Arduino OLED Displays

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Orient Display is a company that specializes in manufacturing OLED modules with competitive prices. The company was founded in by specializing in fields of production, R&D, quality controls. Thanks for the management and employee&#;s continuous hardworking and enormous effort and shareholder continuous investment over years, Orient Display factory is now the world&#;s lead standard and custom OLED display module manufacturer in flat panel industry and is listed as a public company in China stock market . Now, Factories have complete quality and environment management system, ISO, ISO/IATF, ISO, IECQ QC. It is also No.1 in the world for automotive capacitive touch screen which took around 18% market share in the world automotive market.

Orient Display develops a line of products for customer to buy Arduino OLED display modules to have hands on experience. They range from 0.66&#;, 0.68&#;, 0.83&#;, 0.95&#;,0.96&#;, 1.09&#;, 1.3&#;, 1.54&#;, with resolution 64×48, 96×32, 96×39, 96×64, 96×96, 128×64. The interfaces have the options of , parallel, 3 or 4 wire SPI, I2C and RGB interface. 3.3V power supply, extremely wide viewing angle and extremely operating temperature. It&#;s through hole connection by default. Our standard OLED products colors have yellow, blue, white and full color, but we have a lot of other sizes, resolutions and colors to choose available either as standard or custom OLED panel display solutions. Orient Display doesn&#;t have touch panel available in our standard OLED display products but custom made RTP or CTP are welcome and we also provide integration solution for our customers. It&#;s easily controlled by MCU such as , PIC, AVR, ARDUINO, ARM and Raspberry Pi. It can be used in any embedded systems, industrial device, security, medical and hand-held device.

OLED Display Advantages

• Fast Response Speed: OLED display response times are around 1,000 times faster than LCD displays; it is around 10 0 μs (0.01 ms). While LCD displays perform poorly at low temperature which has no effect on OLED display performance.
• Greater Contrast: LCD displays need backlight to be seen which makes some light leaking to cause losing contrast, while OLED displays are true black for background to create superior contrast.
• Wider Viewing Angles: LCD displays have genetic drawback of using rubbing process in manufacturing which makes the viewing angle narrower, while OLED displays don&#;t have such an issue.
• Thinner and Lighter in Weight: LCD displays need backlight to light up. The backlight has light guide, diffuser, reflector, BEF, PCB for LED chips etc. which LCD displays difficult to be very thin. OLED screen panel emits light itself which makes it lighter and thinner.
• Power Consumption: Again, an LCD screen needs backlight to make it work. The backlight has to light the whole LCD panel even in the sleep mode or only a small fraction of the display to be used, such as showing only time on the cell. . Even with quantum dots backlight technology development, it is still very expensive to use, while OLED can just display part of the pixels selectively to save power.

If you have any questions about Orient Display OLED display panels and OLED display modules. Please feel free to contact: Sales Inquiries, Customer Service or Technical Support.

Questions I want answered:

• How much idle current is drawn when the controller is off versus on (blank display)?
• What's the minimum current to see text indoors?
• What's the maximum current when all pixels are on at their brightest?
• How does display size affect current draw?
• How does active data writing affect current draw?
• It's obvious they use more, but how much current do grayscale and color OLEDs use?
• How practical are OLED displays compared to common LCDs for battery powered projects?

Materials:

• Cheap multimeter (manual scale, assumed accuracy +/-10% at worst)
• Various OLED displays (72x40, 96x16, 128x32, 64x32, 128x64-0.96", 128x64-1.3")
• Arduino compatible microcontroller (Adafruit nRF Feather Express)
• Software (my ss_oled library)

These are the displays I used for my tests. I like to use the I2C breakout board versions for simplicity. There may be inefficiencies in the linear regulator and other discrete components which come on the breakout boards, but since the active displays use milliamps, losing a few microamps shouldn't be a big deal.

What about color and grayscale OLED displays?
I was asked on twitter to include a quick test of these OLED displays. I could tell that the power usage was high because the controller chip gets hot to the touch when barely anything is displayed. I no longer have my SSD color OLED to test, but I do have an SSD 128x128 4-bit grayscale display. With the display set to 'off', I measured 600uA. Here are some values I measured when the contrast (brightness) was set to the maximum value:

Display filled with color 0  - 2.5mA (every pixel is off/black)
Display filled with color 1  - 85mA
Display filled with color 2  - 111mA
Display filled with color 3  - 147mA
Display filled with color 15 (display reset due to my 3.3v power supply sagging)

In general, the display uses a lot more current to get the same pixel brightness compared to the monochrome SSD displays.

Procedure:
I ran 8 different tests on each display. The "dim" setting has the contrast set at a value of 31. This is comfortable to read in indoor light or at night. 127 is the default contrast and is reasonably bright. 255 is the max brightness. The current was measured by inserting the multimeter probes between the Vcc of the display and a 3.3V power source (in this case, the regulated output of the Arduino). There was very little visible difference between contrast 1 and 31.

