low power lcd display free sample

This graphic LCD module acts as a shield for Arduino Uno-style microcontrollers. The pins on the carrier board match up to the Arduino Uno"s ports, so the module simply presses on and is fully and correctly connected. Plus, this carrier board is able to be connected to either a 3.3v logic level or a 5v logic level device. (Read our blog post if you have questions about logic level.)

This module is also available with a white-on-blue graphic display, or as a fully built kit with an included Seeeduino (Arduino Uno clone) loaded with code to demonstrate the graphic display.

Do you need a display that draws the lowest current possible? Want long lasting battery-powered LCD project? Well, you have come to the right place. We compiled this list of digital displays that consume the least amount of power. These displays are perfect for when you are trying to extend the battery life of your product by pulling the least amount of current possible.

Other than a pen and paper, ePaper provides the lowest power consumption available for electronic displays. It does this via an electrochemical process that requires zero power once the pixels are in their desired location. These displays are ideal for when the content is not updated very often. Low-power ePapers only use power during updates, so the longer time between updates, the lower the power consumed.

The beauty of OLED displays and power consumption is that OLEDs only draw current for pixels that are on. For instance, when displaying a black and white checkerboard pattern, an OLED display consumes 50% less current than when displaying a completely white screen. Keeping that in mind, user interfaces can be designed to conserve as much power as possible by limiting how many pixels are lit.

This is a small graphics library for an interesting low-power monochrome 250x122 display based on the ST7302 display driver and available from suppliers such as AliExpress:

The display doesn"t need a backlight so it"s very low power, typically about 30µA at 3.3V, which is ideal for battery-powered projects. For comparison a colour TFT display typically takes 20mA.

The graphics library allows you to plot points, draw lines, draw outline and filled rectangles, draw outline and filled circles, and plot characters and text at normal size, or double size with smoothing. The whole library with the demo program fits in 4Kbytes and so will run on an ATtiny402/412 or ATtiny45.

In my search for interesting displays I discovered this monochrome 250x122 TFT display, based on the ST7302 display driver, and available on AliExpress from Maithoga ATtiny85 Analogue Clock.

I"ve made a variant of my Tiny TFT graphics routines to work with this display. Like my Tiny TFT Graphics Library 2 it supports both the classic ATtiny processors, such as the ATtiny85, and the new 0-series, 1-series, and 2-series ATtiny processors, such as the ATtiny402.

The display uses an SPI interface and requires four pins to drive the display. This leaves one pin free on an 8-pin chip such as the ATtiny85 or ATtiny402. If you need more pins choose a larger chip, such as the ATtiny84 or ATtiny404.

The library includes basic graphics routines for plotting points and drawing lines. These work on a conventional coordinate system with the origin at lower left:

Getting the correct set of initialization parameters for the display was quite a struggle, and there are some commands that take 10 parameters! Luckily I didn"t have to start from scratch; I was very grateful that zhcong on GitHub has already written an Arduino display driver for the display

The display driver treats the display as if it"s in portrait orientation, so the columns correspond to the y direction, and the rows to the x direction. I"ll keep with this terminology for consistency with the datasheet.

The display is divided into 11 columns, each of which is 12 pixels high, and 125 rows, each of which is 2 pixels wide. For some reason the columns are numbered starting at 25, so the 250x122 monochrome display uses columns 25 to 35 and rows 0 to 124. note that because 122 isn"t an exact multiple of 12, only part of the last column actually appears on the display.

Unlike on the colour TFT displays each pixel isn"t individually addressable; in fact, the minimum update is to write three bytes to the display, which defines the state of a block of 2x12 pixels corresponding to one column and one row. Fortunately the display supports reading back the display memory, so it"s not necessary to maintain a copy of the display in RAM to do things like line drawing; instead, to set a single pixel we can read the 2x12 block, change one pixel, and write it back.

To make writing the other plotting routines easier I first wrote a routine ReadBlock() to read a block from the display memory, and PlotBlock() to write a block back to display memory. These both take the column, from 0 to 10, and the row, from 0 to 124:

Because points are plotted by reading the previous contents of the display, it"s also easy to add an exclusive-OR plotting mode that inverts the pixel rather than setting it to black. To select this mode set the global variable exor to true.

