Transparent Sprites - Programming Tutorial (TFT_eSPI library)

As I promised, here is tutorial. How to use transparent Sprites on any TFT display. This example works great with TFT_eSPI library. I am using T-Display S3 but you can use and TFT display or any development board.
YOU CAN BUY IT HERE: www.lilygo.cc/...
Here is code : github.com/Vol...
image to rgb565 converter : www.rinkydinkel...
I hope you learned something, if you did, please leave a comment.
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[@Peter_S_]

Excellent video! Your English is not clumsy at all. You are a very clear presenter and every video I have watched has been an excellent presentation. Large parts of America have both English and Spanish as primary languages so your English closely follows the normal English of somebody who speaks multiple languages. Most importantly, you explain everything very clearly. Excellent channel!

[@user-nc2wk3sl5g]

E bem explicado.

[@Rick_Cavallaro]

You got that right. These videos could hardly be any better!

[@hypnoticatrance]

Exactly this!

[@louiscelenza8017]

I really appreciate your videos. You take your time and stay on point. Your English is very good. It has a good tempo and vocal control. I always learn valuable information from your videos, and implement them into my projects. Please continue your quality work. Thank you.

[@VolosProjects]

Thank you Louis, I will try.

[@hypnoticatrance]

Cool stuff, I like your Video Tutorials, and they help me much to get run things I don't had a clue about. My main problem was to get run my new display with tft eSPI, about there was not much Info around how to do with my display. But I find out how, and got it running. Since then i can play around with your nice tutorials! The Idea to use eSPI i got in your videos, and it made my display much faster, as the original library does from my display.

[@arlo4051]

Thank you Volos, I have been fighting with trying to get transparencies to work for a month now, your the best. Regards to family.

[@VolosProjects]

tnx Arlo, best wishes to you and your family

[@jeffreymorris1752]

Your English is very good. You've a more effective and comprehensible vocabulary than most Americans.

[@TYGAMatt]

Your Tft_espi tutorials are fantastic. Thank you so much for taking your time to share this great information. Matt.

[@briannielsbergh]

I've been searching for a way to get rid of the flickering, even been in the official lilygo forum (and in the TFT forum) and not anyone could give a clue... finally I found this video with a simple hack, thank you so much 😊😊

[@kenworks6068]

Your videos are exactly what I need to make some additional gauges in my SUV as I have changed to a different power train. Many vehicle functions were handled by the old engine controller, like the air conditioning compressor logic and I am adding functions like variable speed electric fans as well as additional gauges. I am using Arduino mega2560 A/D to read a lot of sensors, scale data and provide basic control logic. Then the scaled data is going to the LILYGO T-Display-S3 via. I2C to drive multiple gauges. Your examples have been very instructive and with them my code is really improving - Thank You

[@VolosProjects]

I am glad you found something useful. Cheers

[@newmonengineering]

You are doing a great job with English language. And this is an interesting concept. I now know how to eliminate flicker and draw sprites. Very nice. I'm sure it probably took a while to figure these tricks out. But it looks very nice.

[@krusethorsten]

Sprites on a ESP32... Since long time I try to understand what you tell us now. But not had a clue before. How crazy is this solution, to put the graphic in a sprite and this graphic in another sprite to stop flickering. .... but finally it makes sense, and it does what you want. Have to see the video more times to really understand this technic. I definitely will use it in one of my projects in the future...

[@michealmorrow1481]

Thanks for this tutorial. I really like that you upload and show after every step so we can truly follow along.

[@elkakael4369]

ur so called "clumsy english" has help me alots and im dont have difficulties understanding it 👍🏽🙏🏽👌🏽

[@VolosProjects]

Thank you, it is nice to know that.

[@philsaunders65]

Thank you for your clear explanation. I learn so much from every video. I think the videos are much better unscripted because we get to understand your thought-processes, and what you say is more authentic and natural.

[@psprophet]

I love your "clumsy" english, Volo! It makes everything easier for me - as Brazilian. Cheers!

[@VolosProjects]

tnx fabio 😀 cheers

[@nkbdl]

I finally got it working. I am using a LilyGO T-Display S3 and there are some small variations in how to put the code in. But the code works. Thank you! :)

[@VolosProjects]

i am glad you found way. thank you :)

[@tszulpinedo757]

Como siempre, los mejores códigos y ejemplos. Gracias, profesor.

[@hjlc3135]

Excellent tutorial! Many thanks for this! And don't apologize about your english! For other non-english speakers yours is a lot more understandable than the one of many 'native' speakers! 🙂

[@VolosProjects]

Thank you!

