Adding custom driver for ili9488 TFT LCD for Raspberry pi

If you are here, you likely have a ili9488 LCD and would like it going on the raspberry pi. We have been through the process of buying one of these modules and figuring it does not have native linux support and went ahead and wrote a driver for the same.

Our thanks to Noralf Tronnes for maintaining the excellent FBTFT repository and for his well documented code making it easy for us to write support for new hardware.

NOTE: Unfortunatley FBTFT is not taking in new drivers and all the modules are going to be supported via DRM ( Direct Rendering Manager ), so we could not deliver this patch upstream

We are writing up the process of building your own drivers and getting the ili9488 going on the Rasbperry Pi.

To be done before you get started:

- Have your raspberrypi setup with network connectivity

- PC ( Ubuntu/any other Linux distro) setup for cross-compiling Raspberry pi

- Have basic knowledge of compiling linux kernel

1. Find the kernel version running on the Raspberry Pi, its done as below


pi@raspberrypi:~/fbtft $ uname -r 
4.4.21+


2. Download the same kernel version from Raspberry pi linux repository 

On your PC

PC:$ git clone --depth=1 -b rpi-4.4.y https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux 


3. Download this patch and patch it onto the linux tree which we just cloned from the Raspberry pi Repository

Download this file and save it into file named ili9488.patch


PC:$ cd linux/


Save the file ili9488.patch into the linux directory and apply the patch to the linux repository


PC:$ patch -p1 < ili9488.patch patching file drivers/staging/fbtft/Kconfig

patching file drivers/staging/fbtft/Makefile

patching file drivers/staging/fbtft/fb_ili9488.c

patching file drivers/staging/fbtft/fbtft_device.c

4. Get the linux configs from your raspberrypi so we can build the kernel modules with same configuration

Run below commands on your raspberry pi

pi@raspberrypi:$sudo modprobe configs

pi@raspberrypi:$zcat /proc/config.gz > .config


Copy the .config file to your linux folder on your PC

5. Start building (ref : Raspberrypi Kernel Build )

 For Pi 1 or Compute Module:

cd linux KERNEL=kernel make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- bcmrpi_defconfig

For Pi 2/3:

cd linux KERNEL=kernel7 make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- bcm2709_defconfig

Then, for both:

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- modules
NOTE: To speed up compilation us the -j n options along with the above command where n is the number of processors * 1.5
ex: make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- zImage modules dtbs j=6
6. Copy the kernel module driver to the raspberry pi 

If the build goes through well, you would have the fbtft modules compiled, lets copy them to your Raspbery pi.
Note: All our fbtft driver are in the folder drivers/staging/fbtft
PC:$scp -r drivers/staging/fbtft pi@raspberrypi.local:~/

7. Load the drivers to the Raspberry pi
pi@raspberrypi:~/fbtft $ sudo dmesg -C
pi@raspberrypi:~/fbtft $ sudo modprobe fbtft
pi@raspberrypi:~/fbtft $ sudo insmod fb_ili9488.ko 
pi@raspberrypi:~/fbtft $ sudo insmod fbtft_device.ko name=mcufriend_ili9488 debug=3
At this point the LCD display should turn black, That would mean the driver has initialized and its all set to go

8. Testing the display works

pi@raspberrypi:~/img $ sudo apt-get install fbi

pi@raspberrypi:~/img $wget http://www.vanessadewson.com/wp-content/uploads//galleries/post-1747/ful...-O nature.jpg

pi@raspberrypi:~/img $ sudo fbi -d /dev/fb1 -T 1 -noverbose -a  nature.jpg

You should see the image popping up on the display.
Have fun...

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