Cheap Yellow Display (CYD)

What is a CYD?

The Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is the popular name for the ESP32-2432S028 — an all-in-one development board that combines an ESP32 microcontroller with a 2.8″ colour TFT touchscreen (240×320), resistive touch (XPT2046 or CST816 on some variants), and useful extras like an onboard RGB LED, microSD slot, and LDR. It's become a favourite in the maker and smart-home community for building compact dashboards, status displays, and control panels without wiring a separate screen.

Because the display and ESP32 are on one board, you can build a full GUI device (e.g. a Home Assistant monitor) by flashing firmware and connecting to Wi‑Fi — no soldering or complex wiring required.

Purpose of this website

This site exists to help you get the most out of your CYD when using ESPHome and (optionally) Home Assistant. Rather than editing YAML by hand, you can use the tools here to generate and customise configurations visually, then copy the result into ESPHome and flash your device.

The project supports a Home Assistant monitor (sensor dashboard with clock), tailored for the CYD’s screen and GPIO layout.

CYD at a glance

• Board: ESP32-WROOM-32, 2.8″ ILI9341 TFT (240×320), SPI touch
• Display pins: TFT on HSPI (e.g. CLK 14, MOSI 13, MISO 12, CS 15, DC 2); backlight often GPIO 21 (or 27 on I2C touch variants)
• Onboard RGB LED: Red GPIO 4, Green GPIO 16, Blue GPIO 17 (active low)
• Typical use: ESPHome + LVGL for dashboards, clocks, sensor tiles, and custom UIs

Pinouts can vary slightly by manufacturer and revision; the config generator offers presets for common variants (SPI touch / I2C touch) and optional custom pins.