[@markwinfield1679]

Your English is very good and some of your technical language is better than those who are English. You only seem to get confused with some of the pronunciation and that will be because words are pronounced differently in different parts of the world. Keep up the great work. You have saved me hours of work, I will be buying you a coffee.

[@VolosProjects]

Tnx Mark, yes pronunciation is big problem. I am glad you like content. Tnx

[@TYGAMatt]

Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with us. Much appreciated

[@Anto-ro6ru]

Great video, i suggest you to also talk about the approach used in some examples for the moving sprites of the tft library. They use a buffer to “clear” the background as far as i understood.

[@BerndSchmitt-Martinique]

Very useful video and very well explained...step by step . Perhaps you should mention in one of your sprite videos . that the MAIN TRICK with SPRITES is, that you are drawing directly on a " screen buffer " in your MCUs memory !!! You dont draw on the TFT using library functions , which is much more time-consuming. When your IMAGE in your SCREEN BUFFER is complete you push it out in one piece to the TFT. This can even be done still faster by using DMA - direct memory access. Each frame is drawn on a clean sheet of paper ( the background sprite ) so you dont have to take care of the old graphical content. Years ago - without sprites - it was very complex to draw moving graphics , because .... before drawing new content you always had to "neutralize" the old content . Thanks a lot for your videos - because you wont find these excellent explanations on any other place .

[@anhoanghocgioi3140]

Wherever, in whichever school this Mister is teaching, I want to attend his classes!

[@VolosProjects]

hahaha, thank you.

[@chadreshpatel2339]

TFT_eSPI library is amazing but the documentation is not that extensive. It is difficult to figure out how many amazing things we can do. But thanks to your tutorial, i can understand much more things in details.

[@freddycarrillo9266]

OMG, your tutorials are the very best, youre great

[@VolosProjects]

thank you Freddy 😀

[@edwilliams9914]

Thanks! Very informative, like this whole series. Very clearly explained. (And your English is perfectly fine for anyone who actually cares to listen and learn -- and if they *don't*, forget 'em and carry on!).

[@smpplaza6673]

Awesome work mate thank you for taking the time to teach us these things!! You and lilygo are an awesome team!!

[@VolosProjects]

Thank you my friend.

[@rocoroco15]

Thank you so much! I am waiting for my LilyGo screen to arrive... This will be my first project with it!!!

[@MeinElektronikHobby]

... wieder etwas gelernt. Bin gespannt auf das nächste Video - Learned something again. I'm looking forward to the next video

[@VolosProjects]

Tnx :)

[@ReflectingMe2024]

Excellent video whip is wonderfully explained, and your English is a million times better than my Russian😂. Suggestion: I think you’d have a decent audience if you did a live stream, maybe coding another interesting program on the excellent T-Display. I’d watch. Thank you for your great work here. John.

[@tmiller9099]

Thank you. It was helpful to see how some of this comes together.

[@madcow3417]

A quick tip on using Paint: You don't have to resize the image if you paste it in then hit 'Crop' while it's still selected.

[@tablatronix]

This is impressive, i have one of these sitting in my desk, I need to put it to use!

[@jiginvp4830]

Great tutorial. Thanks. Very appreciated. Please do more tutorials.

[@thepapatech2067]

Learning quite a lot watching your videos. Keep up the great work!

[@VolosProjects]

Thank you, i will :)

[@bjarkekorsgaard]

Thank you Volos, for the niece programming example - perfect 🙂 I have noticed that .png files are not converted perfectly via the rinkydinkelectronics rgb565 converter. I can advice to convert .png to .jpg and then use the rgb565 concerter. Now looks slightly better 🙂

[@alejandroperez5368]

But how does the jpg file conserve the transparency?

[@beavisul]

I think this is the best video about this topic. Really really impressed how straight-forward it was. Do you know if it is possible to create gradient transparency? One side of the image fully transparrent and the other no transparency. Useful to create shadow effects. Thank you for the awesome knowledge and content!

[@dobitaobyte]

Amazing, man. When I saw you using RGB565 2bytes here, I tried an icon too and now it's working. Probably I did some mistake before. But I need to confess that image used in example sketch from LilyGo let me crazy. I can't understand the array of 1 byte to generate rgb565.

[@EasyOne]

Very well explained

[@DBBahnospherix-BahnAtmospherix]

14:32 - Great !!! Thank you

[@BlondieSL]

This is an excellent video! The way you explain and demo things makes things so easy to follow and logical. Thanks for that. Just a note. In your video, you mentioned that links that you use, like the rinkydink one, for example, will be in the description. Other than links to other videos and the main code link, I'm not seeing any other links. I'm just now about to get started with ESP32 as I kind of want to move up from Arduino stuff, so any links and suggestions are always helpful. As I've not yet connected my 2, ESP32 boards to Arduino IDE (which I'll use), I'm not yet sure how to find/install whatever board drivers are required. LOL Thanks in advance.