I"ve provided routines to allow you to plot single characters, or a line of text, using a 6x8 pixel matrix. The bottom left-hand corner of each character is determined by the current plotting position, which you can set with MoveTo().

The demo program draws the display used for the photograph at the start of the article. It demonstrates most of the graphics routines including normal-sized text, and double-sized text with smoothing. The stopwatch uses the Minsky circle algorithm to move the hand in 60 increments around the circle using just integer arithmetic. It takes advantage of exclusive-OR plotting to draw and undraw the hand when it moves without corrupting the clock face. The bottom right corner shows the time taken to draw the display.

The display pins SCL, SDA, CS, and DC need to be connected to the microcontroller via four I/O lines. You can use any pins for these, but they should all be in the same port. You need to specify the port pin numbers of the pins you are using at the start of the Monochrome Display Library listing. The reset line has to be kept high for the display to work.

The display is 3.3V only, so if you want to connect it to a 5V microcontroller you"ll need a 3.3V regulator, unidirectional logic-level conversion on the SCL, CS, and DC lines, and bidirectional logic-level conversion on the SDA line.

The 33kΩ pullup resistor from the display"s CS pin is optional; it holds the chip select high to prevent the display from flickering while programming the ATtiny85.

Compile the program using Spence Konde"s ATTiny Core ATtiny25/45/85 (No bootloader) option under the ATTinyCore heading on the Board menu. Then check that the subsequent options are set as follows (ignore any other options):

By default the ATtiny85 runs at 1MHz. Choose Burn Bootloader to set the fuses for 8MHz operation, or your graphics will run rather slowly, then upload the program using a 3.3V ISP (in-system programming) programmer.

Compile the program using Spence Konde"s megaTinyCore ATtiny412/402/212/202 option under the megaTinyCore heading on the Board menu. Check that the subsequent options are set as follows (ignore any other options):

Many projects benefit from a small display as a user interface. For very low power applications this is usually a no-go as the display needs too much energy. I have used e-paper displays from Kent: while these e-paper displays do not need any power to keep the image, changing the display content is not for free, plus is very slow (around 1 second needed to update the display). So I was looking for something low power and fast for a long time, until Christian (thanks!) pointed me to a display from Sharp: both very low power and fast:

And even better: Adafruit has a breakout board for that display available (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1393) :-). The display on the board is the Sharp LS013B4DN04 with 96×96 monochrome pixel resolution. The display is a cross between a e-paper and normal LCD. The ‘background’ color is a nice silver color. What looks cool with this display is that the pixels show up like little mirror:

The display has no backlight: readability is excellent (although somewhat view angle dependent) under daylight, under darker light conditions an extra illumination is needed. It has a very good contrast between the pixels:

The Adafruit breakout board comes with a level shifter so it can be used with 3.3V-5V. I’m using it with 3.3V, and only need 5 wires connected to the display:

One special thing with the Sharp Memory display is that it needs a special clock signal to generate the VCOM, an alternating signal that prevents a DC bias from being built up within the display panel. Depending on the display used, that signal or clock needs to supplied in the range of 0.5 to 60 Hz. That signal can be supplied either externally or by software, depending on the EXTMODE pin:

On the Adafruit breakout board, EXTMODE is pulled LOW: the clocking has to be provided by software. With software a special ‘VCOM’ command is sent to the display:

The ToggleVCOM() function only needs to be called if there are no other display commands sent, as the VCOM bit can be toggled while writing to the display.

Each line of the display can be updated with a command: sending line number, then the number of bytes (12 for the 96 bits) followed by a trailing 16 zero byte:

Of course I have created a new Processor Expert component for using that display. With it is only a matter of minutes to get the display up and running:

Making full updates of the display every 20 ms (50 images per second) requires 41 μA. Of course the less frequent image updates or the less lines update, the better.

That Sharp Memory Display is a really cool one. The Adafruit breakout board has its price ($39.95). It took me a while to get the protocol right, but now I have very low power display and driver in my inventory :-). There is an example project on GitHub, and the SharpMemDisplaycomponent is available on GitHub and will be part of the next McuOnEclipse component release. If you are interested in the sources only, they are available on the McuOnEclipseLibrary project.

