What is in the box
Every box holds a board with its panel already seated. The 6-pack adds nine 15-way cables in three lengths and four strips of breakaway header, and the spare cables are deliberate.
What the 6-pack holds
Six boards, nine 15-way cables, four strips of header, and a hinged plastic case with the boards in it. No adapter boards and no separate breakout per size, because the six are one circuit: the same row of eight holes and the same 15-way socket on every one.
A board is a board with its panel already on it
The panel's orange tail is seated in a socket on the board and the glass sits on the other face, so there is nothing to plug in before first use. What you wire is the board's own 15-way socket or its row of eight holes, and the next two articles are about those.
The spares are not generosity
Nine cables for six boards means three spares, because the cable is the part most likely to fail. It is a flat plastic tail with fifteen conductors on it. Fold one sharply and a conductor can crack while the plastic stays smooth. That gives an intermittent fault that comes and goes as you move the cable, the worst kind to diagnose, because everything else is fine.
If a working display starts misbehaving when you touch the cable, change the cable before you change anything else.
The header strips are the other route
Two straight strips and two right-angle, for the row of eight holes. Straight points out of the face of the board, which suits a board lying flat on a bench. Right-angle points along it, which is what you want when the board will stand upright in an enclosure with wires leaving sideways.
They are breakaway strips, much longer than eight pins. Snap off the eight you need and put the rest back in the case.
What is not in the box
A microcontroller, and if yours runs at 5 V, a level converter. Every board here is a 3.3 volt part and says so in print on its own face. That is worth getting right before anything else, and it has an article of its own.
When it does not work
Three spares, and you will want them. A flat cable is the most fragile thing in the case: crease one and a conductor inside can break while the plastic looks perfect, which gives a fault that moves when you wiggle the cable. Replacing it is the fix, so the 6-pack ships replacements.
Not if you use the cable and your host has a 15-way, 1.0 mm socket to plug it into. The row of eight holes is the other way in, and it needs a header or wire soldered to it unless the board already has one. Only the 0.96 inch model shows a header fitted; the other five show bare holes. What ships with a board is not something this book can check, so look at yours before you plan.
They are meant to be. Breakaway header snaps by hand or with pliers at any pin: count off eight, break there, and keep the rest for the next board. A whole strip does not fit a row of eight holes, and nothing on these boards takes forty pins.
The shortest one that reaches. A flat cable is unshielded and carries a clock at tens of megahertz, and the longer it is the more likely the picture is to arrive scrambled. If a long cable misbehaves, use a shorter one or slow the SPI clock down with setSpiHz.
This book does not say, because nothing it can check does. A board is a board with its panel mounted. Whether a header strip or a cable is packed with it is on the product page of the listing you bought from, not here.
BL, RST, DC, SCL, MOSI, CS, 3V3, GND: the order the back face prints them, and why nobody guesses it.
Eight holes, in order →Edit this page — content/books/lcd/whats-in-the-box.mdx
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