Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.8C
2.8" 480x480 round IPS panel (ST7701, RGB) with GT911 touch, a TF card slot, QMI8658 IMU, PCF85063 RTC, a buzzer and battery sense. A TCA9554 expander handles the panel's reset and chip select and the touch reset.
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 480 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 a round 480x480 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, 40 MHz as Waveshare sends it); the sketch selects the panel for the load 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 8/10/50, vsync 2/18/8); if the picture shimmers or drifts, lower it on the Display tab (Waveshare's ESP-IDF demo runs 18 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, 20 kHz). The battery reads on GPIO 4 through a divide-by-three. The buzzer is EXIO8, a digital output called Buzzer on Hardware > I/O; it starts silent. The serial log is on the USB-C port marked UART (the CH343P), so USB CDC on boot is off; the other USB-C port is the S3's own USB. There is no audio chip, speaker or microphone. The ESP32-S3-LCD-2.8C is the same board without touch: set Touch to None. Compiled; not run on a board here.
Designing for it in LCD Wizard
- Choose Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.8C 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.handplatformio.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 480 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.
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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Next
- 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