Adafruit
SHARP Memory Display Breakout - 1.3 96x96 Silver Monochrome
The 96x96 resolution SHARP Memory LCD is no longer made, but we have a higher-resolution 168x144 display available in the shop at https://www.adafruit.com...
The 1.3" SHARP Memory LCD display is a cross between an eInk (e-paper) display and an LCD. It has the ultra-low power usage of eInk and the fast-refresh rates of an LCD. This model has a matt silver background, and pixels show up as little mirrors for a silver-reflective display, a really beautiful and unique look. It does not have a backlight, but it is daylight readable. For dark/night reading you may need to illuminate the LCD area with external LEDs.
The display is 3V powered and 3V logic, so we placed it on a fully assembled & tested breakout board with a 3V regulator and level shifting circuitry. The display slots into a ZIF socket on board and we use a piece of double-sided tape to adhere it onto one side. There are four mounting holes so you can easily attach it to a box.
The display is 'write only' which means that it only needs 3 pins to send data. However, the downside of a write-only display is that the entire 96x96 bits (1,152 bytes) must be buffered by the microcontroller driver. On an Arduino Uno/Leonardo that's half the RAM available and so it might not be possible to run this display with other RAM-heavy libraries like SD interfacing.
We don't have a detailed tutorial yet but its very easy to get started. Solder the included header to the display and connect Vin to 3-5V, GND to ground, and SCK, DI and CS to three Arduino pins. Then download and install our SHARP Memory Display library and the Adafruit GFX library. Run the example sharpmemtest sketch with the correct data pins to start drawing lines, circles, rectangles, text, etc!
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.
- CS
- CS stands for chip select, a control pin used by SPI devices to tell which connected device should listen. It matters when you connect more than one SPI module to the same microcontroller, because each device usually needs its own CS pin.
- 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.
- microcontroller
- A microcontroller is a small computer on a chip that runs your program and controls connected inputs and outputs. For this product, it is the part that reads buttons and sensors, drives the display and speaker, and communicates over Bluetooth.
- RAM
- RAM is temporary memory used while a device is running, and its contents are lost when power is removed. A “Run in RAM” mode is useful for testing settings without permanently programming the module, but it may not support every feature.
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Displays & Screens
Related Tutorials
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