There are a number of interesting projects out there looking for other ways to get a display on Raspberry Pi without using the video or HDMI plugs. Check out this great tutorial from Mark Williams:
The 1.8″ TFT from Adafruit is the perfect display to attached to a Raspberry Pi.
The TFT isn’t ‘plug & play’ with the Raspberry, a patch has to be applied to the kernel to be able to interface via SPI with the ST7735 controller chip on the TFT. Once working, the display will act as a framebuffer device.
I spent two weeks trying to get it working, so I thought I would document it to help others.
Thanks go to Kamal and Neil for responding to my emails & forum post, and their work on the ST7735 driver. Thanks also go to Adafruit for their cool products.
Featured Adafruit Product!
1.8″ 18-bit color TFT LCD display with microSD card breakout – ST7735R: This lovely little display breakout is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display to any project. Since the display uses 4-wire SPI to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used with every kind of microcontroller. Even a very small one with low memory and few pins available! The 1.8″ display has 128×160 color pixels. Unlike the low cost “Nokia 6110” and similar LCD displays, which are CSTN type and thus have poor color and slow refresh, this display is a true TFT! The TFT driver (ST7735R) can display full 18-bit color (262,144 shades!). And the LCD will always come with the same driver chip so there’s no worries that your code will not work from one to the other. (read more)