SERIAL PERIPHERAL INTERFACE: Driving SPI displays

Let’s go on an adventure into the SPI protocol, LCD displays and model trains with Sean Conway toot-tooting away!

- Sean Conway

YOU NEED

Raspberry Pi Model 3B+

SD card 8GB or more

Pimoroni 1.3-inch SPI colour LCD (240x240) BR (Digi-Key PIM476)

Raspberry Pi OS Lite (4 Mar 21+)

Python ST7789 library to control an ST7789 TFT LCD display

Pillow Python Imaging Library

SPI is a synchronous serial communication interface specification that was developed by Motorola in the mid-1980s to provide full duplex (transmit/receive data in both directions) synchronous serial communication between controller and peripheral devices. Synchronous in protocols means that the communication is controlled by a controller (the Raspberry Pi) that talks to the peripheral – in this case an LCD device.

The SPI protocol defines no special bits to manage data. Limiting this overhead allows for high-speed data streaming. To provide some flexibility in communication, the serial clock has two options – Clock Polarity (CPOL) and Clock Phase (CPHA) – which, when configured, establish one of four modes.

In mode 0, data input/output occurs at the rising edge of the clock signal, where the clock polarity is low. For mode 1, data input/output occurs at the falling edge of the clock signal, where the clock polarity is low. To engage mode 2, data input/output occurs at the falling edge of the clock signal, where the clock polarity is high. In mode 3, data input/output occurs at the rising edge of the clock signal, where the clock polarity is high. CPOL and CPHA values are specified as ‘0’ or ‘1’ to form the four unique modes.