Setup for Basic 16x2 Character OLED - Blue on Black

Tutorials
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A few people have been asking for a workable Display for the Spark Core. I’m hoping the following will help a few people get started.

I use an OLED because it simplifies the wiring and it runs great off 3.3V and doesn’t require any additional wiring for contrast. It’s also slightly less power hungry.

You can pick one up from ebay, spark fun etc. i.e. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11987

You’ll need to do some simple soldering to mount it for the breadboard. Don’t skip this stage and hope you just hang it off some pins.

I’d mount the pins in the breadboard first starting at 1-16 and then solder the display after you’ve got it set up. This makes it easier for wiring later.

I’ve put something together in Fritzing here

http://fritzing.org/projects/oled-with-spark-core which should help.

You should end up with something like

And in the end it should look a little like this

I’ve pasted the code here

Thanks to @BDub and @c99koder for all their hard work.

5 Likes
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Thank you for this super-clear tutorial!

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wow awesome! I am so happy I found your post, I was trying long time to make it.

This will be a nice addon to my Bus-Light Project

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I should have pointed out the downside of these class of displays on a spark core… You quickly run out of pins. Hopefully in the next couple of days @timb (or me) will create a quick tutorial showing a i2C based display to leave you a few pins to work with.

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Thanks to you it was really simple to get it to work.