What is the pinout of a 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module?

If you’re working with a 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS display, the pinout is the first thing you need to nail down before hooking it up to any microcontroller or development board. These modules are incredibly common, used in everything from handheld gaming consoles to industrial control panels, and they typically come in two main interface variants: SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) and MCU 8-bit parallel. The specific pinout depends on the driver chip—most commonly the ILI9341, ST7789, or ST7735—and the breakout board design. For a standard 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS display, you’ll usually find a 14-pin or 18-pin header, but the 14-pin SPI version is the most widespread. Let’s break down the exact pin assignments, signal functions, and voltage levels so you can wire this thing up without frying anything.

First off, the most popular configuration for these modules is the 14-pin SPI interface. The pins are typically labeled on the back of the PCB, but sometimes they’re cryptic—like “CS,” “RST,” “DC,” “MOSI,” “SCK,” “LED,” and “VCC.” Here’s the actual pinout for a generic 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module with SPI, based on the ILI9341 driver (which is the most common): pin 1 is VCC (3.3V or 5V, depending on the module’s regulator), pin 2 is GND, pin 3 is CS (chip select, active low), pin 4 is RESET (reset, active low), pin 5 is DC (data/command select), pin 6 is MOSI (master out slave in, for data to the display), pin 7 is SCK (serial clock), pin 8 is LED (backlight control, often PWM-capable), and pins 9 through 14 are usually MISO (master in slave out, for reading from the display, sometimes not used), and additional ground or power pins. Some modules swap MOSI and SCK, or combine MISO with a spare GPIO, so always check the datasheet. The ILI9341 datasheet specifies that the logic voltage for SPI signals is 2.8V to 3.6V, but many modules include a 3.3V regulator on-board, allowing 5V VCC input. If your module doesn’t have a regulator, feeding 5V into VCC will kill it instantly—stick to 3.3V.

For the 18-pin version, which often supports both SPI and 8-bit parallel modes, the pinout gets more complex. You’ll have 8 data lines (D0 to D7), plus WR (write strobe), RD (read strobe), CS, RS (register select, same as DC), RESET, and a few power pins. The 18-pin header is usually spaced at 2.54mm pitch, and the pin 1 marker is typically a square pad or a dot. In 8-bit mode, you can push pixels faster—up to 8 MHz for the parallel interface versus 4 MHz for SPI on the same driver—but you burn more GPIOs. The ST7789 driver, found in some 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS modules, has a slightly different command set but the same pinout logic. A key detail: the backlight pin (LED) on these modules is often tied to a transistor that expects a PWM signal, not just a high/low. If you drive it with 3.3V directly, you’ll get full brightness, but that’s fine for testing. For production, use a 1kHz PWM to control brightness and save power. The current draw for the backlight is around 20-40 mA at 3.3V, and the display itself draws about 5-10 mA during active use.

Now, let’s talk about the physical layout. The 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module typically has a 40-pin flex cable connecting the glass to the PCB, but the breakout board reduces that to the header. The pinout for the flex cable is completely different—it’s a 0.5mm pitch FPC connector with 40 pins, including the source driver outputs, gate driver outputs, and power rails. You don’t need to deal with that unless you’re designing a custom PCB. The breakout board’s pinout is standardized by the Chinese manufacturers, but there are variations. For example, the “red” PCB version from one vendor might have VCC on pin 1, while a “green” PCB version might have GND on pin 1. I’ve seen modules where the LED pin is labeled “BL” or “BACKLIGHT,” and the RESET pin is labeled “RST.” The ILI9341 driver’s pinout for the SPI interface is defined in the datasheet as: CS (pin 63), DC (pin 62), RESET (pin 61), SDA (pin 60), SCL (pin 59), and LED (pin 58 on the driver chip, but that’s internal). The breakout board routes these to the header.

Here’s a table of the most common 14-pin SPI pinout for a 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module, based on the ILI9341 with a 3.3V regulator:

Pin Number	Label	Function	Voltage Level	Notes
1	VCC	Power supply	3.3V or 5V	Check regulator; 5V input gets regulated to 3.3V
2	GND	Ground	0V	Common ground with MCU
3	CS	Chip select	3.3V logic	Active low; pull high when not in use
4	RESET	Reset	3.3V logic	Active low; tie to MCU reset or GPIO
5	DC	Data/Command	3.3V logic	High for data, low for command
6	MOSI	Master Out Slave In	3.3V logic	Also called SDA or DIN
7	SCK	Serial Clock	3.3V logic	Also called SCL; max 10 MHz typical
8	LED	Backlight control	3.3V or 5V	PWM-capable; 20-40 mA draw
9	MISO	Master In Slave Out	3.3V logic	Optional; not on all modules
10	GND	Ground	0V	Secondary ground
11	VCC	Power supply	3.3V or 5V	Sometimes duplicated for current
12	NC	Not connected	N/A	Leave floating
13	NC	Not connected	N/A	Leave floating
14	NC	Not connected	N/A	Leave floating

This pinout is for the 2.4 inch 240x320 ips display from DisplayModule, which uses the ILI9341 driver and supports SPI up to 4 MHz. The module also includes a microSD card slot, which adds another set of pins—usually CS_SD, MOSI_SD, SCK_SD, and MISO_SD—but those are separate from the display header. The SD card slot uses the same SPI bus as the display, but with a different chip select pin, so you can share MOSI and SCK. The SD card voltage is 3.3V, and it draws about 30 mA during read/write. The display’s pixel clock for SPI is 4 MHz, which gives you a frame rate of around 30 FPS for full-screen updates, assuming you’re sending 16-bit color (240x320x2 bytes = 153,600 bytes per frame). At 4 MHz, that’s 38.4 ms per frame, or 26 FPS, but with optimization like partial updates, you can hit 60 FPS.

