RGB666 40p TTL TFT Touch Sensor Activated When Not Touched

[jmangum]

CircuitPython version and board name

Adafruit CircuitPython 10.1.3 on 2026-02-20; Adafruit-Qualia-S3-RGB666 with ESP32S3
Board ID:adafruit_qualia_s3_rgb666

Code/REPL

Paint demo at https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qualia-esp32-s3-for-rgb666-displays/circuitpython-touch-display-usage

Behavior

After activating the touch sensor (do some finger painting), leave the touch sensor alone for about one minute. The touch sensor will start recording touches with values of 0 and 65. I had to insert a print statement after the ft.touched command:

if ft.touched:
        print('ft.touched:',ft.touched)

REPL will repeated display:

ft.touched: 1
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 0
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 65
ft.touched: 0

[Continuing until code is stopped.]

Description

• Run paint demo at https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qualia-esp32-s3-for-rgb666-displays/circuitpython-touch-display-usage
• Can also cause erroneous touches using Qualia libraries to setup display (replacing explicit setup used in paint demo)

from adafruit_qualia.graphics import Displays, Graphics
from adafruit_qualia.peripherals import Peripherals
graphics = Graphics(Displays.SQUARE40, default_bg=None, auto_refresh=False, rotation=180)
# Set up Peripherals
peripherals = Peripherals(i2c_bus=graphics.i2c_bus)
# Set display to show
display = graphics.display

• Occasionally (very rare) noticed a value for ft.touched of 67, which appeared to cause variable overflow (? unsure about this vehaviour)

Additional information

Workaround is to use if ft.touched == 1, which is ok for single-touch applications.