[@VolosProjects]

thank you, sorry i totally forgot, i will add links in min . Thank you :)

[@nortronics]

thanks for sharing this. Very useful to add to my how-to's knowledge

[@pezictusfish]

The technique is vey clever, thank you for sharing!

[@adrianaxente]

The technique to avoid flickering using "background" sprite is called "double buffering" 😊

[@pbart9821]

Best espi tutorials

[@user-hz7kp8cl7i]

Very useful video lesson. Thanks a lot!

[@HenricoNar]

Really like your video's .You are very accomplished programmer ! Keep up the good work !

[@VolosProjects]

tnx man

[@zyghom]

FANTASTIC!

[@electronics.unmessed]

Nice gadget, I have to think about it how to use it in my projects!😀

[@markwinfield1679]

I have a 240x240 display. Your code works with background.createSprite(240, 238); but fails with anything bigger than 238 i.e. background.createSprite(240, 240); I can still work with this, but would love to know why this is happening!

[@CrazyPit]

Excellent video!

[@paulpkae]

Thanks for the Video. Have you found any good documentation for the TFT_eSPI library?

[@michealmorrow1481]

Great tutorial. I learned something new, as always with your tutorials. But, a problem. When I code: txtSprite.setSwapBytes(true); txtSprite.setTextColor(TFT_RED, TFT_BLACK); I get blue text. All colors except white are wrong, too. Even if I leave out the SwapByte, the colors are still wrong. Any idea why? I am using a T-Display S3.

[@VincentVeak]

Is there a reason to use two sprites vs just pushing the arrow image to the background sprite? What is the purpose of making an arrow sprite to begin with? Thank you!

[@michaelbyron9688]

Oops.. EXCELLENT video!

[@timoengelmann3541]

Thanks, this is great 💪

[@heinzodermatt3928]

Hello Volos, I love your videos. I bought my self a TTGO S3 T-Display. I could manage to get it working with arduino IDE. But not with PlatformIDE. Can you give me a hint, where to look, to get PlatformIO working with this nice Display? (After upload it always stays black) Another question, how do you design your pixel screens ? I'm sure there are some kind of UI designer out there.

[@shadowmosesmusic]

New to PCB - thinking of doing one that can play an animated gif on loop with sound speaker, on off switch, rechargeable battery and led strip light. Would you know how to do that? There's not a lot of resources out there. Thank you

[@chipko]

Hello! TFT_eSPI is amazing as too your videos!

[@AlwaysBolttheBird]

TFT_eSPI is a super powerful library

[@weimingfeng2284]

I am confused, why don’t you just convert the gif file to .h file? And why do you have to convert the transparent gif file to a jpeg file in black background?

[@neurobits]

Thnx. I just can’t realize why you fillScreen inside loop, that’s cpu expensive. Sprites aren’t like real full-managed-moving sprites? In worst case, is possible to create 2 (or whatever) sprites to be used as save-restore background sections? (excuse my eng)

[@LQhristian]

Volos, thank you for all your effort! Have you thought of connecting bluetooth to phone to receive notifications (then delete after a short time)??

[@beavisul]

This was great! Thank you!

[@akissot1402]

Nice info Volos, but help. Sprite is erasing background as it moves, either alone or inside another sprite, any ideas?

[@petricabutnaru9263]

I tried in stm32 with stmduino compiler witl ili9488 display using this library and this code, and on screen appears gray

[@cpocol]

Hi Volos, as a very beginner in MCUs, I was inspired by your videos. Now, getting to an intermediate level, I implemented a simplified version of Wolfenstein 3D in ESP32. Please find it on my channel.

[@Johann75]

How can you draw the screen quickly within an interrupt for quick user input?

[@bobinou]

i am trying to display a jpg or png but it is rendering very slow with about 160 - 300ms per image. the image is stored on the esp32 using littlefs. is there a way to speed that up? i have tried normal tft and sprites.

[@khaldrogo9451]

How are the screens when it comes to sunlight? Are they visible?

[@Windorey]

Hello. I am trying to do this tutorial on M5Stack Core2, but I cannot draw image in Sprite. Please help me

[@nerijusk9598]

Thank you for you work. I have question how do when arrow move very fast(full speed) and can regulate the speed?

[@pezictusfish]

Hey man! Have you used lvgl library with esp32 ttgo's? Also, I was thinking about adding components for cool toys, would be awesome to create an esp32 sonar radar with a graphical twist!

