Display-o-Tron LCD to Pi Zero // Wiring

Support
1

Hello,

I’m starting a new project using a couple of 'Raspberry Pi Zero W’s and need a small display for them. I bought a Display-o-Tron LCD (no HAT or 3k), thinking that it would just plug and play with the GPIO holes on the pi, but this doesn’t seem to work.

Dot3K_LCD_1_of_2_d4fd2bdd-ca66-4a5d-96aa-757695b79ea7_1024x1024.jpeg1024×1024 65.2 KB

I’ve looked around for some examples of other people wiring the LCD directly to a pi, but can’t find any help so far. Can anyone give me some advice on how the LCD should be wired to get it working? I would rather not buy the HAT version as it is much bigger than the Pi Zero, and I also already have the LCDs.

Many thanks,
Jordan

2

P.S. I’m pretty sure there’s enough information in these three links to work out a wiring plan, but I’m very new to hardware stuff and can’t really understand it all.

https://pinout.xyz/pinout/pin1_3v3_power


With respect to that third link, the product code for the screen is EA DOGM163W-A.

Also, I think the pinout for the screen is at the bottom of this page:

And this is the driver I plan on using once it’s all connected:

3

Whew! This takes me back! Do you have a breadboard and some passive components? Because you will absolutely need them to get this to work on its own!

In fact, here’s mine:

When we were prototyping Display-o-Tron waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when I had this same LCD set up on a beadboard and I prepared this image:

For the two voltage booster circuits I believe I used two 1uF capacitors.

Then most of the pins- all wired in red- are simply tied to the voltage supply.

Then Rst and RW can just be floating (not connected to anything) if I remember correctly.

CSB should be connected to Ground.

The rest are wired to the Pi and documented here: https://pinout.xyz/pinout/display_o_tron_3000

As: MOSI, SCLK, LCD CMD/DATA

Edit: Actually looking at my setup, I didn’t even bother tying the unused parallel IO (E, D0, D1 etc) pins high.

4

Thanks for getting back to me! This all seems very cool, but a bit bulkier than I was anticipating for my project - with the breadboard and all.
(I’m basically trying to make a little pager-like pi system that uses mesh networking to send messages between clients, so I need to make everything as small as possible.)

Would I be right in thinking that if I got the Display-o-Tron breakout (https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/display-o-tron-breakout) the wiring just reduces to what I found on this page? https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/dot-breakout-usage-pi

That is:

  • VCC -> 5V
  • GND -> GND
  • RST -> BCM 12
  • RS -> BCM 25
  • CS -> BCM 8
  • SCLK -> BCM 11
  • MOSI -> BCM 10
  • R -> BCM 5
  • G -> BCM 6
  • B -> BCM 13

If I did this, would I still need a breadboard, or capacitors or anything? Or will those connections get everything up and running?

Many thanks again :)

5

Yup the breakout does all the hard work for you and you just need to make the connections listed.

You can solder wires directly to it if you’re going for compact.