sends: the drivers this export uses for the controller send their own numbered start-up sequences only.
ESPHome	An ST7701 needs a register load written for its particular panel, sent over SPI alongside the RGB bus, and there is no generic one. ESPHome carries the sequence inside its model for a few named boards - the Guition ESP32-4848S040 among them - so pick one of those on the Board tab, or use the Arduino export, which can send every sequence the Display tab offers.
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-S3 Xtensa LX7 dual-core @ 240 MHz, 512 KB SRAM (+ 2-16 MB PSRAM on most modules)
Display	Sitronix ST7701 / ST7701S, 480 x 640 px, RGB565 parallel (DPI), 16-bit colour
Touch	Goodix GT911 (capacitive, I2C)
Backlight	GPIO 6, dimmable (PWM)
Memory	16 MB flash, 8 MB octal PSRAM (N16R8)
Graphics library	GFX Library for Arduino

Display pins

ST7701 / ST7701S on RGB565 parallel (DPI): RGB colour order, inversion off.

Signal	Pin
DE	GPIO 40
VSYNC	GPIO 39
HSYNC	GPIO 38
PCLK	GPIO 41
R0 - R4	GPIO 46, 3, 8, 18, 17
G0 - G5	GPIO 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9
B0 - B4	GPIO 5, 45, 48, 47, 21
CS (init only)	TCA9554 pin 2
SCK (init only)	GPIO 2
MOSI (init only)	GPIO 1
RESET	TCA9554 pin 0
Backlight	GPIO 6

Touch pins

GT911: I2C address 0x5D, 400 kHz, shares the display bus.

Signal	Pin
SDA	GPIO 15
SCL	GPIO 7
INT / IRQ	GPIO 16
RESET	TCA9554 pin 1

Also on the board

I2C (GPIO 15 / 7) - SDA GPIO 15, SCL GPIO 7
TCA9554 I/O expander at 0x20, driving the lines marked above
IMU - QMI8658, at 0x6B, on I2C (GPIO 15 / 7)
RTC - PCF85063, at 0x51, on I2C (GPIO 15 / 7)
SDCard - SD card, CLK GPIO 2, CMD GPIO 1, D0 GPIO 42
TCA9554 pin 3 is set high at boot - TF card D3 held high on EXIO4
Battery - analog input on GPIO 4
BOOTButton - input on GPIO 0
Buzzer - output on TCA9554 pin 7

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

Check your revision. Nobody at LCD Wizard has had this board: the export for it compiles and has not been seen on the panel. Every pin is from Waveshare's schematic and their Arduino demo, which is what the board's factory firmware was built from. The panel is an ST7701 that shows nothing until Waveshare's own register load is sent over three wires (SDA GPIO 1, SCL GPIO 2, CS on the TCA9554's EXIO3); the sketch selects it for the load inside the panel's begin() and lets it go after, because the TF card uses the same two GPIOs (SDMMC 1-bit: CLK 2, CMD 1, D0 42, D3 held high on EXIO4) and is mounted after the panel. Only GFX Library for Arduino sends that load. The pixel clock is Waveshare's 30 MHz with their porches (hsync 10/70/60, vsync 10/20/20); they run it on a core of their own that keeps code in PSRAM, so if the picture shimmers or drifts, lower the pixel clock on the Display tab (16 to 20 MHz) before anything else. Touch (GT911, 0x5D, INT GPIO 16, reset EXIO2), the expander (0x20), the IMU (QMI8658, 0x6B) and the RTC (PCF85063, 0x51) share I2C on GPIO 15/7. The panel's reset is EXIO1 and the backlight is GPIO 6 (PWM). The battery reads on GPIO 4 through a divide-by-three. The buzzer is EXIO8, a digital output called Buzzer on Hardware > I/O: on sounds it. It starts silent - the export writes the line low before it makes it an output, since a TCA9554 line made an output starts high. There is no audio chip, speaker or microphone: the buzzer is the board's only sound, so the Internet Radio and anything else that plays needs an I2S amplifier (a MAX98357A and a small speaker) wired by hand to free pins - GPIO 43 and 44 on the UART header and GPIO 0 (the BOOT button's, which then cannot be pressed while it plays) - and set under Hardware > Audio. The IMU's and the RTC's interrupts (EXIO5-7) are not used. The ESP32-S3-LCD-2.8B is the same board without touch: set Touch to None.

Designing for it in LCD Wizard

Choose Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.8B 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 GT911 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.
An RGB panel keeps its frame buffer in PSRAM, which this board has.
Screens are designed for 480 x 640 px in either orientation, with LVGL 9 or LVGL 8.

The parts

ST7701 / ST7701S. RGB data plus a 3-wire SPI init sequence. You must wire CS/SCK/MOSI as well, and pick the init sequence your panel wants.

GT911. The address is selected by the INT pin level during reset, so wire INT and RST if you can.

ESP32-S3. The only common Arduino target with a hardware RGB565 LCD peripheral. PSRAM is effectively required for RGB panels.

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.

From the people who made it

The board’s own documentation. Pinouts on vendor pages do sometimes disagree with the hardware in front of you - where this page and that one differ, trust your board and tell us.

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.

Guition ESP32-4848S040 (4" 480x480)4" 480x480 square ST7701 panel with GT911 touch, sold as the "86 box" wall-plate unit.ESP32-S3 · ST7701 / ST7701S 480 x 480 · GT911 touch

ESP32-S3 + ST7701S 480x480 round480x480 RGB panel that needs a 3-wire SPI init sequence alongside the RGB bus.ESP32-S3 · ST7701 / ST7701S 480 x 480 · CST328 touch

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-77" 800x480 RGB panel with GT911 touch, a TF card slot, RS485, CAN and a sensor input. Same wiring as the 4.3" board, its own timings.ESP32-S3 · Generic RGB565 panel 800 x 480 · GT911 touchPurchase this board

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-4.34.3" 800x480 RGB panel with GT911 touch, a TF card slot, RS485, CAN and a sensor input. An I/O expander handles the reset lines.ESP32-S3 · Generic RGB565 panel 800 x 480 · GT911 touchPurchase this board

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.8 V22.8" 240x320 IPS LCD (ST7789T3, SPI), CST3530 touch, PCM5101A speaker, TF card, QMI8658C, PCF85063ATL, battery sense.ESP32-S3 · ST7789 240 x 320 · CST3530 touch

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-3.493.49" 172x640 IPS LCD (AXS15231B, QSPI), AXS15231B (integrated touch) touch, ES8311 speaker and ES7210 microphones, TF card, QMI8658, PCF85063, battery sense.ESP32-S3 · AXS15231B 172 x 640 · AXS15231B (touch half) touchPurchase this board

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