Waveshare 3.5" a LCD

Community Tutorials
1

So i searched to figure out how to get this to work and no luck that i found anything but people getting white screens. I did manage to get it work but haven’t got it to work with a desktop environment, works great for console and DietPi-Cloudshell. just follow below instructions and it should work, possibly work with other waveshare screens.

dietpi-config
select “1 : Display Options”
select “3 : LCD Panel addon”
select “waveshare32”
exit and reboot

~$ sudo apt install git
~$ sudo git clone https://github.com/waveshare/LCD-show.git
~$ cd LCD-show/
~$ sudo ./LCD35-show

wait for rebbot
~$ sudo nano /DietPi/config.txt
change “framebuffer_width=320” to “framebuffer_width=480”
change “framebuffer_height=240” to “framebuffer_height=320”
change “dtoverlay=waveshare32” to “dtoverlay=waveshare35a”
~$ sudo reboot

2

Thank you so much for this! After hours of trying to get this going, this worked like a charm!

3

Jep, many thanks for sharing, I hope me or someone finds time to implement into DietPi: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues/2394

4

I still haven’t figured out how to get it to run with a desktop environment I wish someone could help but I’m at ends meet with this, no expert just messing around

5

The biggest thing is the dtoverlay needs to be added but I don’t know how to other than to load the driver for the screen

6

Thanks for this, finally managed to get something other than a white screen running…
anyone have an idea how i can get PADD to load?

https://github.com/jpmck/PADD

I’m able to do it on ‘lite’ RPi image but on this would be ideal

it has to be possible somehow

7

I am trying to do the same thing and cannot believe there are no newer threads to be found.
I almost got a waveshare 3.5" B working following the steps above, but not quite.

Now there seem to be two screen buffers on top of each other - the tty1 I want (ie. login) and another showing DietPi Preboot information like the cpu governor info, and whenever I write something eg. try to log in, or run padd, the DietPi-preboot-text overwrites the screen and the stuff I want just flickers…

Modified:

Answering my own questiong, killing off process “fbcp” did the trick!
This was started in /etc/rc.local from wher I can disable it from running on boot.

8

@navdotnetreqs I see very same question ask on GitHub DietPi-Set_Hardware | Waveshare 3.5" support · Issue #2394 · MichaIng/DietPi · GitHub

If possible, try to stick to one platform.

9

0. Install DietPi

Set up internet connection.

1. Activate LCD:

dietpi-config

select “1 : Display Options”
select “3 : LCD Panel addon”
select “waveshare32”
exit and reboot

2. Setup Waveshare driver

(git can also be installed using dietpi-software)

sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/LCD-show.git
cd LCD-show/
sudo ./LCD35-show

wait for reboot

3. Check /boot/config.txt

sudo nano /DietPi/config.txt

Make these changes if needed (I didn’t need to):

change “framebuffer_width=320” to “framebuffer_width=480”
change “framebuffer_height=240” to “framebuffer_height=320”
change “dtoverlay=waveshare32” to “dtoverlay=waveshare35a”

sudo reboot

4. Install fbturbo

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-fbturbo

5. Remove fbturbo config

This should be done after every time LCD35-show is executed:

mv /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.~~

6. Install LXDE

Using dietpi-software utility.

now sudo startx should display the LXDE desktop.

7. autostart

sudo dietpi-autostart

Set it to: 2: Automatic login

(First I set it to 16-LightDM login mask, but didn’t work. Although I suspect it made some useful changes)

If needed: Calibrate Touch

Click the “Menu” button on the taskbar, and choose “Preference” → “Calibrate Touchscreen”.
Finish the touch calibration following the prompts.
Copy the given config and write to:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-waveshare32_calibration.conf

Backlight Control

Type A LCD has no extra pads or pins to control the backlight. There is a hack to cut some traces and add some wires :smiley:

[Waveshare 3.5" LCD hack for backlight control · pskowronek/home-air-quality-and-assistant Wiki · GitHub]

For now, I didn’t need to automatically control the brightness. Just soldering a 1k pot did the job for me.

Sources

Other than this post, here are what I read and used to make things work, some may not be directly related:

[https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/3.5inch_RPi_LCD_(A)_Manual_Configuration]
[HiR Information Report: Small TFT displays for Kali on the Raspberry Pi]
[3.5inch RPi LCD (A) Manual Configuration - Waveshare Wiki ]
[HiR Information Report: Small TFT displays for Kali on the Raspberry Pi]

1 Like
11

usually this did not exist on DietPi

12

You are right. I went trough my commands history and made corrections. That dietpi-autostart does all that needed.

But I’m a little confused: I clearly remember the config screen with Wayland options. I’d added those two lines because I remembered doing that manually in the config tool. But I can not find them in dietpi-config anymore. Am I hallucinating? Was it removed after I installed LXDE?

13

Probably you mixed it with RPi OS?

14

Maybe. I tried many different things before that. Sorry.