$10 LILYGO T-Display RP2040 board integrates a 1.14-inch color display

As its name implies, LILYGO T-Display RP2040 is a Raspberry Pi RP2040 based development board that comes with a display, and more exactly a 1.14-inch color display with 240×135 resolution and based on ST7789V SPI display driver.

The T-Display RP2040 board joins other Rasberry Pi RP2040 boards with integrated displays like Arducam Pico4ML, but does so at a much lower price with LILYGO selling the board for just $9.98 on Aliexpress.

LilyGO T-Display RP2040 specifications:

• Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU with 264 KB of embedded SRAM
• Storage – 4MB SPI flash
• Display – 1.14-inch full-color IPS LCD Display (ST7789V SPI controller) with 240 x 135 resolution
• Expansion – 15-pin + 12-pin expansion headers with 14x GPIOs, 6x PWMs, up to 2x UART, up to 2x I2C, up to 2x SPI, 2x programmable high-speed I/O, 5V, 3.3V, Vbat, and GND
• Misc – Boot & enable buttons, 2x user buttons, red LED
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB-C port
  • 2-pin 1.25mm pitch JST connector for LiPo battery
• Dimensions – Approx 52 x 25 mm

That may be one of the best value Raspberry Pi RP2040 boards I’ve seen in a while with a 4 MB flash, a color display, and battery support. I’d assume a battery charging circuit is included as well even if it’s not explicitly listed in the specs or photos.

The company only points to Raspberry Pi Pico resources for MicroPython and C programming, and there’s no Wiki that I could find.  But LILYGO has another very similar board called “T-Display ESP32” with the same display, plus WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity through an ESP32 WiSoC that supports Arduino.  So I’d expect T-Display RP2040 to get Arduino support in due time. By the way, the ESP32 does support battery charging, so the Raspberry Pi board should too.

The $10 price tag includes the T-Display RP2040 board itself, make expansion header, and a short cable to connect a battery. For reference, the T-Display ESP32 board sells for between $9.79 and $12.17 depending on the SPI flash capacity (4MB or 16MB) and the choice of UART to TTL chip. CP2104 chip price has apparently increased, and now they recommend CH9102F USB to TTL chip instead, with the main downside being the lower speed (4 Mbps max) which should still be plenty enough…

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.

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