Update. Much to my surprise the “4.3 inch LCD Module TFT Display,Controller RA8875,Touch Panel” came. They said it would take 2-6 weeks but it was only about 2 weeks. Came setup for parallel. There are jumpers on the display so you can use i2c or spi 3 or 4 wire.
My Spark has not come yet so it will be awhile before I start working on it.
My goal for my Christmas break is to get the spark working with this display and start doing simple projects.
Doug
i cant wait to buy one too! that looks awesome. looking forward to an OLED shield for spark.
I’m slapping together a a little library for the Parallax 16x2 Serial LCD Backpack right now (I got about 10 of these for $5/ea on clearance at Radio Shack last fall). After that I’ll tackle one for the Digole displays (Serial, I2C and SPI), although with no color support initially (unless someone wants to donate $25 for a color OLED). The good news is the mono protocol is backwards compatible with their new color displays.
Latest update. The jumpers were no problem but I must change the 0 ohm resistors for a 10k ohm resistor. Problem these are SMD and I need to order those and SMD can be hard to solder by hand, I have done it.
I ordered this display through ebay not realizing they had a website for them. The ebay order didn’t say anything about saying which way it should be ordered IE SPI vs. parallel.
Because my spark core was not here I put this project on hold and I am working on another project will get back to this.
I am a little frustrated but it is all solvable. People have been answering my questions quickly they admitted that they need to change the ebay ad.
@timb I would be happy to buy you the buydisplay board if you produced libraries that worked with the spark core for me and all to use. PM me and let’s talk.
The link sprite website has some nice basic LCD’s for good prices.
If you don’t do I2c or a serial backpack, your going to be running a mit full of jumper wires.
timb, the color support is a very minimal amount of extra code for the color display. I have one that I bought when they offered it at half price 
I would gladly test any code you produce as I was going to do that when I receive my Sparks any day I hope (!!!)
Ok, so the buyDisplay unit is an excellent unit and I still want to play with one. HOWEVER, I was digging up info on two other interesting units - the new 4DLCD-FT843 display from 4D Systems and the Gameduino2 available on SeeedStudio after a successful Kickstarter campaign. I overlooked these before but I am reconsidering them. They both use the FT800 with their EVE processor, eliminating the need for a screen buffer. This thing is FAST! Similar to 4D’s Workshop IDE, FTDI has a 3rd-party GUI design tool (though a full version cost $99). I am not sure if it produces usable Arduino code but I will be looking into it. Food for thought.
The MikroE GUI Tool generates code for the mikroC, mikroBasic and mikroPascal compilers, none of which are particularly compatible with Arduino.
I've been doing more research into the FT800, while it's very powerful, the command set is an absolute bitch. It reminds me quite a bit of OpenGL programming, so unless you've got a lot of experience with graphics programming, I'd stay away.
For some good news, my LCD GPU Backpack is progressing along very nicely. I've partnered up with the guy who wrote the LCD_Screen library for Energia. (He's also the guy behind embedXcode, if you're familiar.)
timb… I was afraid of that. As I dug deeper, I realized that it was not all roses. If 4D can create a good library and GUI tool to work with it, then it may be worth considering.
Great news on your backpack!
Just a note, but I should have the Digole Library completely ported over by end of day, with color support!
Hi James - I just started playing with your OLED and my newly arrived Spark cores. Have you had any luck in driving the display yet? I have been busy bringing in all of the necessary #includes but not made much progress.
Thanks
Chris
Hi @Kitard
We have some code but nothing like our current library yet.
I can send you the code to draw a rectangle if you like but at present, that is all it does.
Kind regards
James
I got my display in yesterday, thanks!
Could you send me the code as well? If you at least have it talking to the Core I can adapt it to my primitives library.
Oh, and those of you waiting on my Digole code: I’ll have it soon. I spent the afternoon fixing an I2C bug in core-common, but today should be a clean shot.
Hi @timb
Sure, will get that sent now.
If you need any more info, you can contact me and I’ll be able to help with any info.
Kind regards
James
@timb, am I right in thinking you are developing a library for the i2c backpack on the 16x2 alphanumerical display ?
The backpacks found on this page are the ones strapped to the back of my 16x2.
From what I understand, the demo of the twitter fridge magnet on kickstarted used a backpack. Was this i2c or serial ?
regards
john
Thanks James - have your code up and running and have begun investigating options. Have you looked at u8glib given it has support for SSD1351 or are you planning on a direct port of the existing Arduino libs you have.
So I'm actually working on several display solutions for the Spark Core right now.
There's so many different 16x2/20x2/20x4 LCD backpacks on the market, each with different command sets. I started out writing a library for the Parallax Serial 16x2 LCD Backpack, however it's turned into more of a Universal Liquid Crystal Library. It'll support all the same commands as the Arduino Liquid Crystal Library, but I'm structuring it so that you can use #define statements (or custom functions) to enter the commands your specific backpack expects. It'll support Serial and I2C backpacks.
I've got a port (well, really a re-write) of the Digole SPI/I2C/UART Library I'm working on now.Finally, I've got a primitives and UI library that should work with @Jamjardavies Color OLED and pretty much any other display, so long as you can hack together a basic driver for it. 
timb thanks for lending the whole community your obvious talents.
Doug
Seems like this would be a really easy LCD solution (for me anyway :D)?
http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/16x2-display-and-keypad-shield.html
Since it is an existing arduino shield, do we have the LiquidCrystal library already?