I wanted use the Arduino platform to develop some interesting GUI. In order to simplify my development process, save time, I planned to find some HMI touch screens that could work with Arduino and provided button, menu control icon. So I searched Arduino touch screen on the Internet. I glanced through amazon, Ebay, Google, then I found the Nextion touch screen. It’s just the HMI display I am looking for.
The first thing it attracted me is the price. The 3.2” touch display model only costs about $27. A fair good price! This the general price for LCD screen. Similar price, but more powerful, why not buying it?
The 3.2” Nextion HMI TFT display touch function can meet my need. It comes 16MB Flash data storage space, 1024 byte EEPROM, 3584 byte RAM. With GPIO supported, now I can use it to control my Arduino device and other compatible devices.
It comes with the serial connection. I tried to download to the UART but that stop in the half way. After several attempts, I copied the TFT file to my SD card. This time it was able to load the display from it. Since then, no problems happen with the UART.
In addition, it has a interface design software- the Nextion Editor. It has mass components such as button, text, progress bar, slider, checkbox, radio, etc. With these components, my interface design is easier, functional and nice. I spend less time in programming. Compare with previous project, the editor reduces 99% of development workloads. With the help of this WYSIWYG editor, design GUI is simple and easy.
Of course, it is not perfect. Compare to the iphone and other smart phones touch screen, Nextion touch screen is not so smooth. It seems not very responsive, or the response speed is not so fast. In this case, a touch screen pen is a very useful. So you can choose a pen instead of touching with your finger.
To sum up:
As a GUI developer, this Nextion display touch is worth having. Just took some time to learn how to read it with my microcontroller. I figured it out that it was pretty simple. With the Nextion editor, you can quickly build your own GUI. It’s a great touch screen as well as a powerful productivity tool. So, I rated the Nextion touch screen 5 stars.