Oled displays are great for visualizing small amount of data. Having that in mind I thought it’d be useful if I have a small display, connected to the Internet in my work space. The plan is simple, connect the ESP module to Internet to fetch data in real time and display them on the OLED display.
COMPONENTS REQUIRED:OLED DISPLAY:I wanted this project to be small and compact size so I have gone with this 0.96″ OLED display module. It has a resolution of 128×64 pixel. It uses I2C communication protocol, so less wiring mess. We just need 4 wires to control it two wire for the I2C bus(SDA & SCL) and VCC and GND to power it up. And can show all sorts of alpha-numerical and graphical data. Perfect for my application.
ESP8266 MODULE:Now to connect to Internet and control the display I will be using popular ESP8266 microcontroller. It has WiFi built-in. So we can connect to the Internet easily.
BATTERY:We will also need a Li-Ion battery if we want to make it portable. But it’s totally optional and you can ignore them and use a regular DC power supply adapter to power this project.
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Circuit connection :Some of the displays may have the GND and VCC power pins swapped around. Be sure to check your display and connect the pins accordingly. You can test this setup by using a nodemcu. Connections are as followed.
- VCC – NodeMCU 3.3V
- GND – NodeMCU GND
- SCL – NodeMCU D1 / GPIO5
- SDA – NodeMCU D2 / GPIO4
Many libraries are available to control these displays. I find the Adafruit library very easy to understand and use in projects. I am going to use the AdaFruit library in this tutorial. You’ll need to install “adafruit_GFX” library and “adafruit_SSD1306” library. Since I wanted to make a Digital clock that can also display my current Instagram followers count we will also need another library for follower counter also. We will use NTP Server to get the real time and Instastat Library by Brian Lough to get the Instagram Followers count.
I have designed a PCB for this project to hook up the display in a single board to make it compact. I have used ESP12F for this project and SMD components to reduce space. I solder everything on the PCB and connect a small battery as well.
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