LILYGO's T-Display Gets an RP2040 Makeover, Offers Microcontroller and Display for Under $10

Selling for under $10, this board breaks out a lot of RP2040 features — behind a bright, full-color IPS LCD panel.

Gareth Halfacree
3 years agoHW101 / Displays

Internet of Things (IoT) specialist LILYGO has launched a new version of its compact T-Display development board — this time packing a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller underneath a 1.14" color display.

LILYGO showed off the design of the T-Display RP2040, as the new board is named, back in July. Based on its earlier T-Display ESP32 design, the breadboard-friendly microcontroller kit features a USB Type-C connector for data and power, 2.54mm GPIO pins to both edges, and two user-addressable buttons

Its biggest feature, though only relatively speaking: A 1.14" full-color IPS LCD display, offering a 240x135 resolution. Where the original design had an Espressif ESP32 module, this variant — as the name implies — swaps it for a Raspberry Pi RP2040, the same chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi Pico.

To the microcontroller's on-board dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processing cores, eight programmable input/output (PIO) state machines, and 264kB of static RAM (SRAM) LILYGO has added 4MB of external SPI flash and a two-pin JST connector for an optional lithium-polymer battery.

Microcontroller boards with integrated screens are relatively unusual, and ones based on the RP2040 rarer still. The AI-focused Pico4ML from Arducam has one, alongside a camera and microphone; an upcoming design from Oak Development Technologies, the Inky Tree 2040, adds an e-paper panel.

The LILYGO T-Display RP2040 is now available on AliExpress at $9.98 with unsoldered male headers and a JST cable — a 20% saving over the usual retail price.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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