4inch HDMI LCD

4inch HDMI LCD 800×480, IPS 4inch Resistive Touch Screen LCD, HDMI interface, IPS Screen, Designed for Raspberry Pi

Information Categories: OLEDs / LCDs, LCD, Raspberry Pi LCD Brand: Waveshare

Description Features --- Interfaces RPiHDMI

Related products {{{related}}}

Introduction

4inch Resistive Touch Screen LCD, HDMI interface, IPS Screen, Designed for Raspberry Pi

Features

• 800×480 hardware resolution
• Resistive touch control
• IPS technology, high quality, and perfect displaying from the very wide viewing angle.
• It is compatible and can be directly inserted in any version of Raspberry Pi (For the Raspberry Pi 1 B and Raspberry Pi Zero, HDMI cable is required and should be purchase separately).
• Drivers provided (works with your own Raspbian/Ubuntu/Kali and Retropie system directly)
• Also works as a computer monitor, in this case, the touch panel is unavailable and HDMI cable is required.
• When only used for display, does not occupy any I/O resources (using touch function will occupy I/O resources).
• Backlight control to lower power consumption.

Video

https://youtu.be/0BsDy5CiRUU

Getting Started

Hardware Connection

Hardware connection

1. Plug the LCD to your Raspberry Pi:
   • There are 40 pins on Raspberry Pi Model A+/B+/2 B/3 B but only 26 pins on the LCD, so you should pay attention to connecting the pins to your Pi accordingly.
2. Connect the HDMI Connector to both the HDMI interfaces on the LCD and the Pi.
   • You should connect the LCD to Raspberry Pi Model B or Raspberry Pi Zero with an HDMI cable rather than an HDMI Connector.
3. Turn on the "backlight" switch on the back of the LCD.

Install the touch driver

You can enable the touch in two ways: Method 1. install the driver to your Raspbian/Ubuntu Mate OS. Method 2. use the Ready-to-use image file of which LCD driver was pre-installed. Method 1. Driver installation Please download the latest version of the image on the Raspberry Pi official website. (Raspbian/Ubuntu Mate/Kali or Retropie) 1) Download the compressed image file to the PC, and unzip it to get the .img file. 2) Connect the TF card to the PC, open the Win32DiskImager software, select the system image downloaded in step 1 and click‘Write’ to write the system image. ( How to write an image to a micro SD card for your Pi? See RPi Image Installation Guides for more details) 3) After the image has finished writing, open the config.txt file in the root directory of the TF card. Add the following code at the end of config.txt, then save and quit the TF card safely.

hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_timings=480 0 40 10 80 800 0 13 3 32 0 0 0 60 0 32000000 3
dtoverlay=ads7846,cs=1,penirq=25,penirq_pull=2,speed=50000,keep_vref_on=0,swapxy=0,pmax=255,xohms=150,xmin=200,xmax=3900,ymin=200,ymax=3900
display_rotate=3
hdmi_drive=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Note: For Raspberry Pi 4, you need to comment out dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-V3D.

#dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-V3D.

4) Connect the TF card to the Raspberry Pi, start the Raspberry Pi. The LCD will display after booting up, and then log in to the Raspberry Pi terminal (you can connect the Raspberry Pi to the HDMI display or log in remotely with SSH). 5) Then open the terminal of Raspberry Pi to install the touch driver which can be found in the /boot/ directory. Note: The Raspberry Pi must be connected to the network, or else the touch driver won't be successfully installed.

git clone https://github.com/waveshare/LCD-show.git
cd LCD-show/
chmod +x LCD4-800x480-show
./LCD4-800x480-show

The touch function will work after restart. For ease of use, you can set the screen orientation, see: #Screen orientation settings. Method 2. Using Ready-to-use image The image file with the pre-installed driver is located in the IMAGE directory of the CD. Extract the .7z file and you will get a .img file. Write the image to your micro SD card (How to write an image to a micro SD card for your Pi? See RPi Image Installation Guides for more details). Then insert the card to your Pi, power up and enjoy it.

Screen orientation settings

After touch driver installed, the screen orientation can be set by these commands:

• 0 degree rotation

cd LCD-show/
./LCD4-800x480-show 0

• 90 degree rotation

cd LCD-show/
./LCD4-800x480-show 90

• 180 degree rotation

cd LCD-show/
./LCD4-800x480-show 180

• 270 degree rotation

cd LCD-show/
./LCD4-800x480-show 270

Touch screen calibration

This LCD can be calibrated through the xinput-calibrator program. Note: The Raspberry Pi must be connected to the network, or else the program won't be successfully installed.

• Run the following command to install:

sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator 

• Click the "Menu" button on the taskbar, choose "Preference" -> "Calibrate Touchscreen".
• Finish the touch calibration following the prompts. Maybe rebooting is required to make calibration active.
• You can create a 99-calibration.conf file to save the touch parameters (not necessary if file exists).

