Little Bird
Display-O-Tron HAT
The Pimoroni Display-O-Tron HAT packs a 16×3 character LCD display, six-zone RGB backlight, bar graph LEDs, and six capacitive touch buttons into one slim HA...
The Pimoroni Display-O-Tron HAT packs a 16×3 character LCD display, six-zone RGB backlight, bar graph LEDs, and six capacitive touch buttons into one slim HAT for Raspberry Pi. It's ideal for internet radio, home automation dashboards, and any project that needs a compact display with input controls.
Comes fully assembled — just pop it on your Raspberry Pi and install the Python library to get started. The library includes examples for backlighting, bar graphs, touch buttons, menus, games, and even an internet radio.
Key Features
- 16×3 Character LCD – Full ASCII character set with eight custom glyphs
- Six-Zone RGB Backlight – Individually controllable colour zones (SN3218 driver)
- Six Bar Graph LEDs – Bright white, individually dimmable
- Six Capacitive Touch Buttons – Microchip CAP1166 driver for reliable touch input
- Breakout Pins – Power, I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, and five GPIO pins broken out
- Fully Assembled – Ready to use (breakout header pins require soldering)
Compatibility
- Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3, 2, B+, A+
- Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W
- Any Raspberry Pi with a 40-pin GPIO header
Ideal For
- Internet radio and media player interfaces
- Home automation dashboards
- System monitoring and status displays
- Interactive menu-driven projects
Resources
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- breakout
- A breakout is a small circuit board that makes a tiny or hard-to-solder component easier to connect to with standard pins. It matters because this OLED module can be wired into a microcontroller project without needing to solder directly to the display’s fine contacts.
- GPIO
- General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.
- I2C
- I2C is a two-wire communication bus used by many sensors and small modules. It matters because several I2C devices can share the same two wires, but each device needs a compatible address and your controller must support I2C.
- LCD
- LCD stands for liquid crystal display, a screen technology that uses a backlight and liquid crystals to show images or text. It matters because LCD modules usually need a display driver and enough controller pins or a bus interface to send image data.
- PWM
- Pulse Width Modulation is a way for a digital pin to simulate variable output power by switching on and off very quickly. It matters for controlling things like LED brightness, motor speed, or servo-style signals from a microcontroller pin.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, usually referring to an LED that can mix those three colours. It matters because controlling an RGB LED teaches how separate outputs combine to create different colours.
- SPI
- A fast serial communication bus often used for displays, memory cards, and sensors. It matters because SPI devices need specific pins for clock and data, plus a separate chip-select line for each device.
- UART
- UART is a simple serial connection that sends data over separate transmit and receive wires, often labelled TX and RX. It matters because this module is designed to replace a wired UART cable with a wireless link while keeping the same serial data format.
Find this product in
Displays & Screens
Related Tutorials
Free guides on learn.littlebird.com.au
