Problems with Blue Character OLED 16x2 ID: 823

[SuperJ]

I ordered and quickly received 2 pcs of the Blue Character OLED displays.

I intend to replace an LDC display in a solar charge controller with one of these OLED displays and take advantage of the superior viewing angle.

The LCD I removed was on a 16 pin header and the markings on the back are "1602A-1 V1.3". From what I can glean online, this should be a 16x2 HD44780 LCD...

Alas, Swapping the displays does not make blue joy, the controller makes a horrible shorted switching power supply hum. The OLED display shows an "E" and if I press some buttons it will CLS and show a "2". Sometimes I will get a parade of gobbledegook. ONCE, the display showed one of the setup screens that the controller should be showing - but it was only for a second and it was sliding across the screen.

I can confirm that it is getting 5 volts at pin 2.

I tried disconnecting pins 3, 14, and 15 in case they were grounded and the board was sending power there.

Any pointers for debug?

Jason

[SuperJ]

Additional Info, I have just connected another generic LCD and it works fine too, so it seems that these OLED display handle the data differently...?

I have tried both OLED displays, Both do the same...

[adafruit_support_bill]

These displays are not quite software compatible with the LCDs. They sorta work... sometimes. We are working on a revised library that is tuned for the OLEDs. I hope to have that posted sometime later next week.

[SuperJ]

But that doesn't help me very much as I don't have access to the program this thing is running...

What would it take to build a "translator"?

Does the "not quite software compatible" issue explain the power supply hum when it's connected?

They are pin/shape/code compatible with 'standard' HD44780 LCDs so you can just swap 'em in!

[adafruit_support_bill]

These displays are "pin compatible" in the sense that all the pins have the same function. What we have found is that these displays have slightly different initialization and timing requirements compared to the LCD. They work fine in some systems, but fail to initialize properly in others.

I haven't measured the power consumption, but I believe they do draw more current than the LCD version, which might account for the power-supply hum in your charge-controller.

[SuperJ]

Powering the display externally solved the issue of power supply hum, I can see the controller toggling between two consistent screens of garble.

But I feel the "different initialization and timing requirements" issue has no real solution in my situation, Correct?

[adafruit_support_bill]

But I feel the "different initialization and timing requirements" issue has no real solution in my situation,

If you don't have control over the initialization sequence, then no.

[dsp72]

I just ordered a couple of these and will eagerly await a working library. There's a thread here that might be useful (or not)

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php?actio ... ic=58396.0

[adafruit_support_bill]

OK. We have a library: https://github.com/ladyada/Adafruit_CharacterOLED
These need an extra pin to control the R/W line for reliable operation. The example file "HelloOLEDworld" contains wiring instructions in the comments.

[Codiak]

Good news for the LCD and all those pins.

Solution doesn't leave me hopeful that the i2c/spi LCD backpack is going to be useful?

Should I begin desoldering or is a patch possible?

[adafruit_support_bill]

Unfortunately, this solution does not work for the current backpack. We will try to work this into the next rev of the backpacks.

[tomega3]

Hi, I too like the 16x2 Character OLED displays. I also need to connect it to my Arduino Uno R3 via I2C.
I followed this thread any several others and found that these OLED displays are made by NEWHAVEN
see http://www.newhavendisplay.com/oled-c-119.html

Apparently there are timing issues when using the standard Arduino LiquidCrystallibrary 4 bit/8bit parallel.

A company in japan has made a I2C backpack board for about $14.00 that they say works with the NewHaven NHD-0216KZW-AB5 oled blue 16x2 display. I think this is the same 16x2 blue oled that this thread is talking about. They also have written their own replacement lib for the Arduino LiquidCrystal library called TWILCD
see http://www.akafugu.jp/posts/products/twilcd

So.... my question is does anybody know if the adafruit i2c / SPI character LCD backpack - ID: 292 will work when attached to this oled display and which I2C library to use? (WIRE, I2CMASTER, this TWILCD library, other)

Apparently these oled displays come in 16x2, 20x4, and graphic screens. They come in blue, green, and yellow.

Thanks

[adafruit_support_bill]

The Adafruit backpack requires the Adafruit Liquid Crystal library. There is no OLED support for the backpack at this time.