For my own future reference more than anything else, to get the ILI9341 (either Adafruit or otherwise) working on the ESP8266 using the Arduino development environment isn’t completely straightforward. I knew I had this working previously, but couldn’t find the info again, so am copying it here.

It would appear that the ILI9341 library currently available through the Arduino Sketch -> Include Library -> Manage Libraries is not currently compatible with the ESP8266. Thus you have to download the working library directly from the Adafruit Github repository. However, I also had issues with this version. Finally I used the examples on http://nailbuster.com/?page_id=341 to get it working.

Additionally, the XPT2046 library available in the Arduino manage libraries feature does not support Hardware SPI, however there is an alternative developed by [spapadim] on Github. I took the following steps to compile some example code.

1. Wire up ESP and Touch screen according to http://nailbuster.com/?page_id=341
2. Download the zip file from the end of the page on http://nailbuster.com/?page_id=341 this includes some working examples
3. Download XPT2046 library from Github https://github.com/spapadim/XPT2046
4. Go to Arduino IDE -> Sketch -> Include Library -> Manage Libraries -> Search GFX and install the “Adadfruit GFX Library”
5. Open the example sketch from Nailbuster and compile and upload

I have a feeling these libraries may be a little out of date now so I’ll have a look at whether they can be updated to use the latest versions available from Adafruit.