I like cheap electronics for playing.
Cheap is good for budget conscious hobbyists and China is delivering lots of toys for playing – one being the inexpensive “mono” OLED displays. The single-color displays often come in a dual-color implementation where the top row of pixels are one color and the remaining majority of the lower pixels are another color. These dual-color units allow the title information to be easily distinguished from the lower part of the screen which is usually utilized for changing data.
In a recent eBay (no endorsement intended) special, one Chinese vendor was offering $4 OLED screens in a Yellow-Blue implementation with free-shipping. That was back in mid-February and I received the modules this week: about 6 weeks. Mostly my experience is that the ePackets are arriving in 3 to 4 weeks and the economy shipping (often free) is coming in 6 to 8 weeks: your experience is likely to be different as pinning down the shipping times is difficult.
But,
This article is about the color module which is very similar to the one that Adafruit sells and has written libraries to support: Adafruit 0.96″ OLED. Of course, there is $16 dollars difference between the two (and about 31 – 45 days in getting your hands on it!) I encourage anyone wanting “a play” to support Adafruit as you gain access to their web-support which is really not bad and the little extra you spend supports the software development.
However,
If you are just experimenting and could care less about whether the Chinese part will work or not (or even if you actually receive it), then the $4 clone may be the way to go.
Low cost + low expectations = low risk.
Generally speaking,
I would not post an entire article just to highlight a product sold and supported by Adafruit (or any vendor), but in this case, I am attaching a ZIP to support the OLED running on a Maple Mini Clone (also $4 – $5) which is supported by these new core files for Arduino 1.6.1. To duplicate this project, you need Arduino 1.6.1 (unmodified), a SPI OLED 128×64 pixel display (warning: some are I2C only), the STM32 ARM core files from the above link, and your choice of 8-bit Arduino or 32-bit ARM STM32F103 (Maple, Maple Mini.)
The attached ZIP is for the Maple Mini ARM STM32 Maple Mini running at 72MHz.