Texas Instruments has been making progress possible for decades. We are a global semiconductor company that designs, manufactures, tests and sells analog and embedded processing chips. Our products help our customers efficiently manage power, accurately sense and transmit data and provide the core control or processing in their designs.

Ultra-low-power displays consume very little energy, and the two primary technologies used for these types of displays are bistable and low refresh rate displays. They are used when there is a need for a battery-powered device, want maximum life between charges, and the content being displayed does not change very frequently.

The common uses for ultra-low-power displays are e-readers and electronic price tags. Some of the other applications we have seen are secondary displays for handheld devices and battery-powered products like locks, remote-mounted homes, and industrial products.

Probably the most well know bi-stable low-power display is e-paper technology historically used on e-readers. This technology is available in both monochrome and color.

In a monochrome e-paper display, millions of tiny liquid-filled capsules contain black and white charged ink particles. These capsules are sandwiched between a grid of electrodes. Applying a charge to the electrodes causes the ink particles to migrate to the top of the capsule, and depending on the polarity of the charge, it changes the color of the surface of the display.

E-paper is a reflective technology and, with good ambient light, has an excellent contrast ratio. One of the characteristics of e-paper is that the background is white, whereas many reflective display technologies like LCD have a gray or greenish background. One disadvantage is that E-paper requires front lighting if used in low-light conditions.

Displaying static images on an e-paper display uses very little energy (uW). However, it can require more power (mW) to update the screen than other technologies like LCD in the same size and resolution.

The backlight uses most of the power in a standard TFT display. For example, on a 7” TFT panel, the backlight uses almost 80% of the energy consumed for an average brightness display. The digital circuitry utilizes the remaining power to sustain the picture.

The first step of building a low-power TFT is to move to a reflective or transflective display and eliminate the power consumption of the backlight when the display can use ambient light.

Choosing a Transflective display is a good trade-off since it comes with a backlight that, when turned, the display becomes reflective. However, there is some trade-off in that the reflectance of a transflective display is lower than a pure reflective display. We use an advanced LCD driver chip to reduce the power further to drive the display at different refresh rates.

We use an advanced LCD driver chip to reduce the power further, which allows the display to be driven at different refresh rates. The drivers have two modes; a standard TFT mode that enables the display to operate like a standard TFT being able to do video rate, 60Hz, updates, and a low-power mode where the display refreshes at a rate of 1Hz. This mode is excellent for holding static images and using very little energy. Figure 2.0 depicts the driving methodology. Using these drivers, you can reduce the power of the digital portion of the display by 60%.

Table 2.0 shows a comparison study that we did for a thermostat application to compare different low-power technologies. In this study, the display is active for 15 minutes, and then it shows static images for the remainder of the day.

Conclusion: Depending on your application, either low-power TFT or e-paper may be suitable. If power is critical for your application and requires maintaining an image on display for long periods, consider these great technologies.

US Micro Products has designed displays with both technologies for special low-power applications and can do the same for your product. So let us help you with your display requirements; we have expertise that spans multiple markets and technologies.

If you have a project that is considering taking advantage of any display technology, US Micro Products can provide a solution designed for your application. Send us an email at sales@usmicroproducts.com.

Adding a display to your Arduino can serve many purposes. Since a common use for microcontrollers is reading data from sensors, a display allows you to see this data in real-time without needing to use the serial monitor within the Arduino IDE. It also allows you to give your projects a personal touch with text, images, or even interactivity through a touch screen.

Transparent Organic Light Emitting Diode (TOLED) is a type of LED that, as you can guess, has a transparent screen. It builds on the now common OLED screens found in smartphones and TVs, but with a transparent display, offers up some new possibilities for Arduino screens.

Take for example this brilliant project that makes use of TOLED displays. By stacking 10 transparent OLED screens in parallel, creator Sean Hodgins has converted a handful of 2D screens into a solid-state volumetric display. This kind of display creates an image that has 3-dimensional depth, taking us one step closer to the neon, holographic screens we imagine in the future.

Crystalfontz has a tiny monochrome (light blue) 1.51" TOLED that has 128x56 pixels. As the technology is more recent than the following displays in this list, the cost is higher too. One of these screens can be purchased for around $26, but for certain applications, it might just be worth it.

