3

Displays

BEST OF BREED

here are times when you are

working on a project and you need

a display that not only works well,

but it needs to be flexible. If you find

yourself in this situation, the Spark X

Flexible Grayscale Display from

SparkFun could be a perfect fit. Most displays are

mounted directly to a ridged PCB, or the screens

are mounted to glass, which makes flexing them

impossible, never mind wrapping them around a

tight radius. This OLED doesn’t have either of those

constraints, so it can be bent in a 40 mm radius

without any damage and will still look great.

The Spark X Flexible Grayscale Display still has

a ridged PCB carrier board, which is where the

communication and power circuitry can be found,

but the OLED screen is attached to it via a small

flexible PCB which allows it to be mounted fairly far

away from the ridged part of this display. It would

be great if the entire component was flexible, but

this is a good solution until the control technology

catches up to the advancing display technology.

What we really like about this particular OLED

display is the ability to show off 4-bit greyscale

images on its 160×32-pixel display using a standard

T

Spark X Flexible

Grayscale Display

SPARKFUN $49.95 sparkfun.com

three-wire SPI interface. SparkFun has created a

library making it very easy to get up and running with

an Arduino. It has also released the schematic and

Eagle files, so you can modify them as needed to

work in your next project. The images displayed are

clear and seem to magically appear on this impossibly

thin 0.5 mm display. And if your project requires just

standard text to be displayed, this screen will render it

fairly well and with the great contrast that most OLED

screens are capable of generating.

Even if you don’t need the flexibility this screen

has to offer, it may still be worth looking into

since it features a nice-looking OLED screen, a

well-documented library, and plenty of examples

to get you going quickly. And, if you do need your

display to flex around a tight radius, it’s really hard

to beat the Spark X Flexible Grayscale Display

from SparkFun.

How many

graphical

displays can

be wrapped

around your

coffee mug?!

VERDICT

8 / 10

The Spark X Flexible Grayscale Display still has

a ridged PCB carrier board which is where the

communication and power circuitry can be found

”

”

Below

This display can

handle more than

just plain text: it

features the ability to

display graphics in

4-bit greyscale at a

resolution of 160×32

Credit

Sparkfun Electronics

licensed under CC

BY 2.0