Experiment 10: An OLED LCD display¹ 140xp

Point Summary

Basics 10xp
Alleviating End of Semester Stress 10-20xp
Liberal Arts - 5xp
Be Be Happy - 15-25xp
Temperature and Humidity - 20xp
Sunny Cloudy - 15xp
Magic 8 Ball 20xp
Magic 8 Text 15xp
Too Hot Text - 20xp

Since the start of class we’ve been working with LEDs. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. In this experiment we are going to work with an OLED display. OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode.

Unless otherwise noted all images are under the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license by Adafruit.

The hard part

The hardest part of this lab might be soldering on the headers onto the feather board. If you need help soldering let us know.

ture](pics/neopixelSmall_bb.png)

Step 1 The Basic Code

Installing the library.

First you need to download the library at Download Adafruit_FeatherOLED from github. Unzip the file you download and move the resulting folder to your Arduino/libraries folder.

The basic code 10xp

Here is the code:

// Simple OLED
//
// Adafruit invests time and resources providing this open source code.
// Please support Adafruit and open source hardware by purchasing
// products from Adafruit!
//
// Written by Todd Treece for Adafruit Industries
// Copyright (c) 2016 Adafruit Industries
// Licensed under the MIT license.
//
// All text above must be included in any redistribution.

#include <Wire.h>
#include <Adafruit_GFX.h>
#include <Adafruit_SSD1306.h>
#include <Adafruit_FeatherOLED.h>

Adafruit_FeatherOLED oled = Adafruit_FeatherOLED();

// integer variable to hold current counter value
int count = 0;
int down = 10000;
void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(115200);

  oled.init();
}

void loop()
{

  // clear the current count
  oled.clearDisplay();
  oled.setCursor(0,0);

  // print the count value to the OLED
  oled.print("count: ");
  oled.println(count);
  
  // move 10 pixels down
  oled.setCursor(0,10);
  oled.print("Time remaining: ");
  oled.println(down);
  // update the display with the new count
  oled.display();
  
  // increment counters by 1
  count++;
  down--;
  
  // delay 1 second 
  delay(1000);
}

Remix - Alleviating End of Semester Stress - up to 20xp

Just demo the completed project with all the addons you want

basic 10xp

Can you create a device that repeatedly displays Don’t worry for 2 seconds and then Be Happy! for another 2 seconds?

More interesting font +5xp

Can you do it in a different larger font? You do this in two steps. First you include the library using something like #include <Fonts/FreeSansBold9pt7b.h>, which unsurprisingly loads a 9 point bold Sans font. Second, you set the display font using something like oled.setFont(&FreeSansBold9pt7b);. For a list of all the fonts see This Adafruit page

Uses the modulo % operator +5xp

Can you do the above using only one oled.display(); line in your loop? (Since there are only two states, the Don’t worry state and the Be happy state I only need to use 2 numbers, 0 and 1–that’s a hint)

A distraction - optional 5 liberal arts xp

So I was thinking our board (the mighty esp8266 Feather Huzzah) along with the OLED feather would make a nice micro Amazon Kindle. So I wrote this code to display a book.

#include <Wire.h>
#include <Adafruit_GFX.h>
#include <Adafruit_SSD1306.h>
#include <Adafruit_FeatherOLED.h>

Adafruit_FeatherOLED oled = Adafruit_FeatherOLED();

// integer variable to hold current counter value
int count = 0;
int down = 10000;
void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(115200);

  oled.init();
}

char* story[]={"When", "I", "wrote", "the", "following", "pages,", "or", 
               "rather", "the", "bulk", "of", "them,", "I", "lived", "alone,", "in", "the", "woods,", 
               "a", "mile", "from", "any", "neighbor,", "in", "a", "house", "which",
               "I", "had", "built", "myself"};
               
void loop()
{

  for (int i = 0; i< 31; i++) {
    oled.clearDisplay();
    oled.setCursor(0,15);
    oled.println(story[i]);
    oled.display();
    delay(500);
  }
  delay(1000);
  
}

Try it out! (5xp if you know the book and the author). Anyway I got tired of typing in the book.

Remix - B B B Be Be Happy 10-20xp.

Can you make this popping Be Happy! display with fewer than 20 lines in the loop?
or the augmented one +5xp
or the super augmented one +5xp

Remix Temp and Humidity - 20xp

Even though our OLED is mounted on all the pins, it actually only uses 2:

That means we can connect the usual things to our esp8266 as long as we don’t use pins 4 and 5. On the side of the OLED are three buttons which are optionally available for use. These are connected to pins 2, 16, and 0:

If we are not using those buttons we can use those pins for other things.

Temperature sensor.

Let’s keep the OLED connected but temporarily switch to the temperature/humidity sensor included in the kit.

It is wired up this way (again, no need to remove the OLED):

Installing the libraries.

We need to install 2 libraries

The Sensor library

Download the sensor library zip file, unzip it, rename the folder Adafruit_Sensor and move the folder to your Arduino/libraries folder.

The Temperature Sensor library

Download the temperature sensor library zip file, unzip it, rename the folder DHT and move the folder to your Arduino/libraries folder.

The code

When you loaded the libraries, you also installed several example programs. In the Arduino IDE, under the file menu select examples/DHT sample library/DHTtester You may want to change Serial.begin(9600) to Serial.begin(115200). When you upload that program you should see in the serial monitor:

Your task

Can you create a device that displays the temperature and humidity on the OLED display?

Sunny or Cloudy 15xp

Can you add another sensor so that your device will also display whether it is sunny or cloudy (in addition to temperature and humidity)? Here are some pictures using previous hardware

Magic Eight Ball 20xp

Remember those Magic Eight Balls?

If not, check out this Wikipedia page

We would like to implement a Magic 8 Ball using our OLED screen.

As part of your solution you may need to generate a random number. To do so you can use the built-in function random that does so. Here is some example code that generates random integers from 0 up to but not including 10:

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
}

void loop() {
  int i = random(10);
  Serial.println(i);
  delay(1000);
}

You device should generate slogans (negative, positive, whatever) when a user presses a button. Remember that we have three buttons on our OLED that we can use.

Magic Eight Ball Text Message 20xp

Can a button press on your device send a 8 Ball text message to your phone?

Too Hot Text - 15xp

I have 2 dogs in my apartment. I would like a device that would text me when it gets too hot in the apartment for them. For testing purposes you can set the temperature low and use your hand to heat up the sensor.

Experiment 10: An OLED LCD display1 140xp