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf

• Save the touch parameters (may differ depending on LCD) to 99-calibration.conf, as shown in the picture:

• Press the keys Ctrl+X, and select option Y to save the modification.
• The modification will be valid after rebooting the system. Enter the following command for system reboot:

sudo reboot

Install virtual keyboard

1.Execute the following code to install the corresponding software.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install matchbox-keyboard
sudo nano /usr/bin/toggle-matchbox-keyboard.sh

2.Copy the following content to toggle-matchbox-keyboard.sh, save and exit.

#!/bin/bash
#This script toggle the virtual keyboard
PID=`pidof matchbox-keyboard`
if [ ! -e $PID ]; then
killall matchbox-keyboard
else
matchbox-keyboard &
fi

3.Execute the following code.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/toggle-matchbox-keyboard.sh
sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/applications
sudo nano /usr/local/share/applications/toggle-matchbox-keyboard.desktop

4. Copy the following content to toggle-matchbox-keyboard.desktop, save and exit.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Toggle Matchbox Keyboard
Comment=Toggle Matchbox Keyboard`
Exec=toggle-matchbox-keyboard.sh
Type=Application
Icon=matchbox-keyboard.png
Categories=Panel;Utility;MB
X-MB-INPUT-MECHANSIM=True

5.Execute the following code, this step must use the "pi" user authority, if you use the administrator authority, the file will not be found.

sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel

6.Find the code similar to the following.(the icon of different versions may be different)

Plugin {
type = launchbar
Config {
Button {
id=lxde-screenlock.desktop
}
Button {
id=lxde-logout.desktop
}
}

7. Add the following code to add a Button item, as shown below.

Button {
id=/usr/local/share/applications/toggle-matchbox-keyboard.desktop
}

8. Execute the following code to restart the system, you can see a virtual keyboard icon in the upper left corner of the LCD.

sudo reboot

Interface

PIN NO.	SYMBOL	DESCRIPTION
1, 17	3.3V	Power positive (3.3V power input)
2, 4	5V	Power positive (5V power input)
3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 24	NC	NC
6, 9, 14, 20, 25	GND	Ground
19	TP_SI	SPI data input of Touch Panel
21	TP_SO	SPI data output of Touch Panel
22	TP_IRQ	Touch Panel interrupt, low level while the Touch Panel detects touching
23	TP_SCK	SPI clock of Touch Panel
26	TP_CS	Touch Panel chip selection, low active

Resource

User Manual

• 4inch HDMI LCD User Manual

Driver

The driver can be downloaded from github

git clone https://github.com/waveshare/LCD-show.git

Software

• Panasonic SDFormatter
• Win32DiskImager
• PuTTY

Image

Description: if you felt hard to install driver, try the image with driver pre-installed.

• 4inch_HDMI_Raspbian-180326.7z

LCD Panel Dimension

• 4inch HDMI LCD panel dimension

FAQ

Question: I can’t make the LCD work normally with the Raspberry Pi image. What is the reason?

Answer: The LCD must be installed with the driver before it can be used normally. For details, please refer to the relevant introduction in the user manual.

Question: Why does the touchscreen not work well?

Answer: Now, we only provide touch screen drivers for Raspbian and Ubuntu Mate. How to install the driver? See:#Method_1._Driver_installation

Question: Why does the image provided on the wiki does not work on my Pi?

Answer: The image provided may differ depending on batches, however, some Images are just available for Pi 2 (or before, but not for Pi 3). In such cases, you can download the latest version from Raspberry Pi website and install the driver. See:#Method_1._Driver_installation Make sure the hardware connection is correct and connects fine. Make sure you've written the image to your SD card using the software File:Win32DiskImager.zip rather than just copy and paste. When the Raspberry Pi starts normally, the PWR light is always on and the ACT light is blinking. If you find that both lights are always on, it may be that the TF card failed to burn the image or the TF card is in poor contact with the Raspberry Pi. It is strongly recommended to use a stand-alone 5V/3A power adapter because the USB port of PC might not have enough power to support the Pi and LCD.

Question: Could I only connect the HDMI cable?

Answer: No, the HDMI interface is only used for display. You also need to insert the GPIO for touching and power. BTW, you can also connect the external power adapter to the USB interface for power if LCD has an external power interface.

Question: What is the working temperature of this LCD?

Answer: The working temperature is 0°C -- 70°C

Question: It seems not to work as a computer monitor for a Windows PC, right?

Answer: This LCD is used for portrait display. You can set the orientation on Windows: desktop right click --> display settings --> orientation: portrait.

Support

Contact us Working hours: 09:00-18:00 (UTC+8 Monday to Saturday)