The 18-pin parallel interface version has a different pinout. Here’s a typical assignment for an 18-pin header on a 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module with 8-bit 8080 interface:

Pin Number	Label	Function	Voltage Level	Notes
1	VCC	Power supply	3.3V or 5V	Same as SPI version
2	GND	Ground	0V	Common ground
3	CS	Chip select	3.3V logic	Active low
4	RS	Register select	3.3V logic	Same as DC
5	WR	Write strobe	3.3V logic	Active low; toggles to write data
6	RD	Read strobe	3.3V logic	Active low; toggles to read data
7	RESET	Reset	3.3V logic	Active low
8	D0	Data bit 0	3.3V logic	LSB
9	D1	Data bit 1	3.3V logic
10	D2	Data bit 2	3.3V logic
11	D3	Data bit 3	3.3V logic
12	D4	Data bit 4	3.3V logic
13	D5	Data bit 5	3.3V logic
14	D6	Data bit 6	3.3V logic
15	D7	Data bit 7	3.3V logic	MSB
16	LED	Backlight control	3.3V or 5V	PWM-capable
17	VCC	Power supply	3.3V or 5V	Duplicated for current
18	GND	Ground	0V	Duplicated ground

The parallel interface is faster but requires 8 GPIOs for data, plus 4 control lines, totaling 12 GPIOs minimum. The ILI9341 datasheet specifies that the 8-bit parallel interface can run at up to 10 MHz, giving you a theoretical frame rate of 153,600 bytes / 10 MHz = 15.36 ms, or 65 FPS. In practice, you’ll get around 50 FPS due to overhead. The SPI version, on the other hand, uses only 4 GPIOs (CS, DC, MOSI, SCK) plus RESET and LED, making it ideal for low-pin-count MCUs like the ESP8266 or ATmega328. But SPI has a higher latency per byte because it’s serial. For the 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module, the pixel format is 16-bit RGB565, meaning each pixel uses 2 bytes. The ILI9341 driver supports 18-bit RGB666 internally, but the interface truncates to 16-bit for speed. The color depth is 262K colors, but the IPS panel itself has a 178-degree viewing angle and 400 nits typical brightness.

Voltage compatibility is a critical detail. The ILI9341’s logic pins are not 5V tolerant—they’re rated for 3.6V max. If you’re using a 5V MCU like an Arduino Uno, you need level shifters on the SPI lines (CS, DC, MOSI, SCK, RESET). The backlight pin (LED) is often connected to a P-channel MOSFET that switches the backlight LED string. The gate of that MOSFET is driven by the 3.3V logic, so applying 5V to the LED pin can damage the MOSFET. Always check the module’s schematic—some modules have a resistor divider that drops 5V to 3.3V, but it’s not guaranteed. The VCC pin, if the module has a 3.3V regulator, can take 5V, but the regulator heats up at higher currents. The regulator’s dropout voltage is typically 0.5V, so 5V input gives 4.5V output, but the ILI9341 only needs 2.8V to 3.3V. The regulator’s maximum output current is around 50 mA, which is enough for the display and backlight combined. If you’re driving the backlight at full brightness, the total current draw is about 60 mA, so the regulator runs hot but within spec.

Another variation is the 4-wire SPI version, which omits the MISO pin. This is common on cheaper modules where the manufacturer doesn’t implement readback from the display. The pinout is then VCC, GND, CS, RESET, DC, MOSI, SCK, LED—that’s 8 pins. Some modules have a 10-pin header with the same signals but include a second ground. The 4-wire SPI mode is fine for most applications because you rarely need to read from the display (e.g., for reading the pixel data or the driver ID). The ILI9341 supports both 4-wire and 3-wire SPI, but 3-wire uses a bi-directional data line, which is rare on these breakout boards. The 3-wire mode is only used on some ST7735 modules.

The physical dimensions of the pin header are also worth noting. The 14-pin header is usually 2.54mm pitch, with pin 1 marked by a square pad on the PCB. The header is typically male, so you need female jumper wires or a female header on your MCU. The pin order is often printed on the back of the PCB, but it’s tiny—use a magnifying glass. I’ve seen modules where the pinout is reversed, so always check with a multimeter: measure continuity between the pin and the driver chip’s leg. For example, pin 1 on the header should connect to the VCC pin on the ILI9341 (pin 1 on the driver is usually VCC, but check the datasheet). The driver chip’s pinout is documented in the ILI9341 datasheet, which is 300+ pages, but you only need the interface pins.

For the 2.4 inch 240x320 IPS module, the resolution is 240x320 pixels, which is a QVGA display. The aspect ratio is 3:4, and the pixel density is about 154 PPI. The IPS technology means the viewing angle is 80 degrees in all directions, with a contrast ratio of 1000:1 typical. The response time is 25 ms, which is fine for static images but can cause ghosting on fast-moving video. The module’s weight is around