How to use and why to use Sprites (TFT_espi Programing tutorial) 

Great instructional videos! I remember using sprites in 1983 (40 years ago!) on a Commodore 64. Those were 24×21 pixels and if your sprite resembled anything beyond a blocky blob then you were having a very good day.

This is the first video of yours I have seen. For me as a beginner, the way you have gone through this is fantastic! Thank you so much.

I really like the way you structure this video, because it reflects the ways a normal beginner will start over and you shot hot to be a pro

Nice job... I was trying to put lots of code on my Lilygo T-watch (with your graphs and others that I like) and now I'm understanding a little better how do it

I haven't started watching, but already am super happy you made this one... i've been trying to understand what a sprite is/does and how to use it to make a little game... but i was still confused a lot! BTW, i normally dont comment on YT, but i just want to say i love your video's, i bought a couple of these ESP32's with a build-in screen for a little project and learned so much from your video's!!!

i like how you just chill in your garden and make great content for us :)

Thank you Volos! I have learned a lot from this video. You explain it in a very clear and funny way. Congratulations!!

Thank you for the explanations of how this works, quality information on how to program for the LCD is excellent.

thank you so much for making video's with this esp board. I picked it for a school project with basicly 0 programming experience, and then i could find almost zero information on how to program it. Your videos saved my project!

Dude, That's quite huge collection of displays for a single person. Thanks

Danke dir Volo für die Mühe die du dir gemacht hast - ich konnte viel lernen, zumal mir jetzt vieles klar geworden ist.

Very helpful. Seems like learning to use Sprite's is critical to developing great projects. this is a Great video to show why.. Thanks jimS

Very useful, looking forward to next sprites tutorials!

Once again an interesting and incredibly useful video. Thank you so much!

Excellent! That was a very good demo of using sprites

WOW, that was easy... Thanks for sharing, it is very much appreciated here.

not sure when i subscribed but every time i hear you say subscribe i look, this time i'll say thanks for putting so much information out! these display manufacturers should send you free screens every time and pay you!!

Haven’t played with sprites since the days of Commodore 64 (showing my age 😄). Wish I understood them then like I do now. Many thanks! 👍🏾🤓

Nice example! Looking forward for more with sprites..

Absolutely clear explanation thanks

Fast to draw front arc and erase rear arc to move circle from an edge.(But beware of undrawn pixels for thin line). Also should always pause after changes to permit persistance of human vision to load the new image to brain. In ideal world, 20ms for recalculations and delay to give 50 frames per second. Ah... I am watching as typing. So I'm theorising that the operations are made to fast ESP32 RAM instead of TFT and then DMA load from RAM to TFT with your img.push operation. Thanks for tutorial!

Thanks for another great video!

Great tutorial, very informative.

Simple, practical and even had birds chirping!

Interesting. Never dis anything with sprites. I’ll try to use them. Thanks one more time. 🤘🏽🤘🏽🤘🏽.

perfect! I spent so much time on looking for such thingis ;-)

Thank you very much ... I did learn something new!!!

Nice Pizza oven! Good tutorial.

Subscribed Instantly!

I'M IN LOVE WITH THE SPRITES NOW :)

Liked, favorited, subscribed and appreciated!

Thank you! Coffee coming your way!

Very cool, TY for sharing.

Thank you very much for your tutorials,...How do you speed up Sprites? It seems to be very slow as compared to non-Sprites.

You rock dude, thanks 👍🏼

Interesantno. Razlika je, da se operacie kod sprite rade u memoriji a ne na ekran, tek na kraju se sprite odlikuje na ekran. Sto ukupno ispadne brze i kao neka vrsta doublebuffera. Mozda bi mogao jos i da uklonis ove dve operatie sa "TFT_BLACK" i da koristis "fillSprite(TFT_BLACK)" na pocetku. Po specifikaciju bi moglo biti jos malo brze :)

Hey, firstly, thanks for a great video, I'm learning a lot about Arduino/ESP32 at the moment and this has been really informative. Secondly would you mind sharing the sketch for the fuel gauge shown at 20secs? I want to make a speedo gauge and the asthetic of yours is exactly what I'm hoping to achieve. Thanks again!

Thank you, very helpful.

Great info. Sprite is like a backbufferr I think

Great video. Thanks

Thank you! That helped a lot understanding (:

great sir..very useful

good job. the orange ball looks nice, is it OK to use a circle image instead of the ball?

Hey hey Bro! Thanks too much for the tutorial.!

Very Good

Thank you.. I need your help if possible.. Im using this TFT_eSPI library with my st7735 128x128 display.. and it works great when I show a 16-bit image using pushImage( ) function. but if I print a text on top of it, the text starts flickering. I've tried many things to no avail, but if I change the image to the 8-bit bitmaps it works perfectly ! .. so can I display an 8-bit color image (not bitmap) using this library ?

Thanks for this clear explanation! I have learned a lot!

Please, I need more on this topic

Nice 👍🏻

It would be great if you could explain the theory and why it's smoother and better than the other approach. I want to know the behind the scenes implementation process.

Cool!!! thanks l use ttgo t4

..brilliant video, you’re a great teacher, thank you!! ..are you looking forward to TTGO t-Display Amoled, should be cool

Thank you !!!

Thanks!

Nice !...cheers.

was commodore user and did use sprite concept alot. my explanation version to newbie. you are drawing graphic to memory (not to screen), after you done draw graphic (into memory), copy the memory to screen., done, rinse and repeat. to some (and on old computers) yes, this slightly slow graphics viewing-play. but the slowness is offset by the speed of cpu processing the code, modern computer makes it useless because the cpu is far faster and flicker comes back. interesting is unfazed by small development boards.

here we go!!!! 😊😮😊😊

Please do a tutorial / video on how to design a pcb board from a simple circuit using software.