The liquid crystal display (LCD) is the most common display to find in DIY projects and home appliances alike. This is no surprise as they are simple to operate, low-powered, and incredibly cheap.

This type of display can vary in design. Some are larger, with more character spaces and rows; some come with a backlight. Most attach directly to the board through 8 or 12 connections to the Arduino pins, making them incompatible with boards with fewer pins available. In this instance, buy a screen with an I2C adapter, allowing control using only four pins.

Available for only a few dollars (or as little as a couple of dollars on AliExpress with included I2C adapter), these simple displays can be used to give real-time feedback to any project.

The screens are capable of a large variety of preset characters which cover most use cases in a variety of languages. You can control your LCD using the Liquid Crystal Library provided by Arduino. The display() and noDisplay() methods write to the LCD, as shown in the official tutorial on the Arduino website.

Are you looking for something simple to display numbers and a few basic characters? Maybe you are looking for something with that old-school arcade feel? A seven-segment display might suit your needs.

These simple boards are made up of 7 LEDs (8 if you include the dot), and work much like normal LEDs with a common Anode or Cathode connection. This allows them to take one connection to V+ (or GND for common cathode) and be controlled from the pins of your Arduino. By combining these pins in code, you can create numbers and several letters, along with more abstract designs—anything you can dream up using the segments available!

Next on our list is the 5110 display, also affectionately known as the Nokia display due to its wide use in the beloved and nigh indestructible Nokia 3310.

These tiny LCD screens are monochrome and have a screen size of 84 x 48 pixels, but don"t let that fool you. Coming in at around $2 on AliExpress, these displays are incredibly cheap and usually come with a backlight as standard.

Depending on which library you use, the screen can display multiple lines of text in various fonts. It"s also capable of displaying images, and there is free software designed to help get your creations on screen. While the refresh rate is too slow for detailed animations, these screens are hardy enough to be included in long-term, always-on projects.

For a step up in resolution and functionality, an OLED display might be what you are looking for. At first glance, these screens look similar to the 5110 screens, but they are a significant upgrade. The standard 0.96" screens are 128 x 64 monochrome, and come with a backlight as standard.

They connect to your Arduino using I2C, meaning that alongside the V+ and GND pins, only two further pins are required to communicate with the screen. With various sizes and full color options available, these displays are incredibly versatile.

For a project to get you started with OLED displays, our Electronic D20 build will teach you everything you need to know -- and you"ll end up with the ultimate geeky digital dice for your gaming sessions!

These displays can be used in the same way as the others we have mentioned so far, but their refresh rate allows for much more ambitious projects. The basic monochrome screen is available on Amazon.

Thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT LCDs) are in many ways another step up in quality when it comes to options for adding a screen to your Arduino. Available with or without touchscreen functionality, they also add the ability to load bitmap files from an on-board microSD card slot.

Arduino have an official guide for setting up their non-touchscreen TFT LCD screen. For a video tutorial teaching you the basics of setting up the touchscreen version, YouTuber educ8s.tv has you covered:

With the touchscreen editions of these screens costing less than $10 on AliExpress, these displays are another great choice for when you need a nice-looking display for your project.

Looking for something a little different? An E-paper (or E-ink depending on who you ask) display might be right for you. These screens differ from the others giving a much more natural reading experience, it is no surprise that this technology is the cornerstone of almost every e-reader available.

The reason these displays look so good is down to the way they function. Each "pixel" contains charged particles between two electrodes. By switching the charge of each electrode, you can influence the negatively charged black particles to swap places with the positively charged white particles.

This is what gives e-paper such a natural feel. As a bonus, once the ink is moved to its location, it uses no power to keep it there. This makes these displays naturally low-power to operate.

This article has covered most options available for Arduino displays, though there are definitely more weird and wonderful ways to add feedback to your DIY devices.

The STM32U5 series offers advanced power-saving microcontrollers, based on Arm® Cortex®-M33 to meet the most demanding power/performance requirements for smart applications, including wearables, personal medical devices, home automation, and industrial sensors.

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High integration and innovation: large memory with ECC on Flash and SRAM, USB Type-C w/power delivery controller, CAN FD, 14- and 12-bit ADC, Multi-function Digital Filter (MDF) and Audio Digital Filter (ADF)

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