This breakout board is something we designed in-house to help us work with ‘dot-clock’ 40-pin TFT displays that require the RGB pixel data to be clocked in continuously. These displays have 40-pin Flex PCB (FPC) cables and often require a boost converter for the backlight LED, which makes them annoying to breadboard. To make them breadboardable, we stuck a 40-pin FPC and a FAN5333-based backlight driver with adjustable current onto a labeled breakout board. Now you can poke and probe each pin!
The backlight driver defaults to 25mA and can boost up to 24VDC for up to 7-LED strings. Check your display datasheet for the string configuration, and short out the jumpers to increase the backlight current.
Comes with one assembled and tested PCB. Header and TFT display is not included! We have 4.3″ with touchscreen and 5.0″ (with and without touchscreen) displays in the shop that work well with this. The 4.3″ tend to like 25mA backlight drive, the 5.0″ look good with 50mA backlight.
We don’t have a tutorial on using this breakout or how to interface with these displays and you must have a processor that can drive the display! This is a tool designed for more advanced makers who already have a microprocessor that has dot-clock-type TFT support built in and just want a wiring assistant. You can grab the Eagle CAD files here.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
