Displays

Raspberry Pi and case not included

Great for including a colourful character display and button inputs on your Raspberry Pi based projects!

Includes a 16x3 character LCD display, 6-zone RGB LED backlight, bar graph, and six capacitive touch buttons all in one slim package.

It's ideal for controlling your internet radio or home automation projects.

Features

• 16x3 character LCD display (full ASCII character set and eight custom glyphs)
• Fully controllable six zone RGB backlight
• Six bright white bar graph LEDs (individually dimmable)
• Six capacitive touch buttons
• Power, I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, and five GPIO pins broken out
• SN3218 LED matrix driver chip (drives the RGB backlight)
• Microchip CAP1166 capacitive touch driver chip
• Display-O-Tron HAT pinout
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
• Python library
• Comes fully assembled (breakout pins require soldering)

Software

Our Display-O-Tron Python library will get you going in a jiffy, and makes controlling Display-O-Tron HAT really easy.

We've included examples showing you how to use the backlight, bar graph LEDs, and touch buttons, as well as more advanced examples showing you how to create menus, games and even an internet radio!

Notes

If you want to keep your Pi in a case, we recommend the Pibow Coupé case as it will allow you to still use the capacitive touch buttons.

Cables not included

These displays are small, only about 1" diameter, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display.

This display is made of 128x64 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this miniature display for its crispness!

This breakout can be used with either an SPI or I2C interface - selectable by soldering two jumpers on the back. The design is completely 5V-ready, with an onboard regulator and built in boost converter. It's easier than ever to connect directly to your 3V or 5V microcontroller without needing any kind of level shifter!

TheRaspberryPiGuy has done an *excellent* video on getting this display running with your Pi.

Guy Carpenter has a guide for using OLEDs like this one with the Raspberry Pi it's well worth a read!

Using this display with a Raspberry Pi? Check out Adafruit's SSD1306 OLED display guide.

Adafruit have provided a detailed tutorial and example code in the form of an Arduino library for text and graphics. You'll need a microcontroller with more than 1K of RAM since the display must be buffered.

On the Raspberry Pi, Adafruit now have a Python library available that works with these displays in both i2c and SPI mode.

You can download the Adafruit SSD1306 OLED display Arduino library from github which comes with example code. The library can print text, bitmaps, pixels, rectangles, circles and lines. It uses 1K of RAM since it needs to buffer the entire display but its very fast! The code is simple to adapt to any other microcontroller.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Dimensions:

• PCB: 38mm x 29mm (1.5" x 1")
• Screen: 25mm x 14mm
• Thickness: 4mm
• Weight: 8.5g
• Display current draw is completely dependent on your usage: each OLED LED draws current when on so the more pixels you have lit, the more current is used. They tend to draw ~20mA or so in practice but for precise numbers you must measure the current in your usage circuit.
• This board/chip uses I2C 7-bit address between 0x3C-0x3D, selectable with jumpers

• UG-2864HSWEG01 Datasheet
• UG-2864HSWEG01 User Guide
• SSD1306 Datasheet

Netduino driver, Netduino sample and documentation. This sample displays bitmaps and animations on the display.

We've stepped up our LED game! Unicorn HAT HD crams 256 RGB LEDs, in a 16x16 matrix, onto a single HAT. High-definition rainbow goodness!

You can still use it for all of the same things as the regular Unicorn HAT, but with 4 times as many pixels it makes much more complex animations possible, including scrolling text, and even low resolution videos.

The bundled ninja diffuser makes the pixels look extra-shiny by providing some subtle diffusion, blurring the lines between each pixel. Simply use four of the nuts to space the diffuser slightly away from the HAT, and the other four to secure it.

The MagPi said that Unicorn HAT HAD had a "real wow factor" and that the "performance is excellent" in their five star review.

Features

• 256 RGB LED pixels in a 16x16 matrix
• Pixels driven by ARM STM32F and three STP16CPC26 LED drivers
• Bundled ninja diffuser, plus nuts and bolts
• Unicorn HAT HD pinout
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
• Python library
• Comes fully assembled

The ARM chip on Unicorn HAT HD does all of the heavy lifting, meaning that you can just bung data to it and it'll take care of the rest. It acts as the man-in-the-middle between your Pi and the three STP16CPC26 LED drivers that actually drive the LEDs.

Our Python library will have your Unicorn HAT HD pooping out high-definition rainbows in a jiffy. There's a stack of examples too, to show you how to create slick animations, simulate the Game of Life, a forest fire or a flickering candle, and even scroll text!

• Photo-sensitivity warning: flashing, strobing, and patterns of lights may cause epileptic seizures. Always take care and immediately stop using if you feel unwell (dizziness, nausea, affected vision, eye twitching, disorientation).
• Power: Unicorn HAT HD requires a >2A microUSB power supply for your Pi. We recommend the official Raspberry Pi power supply.

What's going to protect your beloved Raspberry Pi from an onslaught of rainbow-coloured fusion? That's right, it's Unicorn pHAT.

Sporting a matrix of 32 (8 x 4) RGB LEDs and powered directly from the Pi, this is the most compact pocket aurora available.

Unicorn pHAT provides a wash of controllable colour that is ideal for mood-lighting, pixel art, persistence of vision effects, status indications, or just blasting colour into your surroundings.

Features

• 32 RGB LEDs (SK6218 - 3.5mm x 3.5mm)
• LED data driven via DMA over PWM
• Unicorn pHAT pinout
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
• Python library
• Female header requires soldering

Software

Unicorn pHAT uses the same Python library as Unicorn HAT, so it's super-easy to use, should automatically detect that you're using the pHAT and includes some examples written specially for Unicorn pHAT.

Notes

• Warning: SK6218 LEDs are bright enough to cause eye pain, do not look at them directly when brightly lit. We recommend using Unicorn pHAT at lower brightness levels.
• Photo-sensitivity warning: flashing, strobing, and patterns of lights may cause epileptic seizures. Always take care and immediately stop using if you feel unwell (dizziness, nausea, affected vision, eye twitching, disorientation).
• Power: Unicorn pHAT works best with a >2A microUSB power supply for your Pi. We recommend the official Raspberry Pi power supply.
• Compatibility (audio): as Unicorn pHAT uses PWM and GPIO18, it will interfere with analogue audio playback (random colour patterns and flickering). HDMI should work just fine! :D