3

Displays

BEST OF BREED

ONLYTHE

BEST

ou might think that all displays

are the same. And you also might

be thinking of those typical 16×2

character displays with either a blue

or green tinted screen that so many

of us got our feet wet with early on

in our electronics building adventures. And although

those types of displays are very useful, and easy to

find for a minimal cost, there are dozens of other

display technologies that are available to creators and

tinkerers that are a lot more interesting.

So how many varieties could there really be for you

to choose from? It seems like every week we see a

new technology or form factor, many of which inspire

us to think about how we could incorporate them into

the next project.

Before we look at some of our favourite types of

displays, and why we like them, let’s look at what

Y

we mean by ‘display’. Simply defined, when talking

about your electronics project, a display is a visual

representation of data. It could be something as

simple as a one-colour LED or mechanical device that

notifies the user of an action or alert. In many cases

this might be a good solution. In fact, many times a

project can be trimmed down and only use a simple

RGB LED as a very functional display.

In this roundup we’ll be sharing some of the best

in class graphical and character displays for those

projects that need more than just a simple blinking

LED. We’ve selected a cross-section of both old and

new technologies from a variety of companies.

Visualising data in your next project

By Marc de Vinck @devinck

The ever-evolving

world of displays

Below

A classic 16×2

character display

that most of us have

used at some point

Credit

Adafruit licensed

under CC