This weekend I wanted to test composite video on the Raspberry Pi Zero. I had a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a NTSC/PAL (Television) TFT Display – 2.0″ Diagonal from Adafruit.
This display is ridiculously small. It’s quite something to boot up Raspbian with the PIXEL desktop environment on a Pi Zero with this little 2″ display.
Hardware Wire Up
The display only needs 4 connections.
- Power (I’m using 5v from a Adafruit Power Boost 1000 basic module)
- Ground (ground connected to pin 14 / ground on Pi Zero and negative on the boost module)
- Positive (yellow) from TFT display board to TV on the Pi Zero
- White from the TFT display board to the other pin, next to the TV pin.
Here’s what everything looked like after connecting the boost module (3.7v to 5v conversion), the battery charge controller, LiPo, and 2″ TFT display.
Powering up and Configuration
Power up and enjoy the tiny display outputting the boot up sequence.
The display is meant to run at 320×240, so after booting up I edited /etc/config.txt to set this up along with some overscan tweaks.
sudo nano /etc/config.txt
Set the following in the /boot/config.txt file:
# these overscan settings are what worked well for me overscan_left=-26 overscan_right=-26 overscan_top=-16 overscan_bottom=-24 framebuffer_width=320 framebuffer_height=240
Although it is really expensive for what it is, the 2.0″ TFT display is great for small electronics projects that call for full display output. It’s simple and easy to connect, and doesn’t take up too much space either.