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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Review: Adafruit 16x2 OLED Display

If you are an Arduino user, you may well have used a 16x2 LCD display. These displays require a pot to set the contrast. The Adafruit 16x2 OLED display does away with the need for this pot.

In all other ways it works just like an LCD 16x2 display and uses the standard LiquidCrystal library.

Its not that obvious from the photo above, but this display is lovely! The background is jet black under most lighting and the LED emissive display much clearer than the LCD equivalents.

It is not a cheap option, but for that special project, I Highly recommend this display.

Here's the code, straight from the Example sketch - with a few pin changes:

/*
  LiquidCrystal Library - Hello World
 Demonstrates the use a 16x2 LCD display.  The LiquidCrystal
 library works with all LCD displays that are compatible with the 
 Hitachi HD44780 driver. There are many of them out there, and you
 can usually tell them by the 16-pin interface.
 This sketch prints "Hello World!" to the LCD
 and shows the time.
  The circuit:
 * LCD RS pin to digital pin 12
 * LCD Enable pin to digital pin 11
 * LCD D4 pin to digital pin 5
 * LCD D5 pin to digital pin 4
 * LCD D6 pin to digital pin 3
 * LCD D7 pin to digital pin 2
 * LCD R/W pin to ground
 * 10K resistor:
 * ends to +5V and ground
 * wiper to LCD VO pin (pin 3)
 Library originally added 18 Apr 2008
 by David A. Mellis
 library modified 5 Jul 2009
 by Limor Fried (http://www.ladyada.net)
 example added 9 Jul 2009
 by Tom Igoe
 modified 22 Nov 2010
 by Tom Igoe
 This example code is in the public domain.

 http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LiquidCrystal
 */

// include the library code:
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>

// initialize the library with the numbers of the interface pins
LiquidCrystal lcd(7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12);

void setup() {
  // set up the LCD's number of columns and rows: 
  lcd.begin(16, 2);
  // Print a message to the LCD.
  lcd.print("hello, world!");
}

void loop() {
  // set the cursor to column 0, line 1
  // (note: line 1 is the second row, since counting begins with 0):
  lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
  // print the number of seconds since reset:
  lcd.print(millis()/1000);
}

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your post, Review: Adafruit 16x2 OLED Display, is really well written and insightful. Glad I found your website, warm regards!

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Simon Monk said...

Thanks to Don from the Arduino Forum, for pointing out that you should use the Adafruit library for this device and wire up the RW pin. See Adafruit product page for this.

Mine works, but some timing differences mean that it may not always work.

go hye jo fans said...

it is will work with library for lcd 16x2??