[@codecaine]

Excellent content

[@michaelbyron9688]

EXCEKENT video!

[@IronRiviera]

Very nice. Thanks

[@BlondieSL]

I forgot to ask, are these sprite things dependent on the display type, make, model? Or will they work on any display, even like an ST7735 models? (1.8" and 0.96") ??

[@JurassicJenkins]

Volos - thank you for moving the needle on the UI - very good presentation. I bought 4 of these lilygo S3 and can’t get any to display, the code is running, no display, my money is on tft_eSPI - even though I did on PC and Mac. I’m only using the Arduino IDE. I’m a notepad++ guy 😊- No VSCode yet… any ideas? All the boards worked with “factory” code.

[@VolosProjects]

Hello, youu need to install right library for display, please fallow this tutorial kzbin.info/www/bejne/naHcloCggp6Whbc

[@localixdots9698]

Не пробовали написать небольшую операционную систему с UI ?

[@guywhoknows]

Good video. Good explanations.

[@chlor7877]

Paint: If you set the image too small and paste a big image into it, it will size up by itself.

[@mikentx57]

Question for anyone. If I have multiple sprites. How do I control their front to back order. So when they cross on the screen. I control which sprite will be on top.

[@leeman3749]

it worked right up until the pushToSprite function call. My Sprite(My_Logo) is 240x240px, The Background Sprite is also 240x240 pixel (to match screen size). After is did changed the pushToSprite, the Sprite(My_Logo) disappeared and only the purple background shows, the Sprite(My_Logo) disappears. Is there a problem with having the Sprite (My_Logo) the same size as the background Sprite?

[@VolosProjects]

It is memory problem, try to use smaller sprite 200x200

[@leeman3749]

@@VolosProjects Thanks so much for your fast reply. Can I buy you a coffee?

[@VolosProjects]

@@leeman3749 thank you my friend.

[@fabryz]

Did you see that Lilygo now released also the touch version of the "T-Display S3"?

[@BlondieSL]

Touch!!!??? NICE! I love touch screens. Currently, I use different sizes of Nextion displays, but the TFT like in this video is nice!

[@davidrowe9168]

Very useful. Thx

[@esmokebaby]

I wounder if I can cut a hole in my PC case and have it read my CPU GPU temps and my fps

[@Bestkeiki]

I hope you will do a video demonstrating the lilygo t-dongle-s3 also

[@kidrobot.]

where can i buy one of these tiny things? i want one for my keychain

[@johanneskrijger398]

Hello Volo, I have one question about transparent sprites. Is there a way to send you an email. In short, I created an yellow Circle in a Sprite and it is displayed in Purple in Background Sprite.

[@quaphik4239]

Quick question is this similar to the nfs process

[@biker2k3]

Excelente explicación!

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Thank you again!

[@sakibyousuf1869]

Hello, Volos How can I achieve this on seed wio terminal. I am not able to run img.pushToSprite function. Any suggestions please 🥺

[@VolosProjects]

Try to update library

[@sakibyousuf1869]

@@VolosProjects already updated to latest version. The thing is it uses the seed inbuilt tft_espi library. And that library has no function named . pushToSprite. Please help 🥺

[@Root2Fox]

Thank you!

[@walley7i322]

Wow!!! Good!!!!!!!

[@ZacsNotDead]

I don't know wut this vid is gonna be I just like mega man

[@Fusiiiiion]

Thanks a lot, this is a great job'

[@neet9599]

hello，I wanna know how can make a frame animation forSprites

[@nageshwarrao8629]

I am wonder if you can program Gameboy advance or any arcade emulator in it

[@RicardoPenders]

I tried to buy one of these boards about two months ago, then I bought another one but the older version hoping that they get one of these boards sent to me but these boards aren't available on the Banggood website, this has never happened before that I had to wait as long as I'm waiting on these boards. I do really want them but if they aren't sending me at least one board before the end of this year I'm gonna ask for a refund, I'm not sure what's going on at Banggood and I would like to know if this is happening to other people who did buy something at the Banggood store the last 3 months and if you have to wait as long as I.

[@VolosProjects]

bangood have problems with stocking this board. You can ask for refund and try to buy it somewhere else.

[@RicardoPenders]

@@VolosProjects Well, to me it looks like Banggood has other problems too because I bought another thing which is unrelated and that item has the same issue getting sent out. The weird thing is when I bought these products they showed these were in stock and after I payed the products were suddenly out of stock but I told them I can wait and that was 2 months ago.

[@DanNV100]

Не знаю зачем это, но это классно.

[@HaikuGuy]

Thanks!