OT: A cool new display technology I've not seen before.

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
That looks nice and I imagine it could be useful in applications which need low current draw.

A 28X2 could handle a 90x90 display buffer for ease of use and speed with only a few unused rows and column pixels, and a small border round the display is possibly no bad thing. Driving it directly per pixel would give full access but would likely be slower. One could perhaps split it between buffered and unbuffered.

Looking at the source supplier it seems that version may have been discontinued by the manufacturer but there is a larger version, with even more pixels, 166x144, which is almost half the price.

166x144 is too big for a complete PICAXE memory buffer, but one could use 2x2 pixels as one virtual pixel, making it effectively 83x72, and there might even be tricks available to round-off corners to make it look even nicer.

As you say it's finding an application. Alarm clock ? Thermometer ? Put an Android or IOS logo on it and strap it to your wrist, the modern equivalent of a fake Rolex ?
 

erco

Senior Member
"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."

An interesting part with a ridiculous restriction. I'm sure they want someone to find a way to use it. In copious quantities!
 

stan74

Senior Member
Write only not a problem with colour glcd cos a pixel is a word. You only need a buffer for drawing lines not text on bit mapped displays. I bet it's slow like old kindle electric ink.
 

Buzby

Senior Member
Looking at the data sheet for this display, it looks like you could display lines of text, or sprites for Space Invaders, without needing a complete 96x96 bitmap held in RAM.

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/LS013B4DN04-3V_FPC-204284.pdf

The datasheet seems to indicate that you can update an arbitrary single row of pixels on demand, so you would only need a 96x1 buffer, 12 bytes.
It also seems to indicate that the complete display can be refreshed at 60Hz, so moving small objects should be really quick.

I just wish I had a reason to buy one !.
 

newplumber

Senior Member
I just wish I had a reason to buy one !.
you could make a clock that tells time in all cities with 10+ million populations ...and 1 per country
or you could get it working then (calmly) show me how to use it so I can balance my wrist check book :)
it does look pretty cool tho
 

stan74

Senior Member
Like all data sheets https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/LS013B4DN04-3V_FPC-204284.pdf too complicated..what are those timing signals diplayed? Better to look at an arduino lib where someone's done the donkey work for you.
※2 Setting value for pixel memory initialization
SCS=Driving accordingly to clear pixel internal memory method (use all clear flag or write all screen white)
S1=M2 (all clear flag) = “H” or write white
SCLK: Normal Driving
If the device is not bit mapped then why a buffer? If a pixel is a byte it's just written using set x,y page/column address and write byte.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
If the device is not bit mapped then why a buffer? If a pixel is a byte it's just written using set x,y page/column address and write byte.
The device is bit mapped in the sense that every pixel can be mapped to a bit in a particular byte which it would be sent.

An image can be churned straight out to the display without needing any buffer. A buffer is only needed if one wants to alter individual pixels while keeping other pixels in the display as they are.

The display only supports whole screen or whole line updates, not individual pixel updates, nor groups of 8 pixel updates. So a buffer has to be used if one wants individual pixel control, which one would need for anything useful.

Other displays like the SSD1306 allow 'groups of 8 pixels' updates so a single pixel can be updated by reading how that 8 pixel group is set, updating the specific pixel, sending the group back. This display simply doesn't support that.
 

stan74

Senior Member
Hi Hippy, hope you well.
"The display only supports whole screen or whole line updates, not individual pixel updates, nor groups of 8 pixel updates. So a buffer has to be used if one wants individual pixel control, which one would need for anything useful."
That explains things. Useless for graphics..in comparison.
Drawing a line across screen diagonals would need some thought.think the display is good at low power if the pixels are just set and not refreshed ..like early kindle book thingys were.
I
 

eggdweather

Senior Member
Out of interest e-paper / e-ink displays of typically 200x128 pixels and either SPI bus or serial are now reasonably price at about $30 and take no power after a refresh/draw/print. Look for Waveshare.
 
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