This OLED goes out to all the fans who want more pixels! Normally our 128×64 OLEDs are the biggest ones we’ve stocked that can use I2C. This one is a whopping 128×128 pixels and it even has an extra bonus – it can do grayscale pixels! Yep, you get the same crispness of a monochrome OLED but with 16 levels of grayscale.
This display is a petite 1.5″ diagonal, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128×128 individual grayscale 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 these miniature displays for their crispness!
The driver chip, SSD1327 can communicate in two ways: I2C or SPI. The OLED itself requires a 3.3V and 12V power supply and 3.3V logic levels for communication. We include a 3.3V regulator and 12V boost converter, and all pins are fully level shifted so you can use with 3V or 5V devices!
If you are using I2C, we’ve included SparkFun qwiic compatible STEMMA QT connectors for the I2C bus so you don’t even need to solder! Plug and play with any board that has a Qwiic or STEMMA QT connector for effortless prototyping and development.
This display, being 16-level (4-bit) grayscale and 128×128, requires 128 * 128 * 4 bits = 8KB of SRAM to buffer. So you can’t use it with a small chip such as the Arduino UNO (ATmega328 or 32u4). Pick a microcontroller or microcomputer with 16KB+ RAM – a SAMD21, SAMD51, ESP, nRF52, Teensy, etc will do an excellent job. As long as you have I2C or SPI interface available, you’re good to go – SPI will be much faster, but I2C requires fewer pins.
Please note that OLED displays are made of hundreds of…OLEDs! That means each pixel is a little organic LED, and if it’s kept on for over 1000 hours it’ll start to dim. If you want to keep the display uniformly bright, please turn off the display (set the pixels off) when it isn’t needed to keep them from dimming.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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