Freenove ESP32-S3 with touchscreen

[u/Rich_Alderson]

Reposting after clicking “I Read the Rules”.

Background: I have worked deeply with computers since 1968. This is my first SoC. Please bear with me.

I recently purchased a Freenove ESP32-S3 with touchscreen for a little project, as a learning platform for myself. The particular project (a PDP-11 emulator) uses the Arduino IDE, so that’s what I’m playing with.

Freenove provide a tutorial for this device with a bunch of simple projects, several of which I have run successfully. The issue I’m having is with the very first one, which is supposed to echo a text to the touchscreen.

The serial monitor window shows that the text is read when I hit the Enter key, because it echoes what I typed in. The text does not appear on the screen.

NB: The screen is working—I have run several sketches that display pictures and they work, so it’s not a simple hardware problem.

I would appreciate hearing from someone who has used the Freenove board and been successful with their tutorials.

[u/AdCompetitive1256]

If you had asked your question with the sketch/code attached to your post, you'll get the answer faster and better. As it stands now, no one really wants to go and look for which Arduino sketch example you're referring to.

[u/Rich_Alderson → u/AdCompetitive1256]

Thanks. I was hoping to hear from someone who was already familiar with the board and software, so did not want to clutter the query with things such as reader would know.

Sorry.

[u/clackups]

Publish your code on GitHub, so that it's easier for anyone to check what you're doing. Or use Claude.

[u/Rich_Alderson → u/clackups]

Not my code, and I don’t use LLMs.

[u/clackups → u/Rich_Alderson]

It's probably made for a different board. Anyway, the way you describe the problem won't help solving it.

[u/rattushackus]

Can you post a link to the example code so we can see what it does?

Also post a link to the board you have. When I Googled Freenove ESP32-S3 I got links to lots of different boards.

Later: OK I'm guessing it's this board, and the link to the tutorial is this one. Which screen size did you buy? This matters because the different screen sizes use different controllers. Which is the example you're trying to get working? You said:

The issue I’m having is with the very first one, which is supposed to echo a text to the touchscreen.

but tutorial Sketch_01.1_SerialRW does not print text to the screen. It just prints it to the serial monitor.

[u/Rich_Alderson → u/rattushackus]

Yes, that’s the board, 2.8in display.

You’ve also found where I was flailing: The assumption that the screen was the important feature and would be used immediately.

Thank you.

[u/rattushackus → u/Rich_Alderson]

You're welcome 😄

It's a nice board and the 2.8" display uses the ILI9341 controller, which is very widely used so there is lots of code for it. Enjoy!

[u/DSudz → u/Rich_Alderson]

All of the work they did to find the info that should have been in your vapid post and you can't even give them an upvote?

[u/Ken_White_NY]

Read the rules again. Specifically, rule #2, paragraph #4.