Results:

Type

Display Off

On, but Black

Contrast 31, 50% pixels lit

Contrast 127, 50% pixels lit

Contrast 255, 50% pixels lit

Contrast 31, 100% pixels lit

Contrast 127, 100% pixels lit

Contrast 255, 100% pixels lit

128x128 1.12&#;

5mA

7.1mA

49.5mA

104.0mA

108.0mA

89.9mA

104.0mA

104.0mA

128x64 1.3&#;

490uA

490uA

15.4mA

26.1mA

31.4mA

20.6mA

33.7mA

39.1mA

128x64 0.96&#;

26uA

469uA

5.6mA

8.1mA

11.0mA

10.3mA

15.1mA

20.7mA

128x32 0.91&#;

6uA

6uA

12.1mA

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16.2mA

21.1mA

21.3mA

29.0mA

38.7mA

128x32 0.91&#;

4uA

4uA

16.2mA

19.7mA

21.7mA

27.5mA

33.8mA

36.0mA

96x16 0.69&#;

7uA

7uA

4.45mA

5.62mA

6.96mA

7.23mA

9.44mA

12.11mA

64x32 0.49&#;

6uA

6uA

1.56mA

2.71mA

3.11mA

2.49mA

4.63mA

5.17mA

72x40 0.42&#;

4uA

230uA*

630uA*

N/A

N/A

93

N/A

N/A

* The 128x128 display is sold by Pimoroni; I don't have other examples to test

I thought that the 128x32 was an anomaly from a specific vendor, but a second display from a different vendor behaved the same way. Strangely, a second 64x32 display from the same vendor, bought in the same batch, used twice as much power as the one tested above.

I chose the most efficient display to do a final test which displays text (less than 50% pixel coverage). My ammeter read 630uA for a static text display on the 64x32 OLED.


What about active data writing?
Besides extra activity on the display controller, there will be current leaking through the pullup resistors when the SCL or SDA lines go low. Typical pullup resistors for these displays are 4.7KOhm, so while the data and clock lines are active, about 700uA (3.3V / ohms) will leak through them. I tried a test where I continuously wrote the same data to the display (same display and same text as above). The results were a reading of 1.47mA. Different pullup resistors and different data being written will produce different results.

Conclusions:

• There is a nearly linear relationship between the number of lit pixels and current use
• The display size is directly related to the current use
• There are some oddball displays that use more current than expected. Need to test each one individually
• Actively writing to the display uses more current than a static display - hard to know if it's the I2C activity or the controller chip or both
• There's something odd about the 72x40 displays I have; I will need to get some from another vendor and retest
• The ubiquitous 128x64 0.96" OLEDs can potentially display a screen full of useful information on less than 5mA
• The power usage of grayscale and color OLEDs is much less efficient when compared to the same size and brightness of monochrome displays.

• A small OLED with indoor readable text can run on less than 1mA

The last item above surprised me the most. The power indicator LED on most Arduino boards uses more current than the 64x32 OLED with useful information displayed on it.

To answer my last question about the practicality of OLEDs versus commonly available LCDs for battery powered projects, I think it depends on the project and power source. A decent sized LCD with the backlight off can consume less than 275uA (my measurements from a 2" 128x64 UC). If your power budget is small and your MCU is programmed to sleep most of the time (avg current < 1mA), this can make a huge difference compared to a 5-20mA OLED displaying the same info. On the other hand, if you're powering a Raspberry Pi Zero or ESP32 w/WIFI on (80-120mA), another 5-20mA won't make as big a difference to your power budget.

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Those little OLED displays are everywhere, and there's a good reason. They're inexpensive, easy to program and they look good. I wanted to explore how much current they draw so that I can plan better for battery powered projects.These are the displays I used for my tests. I like to use the I2C breakout board versions for simplicity. There may be inefficiencies in the linear regulator and other discrete components which come on the breakout boards, but since the active displays use milliamps, losing a few microamps shouldn't be a big deal.I was asked on twitter to include a quick test of these OLED displays. I could tell that the power usage was high because the controller chip gets hot to the touch when barely anything is displayed. I no longer have my SSD color OLED to test, but I do have an SSD 128x128 4-bit grayscale display. With the display set to 'off', I measured 600uA. Here are some values I measured when the contrast (brightness) was set to the maximum value:Display filled with color 0 - 2.5mA (every pixel is off/black)Display filled with color 1 - 85mADisplay filled with color 2 - 111mADisplay filled with color 3 - 147mADisplay filled with color 15 (display reset due to my 3.3v power supply sagging)In general, the display uses a lot more current to get the same pixel brightness compared to the monochrome SSD displays.I ran 8 different tests on each display. The "dim" setting has the contrast set at a value of 31. This is comfortable to read in indoor light or at night. 127 is the default contrast and is reasonably bright. 255 is the max brightness. The current was measured by inserting the multimeter probes between the Vcc of the display and a 3.3V power source (in this case, the regulated output of the Arduino). There was very little visible difference between contrast 1 and 31.* The 72x40 display didn't appear to respond to the contrast setting and had a permanent and somewhat dim contrast.* The 128x128 display is sold by Pimoroni; I don't have other examples to testI thought that the 128x32 was an anomaly from a specific vendor, but a second display from a different vendor behaved the same way. Strangely, a second 64x32 display from the same vendor, bought in the same batch, used twice as much power as the one tested above.I chose the most efficient display to do a final test which displays text (less than 50% pixel coverage). My ammeter read 630uA for a static text display on the 64x32 OLED.Besides extra activity on the display controller, there will be current leaking through the pullup resistors when the SCL or SDA lines go low. Typical pullup resistors for these displays are 4.7KOhm, so while the data and clock lines are active, about 700uA (3.3V / ohms) will leak through them. I tried a test where I continuously wrote the same data to the display (same display and same text as above). The results were a reading of 1.47mA. Different pullup resistors and different data being written will produce different results.The last item above surprised me the most. The power indicator LED on most Arduino boards uses more current than the 64x32 OLED with useful information displayed on it.

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