Nextion 2.4" and 4.3" UART TFT Displays Come with a Drag and Drop UI Editor (Crowdfunding)

You may want or need to add a small TFT display to control your devices, and it may not always be easy to interface with the hardware, and desiging the user interface may be time consuming. ITEAD Studio latest project, Nextion TFT HMI touchscreen displays, aims to simplify connection with a simple UART interface, and make UI design easier with their Nextion Editor that allows developers to create a user interface without coding.

Two models are available:

Nextion-2.4″
- 2.4″ display with 320×240 resolution
- Refresh rate: 80 ms
- 4MB flash
- 4-pin UART interface
- Micro-SD card slot, GPU, resistive touch sensor.
- Dimensions – Board: 74.43 x 42.85 x 3.32 mm; display: 60.78 x 42.62 mm
- Power Consumption – Sleep: 20 mA; active: 90 mA
Nextion-4.3″
- 4.3″ display with 480×272 resolution
- Refresh rate: 20 ms
- 16MB flash
- 6-pin UART interface
- Micro SD card slot, GPU, RGB driver, RGB buffer, resistive touch sensor
- Dimensions – Board: 120 x 73.59 x 4.48 mm; display: 105.39 x 67.18 mm
- Power Consumption – Sleep: 30 mA; active: 250 mA

The micro SD card is used to upload code faster than via the USB to UART interface.

Beside the hardware, Nextion Editor is the other exciting part of this project. The WYSIWYG user interface editor allows you to drag and drop your own images / icons, and also comes with pre-defined components such as text, buttons, progress bar, menus, gauges, and so on. Nextion Editor is only available for Windows, but Linux and Mac OS versions may come out later in 2015, and that’s actually a stretch goal if the campaign raises over one million dollars (unlikely).

The company also has written a few tutorial for Arduino, for instance showing how to add a simple button or display a progress bar adjusted with a potentiometer.

Nextion project has been listed on Indiegogo for a few days, and have already raised over $32,000 from about 1,400 backers. All early bird rewards are sold out, but you can still pledge $15 for the 2.4″ display and $30 for the 4.3″ display. Sipping is included (Hong Kong Post registered mail), and delivery is scheduled for July 2015.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.