Where is part 2??? I haven't been able to figure out how to make a masked sprite, I was hoping you had information on that.

How do you know which displays are supported? I've a few ST7735 TFT displays, flickers a lot and low resolution

6:21 that's actually a useful bug!

Can you do a tutorial on using Lvgl library with T-Display S3 make of nice UI, fonts, colors, etc.

and willing nice tutoet League teams and players to chose as their editor. More money for tho. It is pretty cool to see the progress I

Hi and thanks for great videos, I am finding them very useful. I am working with ESP32-Vroom and 320*240 TFT(SPI), when I define my sprite with full length it does not work (LCD is black) but when I break it into 2 sprit of 120*320 I have no issue and it successfully updates the LCD? Any ideas?

OMG where did you get that coffee mug?

Why am I getting this error when I trying to do something with this ttgo? Sketch uses 18280 bytes (59%) of program storage space. Maximum is 30720 bytes. Global variables use 1882 bytes (91%) of dynamic memory, leaving 166 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 2048 byt

Hy! is possible to develop an menu user interface with sprites?

When ever I hear the word 'Sprite' I think of Mr Claypole in Rentaghost.

благодарю бро за такое пошаговое объяснение. Можешь рассказать так же про режим DMA на ESP32?

"Takes a drink of sprite while watching a video that is talking about sprites"

Those screen flickers look like image buffer corruption to me. I guess it's because of unaligned memory writes or LCD's driver issue, maybe it has to do with the weird resolution this display has, and I'd say you're essentially bypassing the issue with writing full frame buffer every frame which is less efficient both in terms of CPU cycles and memory usage than the partial screen update the first approach had. I'm interested to figure the real issue out.

Good stuff!! But as far as I can understand, ONE sprite of 135x200 pixels takes all RAM memory of ESP32 :(

Great video. I followed along using ESP32 and ILI9341 (240x320) and it worked great until I tried to make the full-screen 240x320 sprite (scaled up from your example). It will only go so big before it stops working. I'm guessing it's a memory issue and I need som more teaching. I can't seem to find another tutorial that goes deeper :(

ahhaha thanks xD

Just to confirm, this doesn't have to be on a TTGO, right? It can be any ESP32 board, like ESP32 WROOOM ? And will any TFT work, like the 4 wire ones, or does it require TFTs that have several wires?

Interesting idea. But why don't you use "real" sprites? A circle sprite you just move over the screen? And a number sprite which you update every loop?

So, Sprite will paint the objects into the memory one by one and then into the screen in one shot?

Can you please also tell me what is deleteSprite? What is its importance? How to use it?

What User Setup do you use in "User_Setup_Select.h"?

Great example of "Arduino code". You just could use a Frame buffer to avoid ANY of this flickers :\

Nice video thank you but could you repeat this video but using micropython please?

At time 00:05, we can see your pizza oven. Will you create a tutorial on how to build a pizza oven. Please.

Your screen flicker is pacman-esque.

I didn't find. Any sprite bottle😅

Do you only provide the code if they buy you a coffee?

I think "why you need double buffering" would be a much more suitable title. whatever. i dont care much about strange arduino lib apis. cya

Okay. I'm going to try to explain the problem I'm having with your example. I have a different size display. Mine is 240x240 (size set in the user_settup.h file). Your code line by line works great but if I change the size of the sprite to 240x240 it won't run. All I get is a black screen. I've change the size of it on both x and y and the only time I can get it to run is if the size of the sprite difference between x and y is >= 10. img.createSprite(240, 240); doesn't work. img.createSprite(235, 235); works img.createSprite(240, 231); doesn't work img.createSprite(240, 230); works img.createSprite(230, 240); works img.createSprite(231, 240); doesn't work img.createSprite(239, 231); works img.createSprite(235, 235); works. I'm confused. Could this be something in the user_setup.h? Edit: I found my answer. This may help others. I’m using an ESP32 Wroom 32. “A Sprite is notionally an invisible graphics screen that is kept in the processors RAM. Graphics can be drawn into the Sprite just as they can be drawn directly to the screen. Once the Sprite is completed it can be plotted onto the screen in any position. If there is sufficient RAM then the Sprite can be the same size as the screen and used as a frame buffer. Sprites by default use 16 bit colours, the bit depth can be set to 8 bits (256 colours) , or 1 bit (any 2 colours) to reduce the RAM needed. On an ESP8266 the largest 16 bit colour Sprite that can be created is about 160x128 pixels, this consumes 40Kbytes of RAM. On an ESP32 the workspace RAM is more limited than the datasheet implies so a 16 bit colour Sprite is limited to about 200x200 pixels (~80Kbytes), an 8 bit sprite to 320x240 pixels (~76kbytes). A 1 bit per pixel Sprite requires only 9600 bytes for a full 320 x 240 screen buffer, this is ideal for supporting use with 2 colour bitmap fonts.” github.com/Bodmer/TFT_eSPI#sprites

#include TFT_eSPI tft = TFT_eSPI(); TFT_eSprite img = TFT_eSprite(&tft); void setup() { tft.init(); tft.setRotation(1); img.setColorDepth(true); img.setColorDepth(1); //img.setColorDepth(8);// NO IMAGE img.fillSprite(TFT_RED); img.createSprite(480,320); } int x = 0; void loop() { img.fillCircle(x,36,30,TFT_BLACK); x = x + 10; if (x > 480) x = 0; img.fillCircle(x,36,30,TFT_GREEN); img.pushSprite(0, 0); delay(10); } Not work on stm32f401ccu6