The $20 ESP32 "Cheap Yellow Display" becomes a versatile smart-home dashboard

At a glance:

• The ESP32 "Cheap Yellow Display" (model ESP32-2432S028R) costs about $20 and features a 240x320 TFT LCD, an SD card slot, and additional GPIO pins for custom hardware.
• Author Adam Conway used ESPHome and LVGL version 8 to build a programmable smart-home dashboard that shows time, living-room temperature, and controls bedroom lights, office lights, and Music Assistant.
• Despite sparse documentation, the project shows how a low-cost ESP32 board can become a flexible, open-source interface for home automation.

What the ESP32 CYD brings to the bench

The ESP32-2432S028R board arrived for roughly twenty dollars, bundling a 240x320 TFT touch-ready display, an SD card slot, and a set of broken-out GPIO pins. It also shipped with an acrylic and wooden enclosure, though the design can be housed in any custom case. Its low price makes it an attractive entry point for hobbyists looking to experiment with ESPHome. Conway's long-term goal is to replace the OnePlus 6 he keeps on his desk as a Home Assistant dashboard with this purpose-built screen. The board can be reprogrammed in minutes, allowing the dashboard to morph into a different interface whenever needed. To explore larger form factors, he has ordered a couple of bigger displays for further testing and software development.

Building the dashboard with ESPHome and LVGL

Initial experiments relied on a web-based ESPHome display designer, but the workflow felt slow and the results looked unattractive. Turning to GitHub, Conway found Brian Lough's repository with LVGL examples for ESPHome, which introduced the Light and Versatile Graphics Library (LVGL) version 8 – a relatively new addition to the framework at the time. LVGL enables rich graphics on memory-constrained devices, and after studying Ryan Ewen's LVGL-ESPHome implementation that specifically supported the CYD, he was able to craft a multi-page interface. The final layout places a time sensor at the top-center and living-room temperature at the top-right. Buttons for bedroom lights and office lights sit alongside a custom widget that launches Music Assistant, granting volume and track-skip controls once activated. All of these elements are defined in ESPHome YAML and exposed through LVGL widgets, demonstrating how the cheap display can become a functional smart-home hub.

Challenges, lessons and future plans

Getting LVGL to work in ESPHome proved challenging because the official documentation was thin and the library had only recently been integrated, forcing the author to piece together information from multiple repositories. Nevertheless, his background in software development let him debug wiring, YAML configuration, and widget callbacks, turning frustration into a rewarding learning experience. The process highlighted the importance of community-shared code when official guides lag behind new features. He plans to release the complete dashboard code as open-source on GitHub, hoping that others can reuse and improve upon the design. With the extra larger displays on hand, future work will explore more elaborate interfaces, possibly integrating additional sensors or voice-feedback modules. Ultimately, the CYD shows that a twenty-dollar board can serve as a versatile foundation for DIY home-automation projects.