We love our black and white monochrome displays but we also like to dabble with some color now and then. Our big 1.5" color OLED displays are perfect when you need a small display with vivid, high-contrast 16-bit color. The visible portion of the OLED measures 1.5" diagonal and contains 128x128 RGB pixels, each one made of red, green and blue OLEDs. Each pixel can be set with 16-bits of resolution for a large range of colors. Because the display uses OLEDs, there is no backlight, and the contrast is very high (black is really black). We picked this display for its excellent color, this is the nicest mini OLED we could find!

This OLED uses the SSD1351 driver chip, which manages the display. You can talk to the driver chip using 4-wire write-only SPI (clock, data, chip select, data/command and an optional reset pin). Included on the fully assembled breakout is the OLED display and a small boost converter (required for providing 12V to the OLED) and a microSD card holder. This design includes built-in logic level shifting so you can use it with 3-5VDC power and logic levels. Our example code shows how to read a bitmap from the uSD card and display it all via SPI.

The 1.5" version of the display comes with an EYESPI connector! This 18-pin 0.5mm pitch FPC connector has a flip-top connector for using a flex cable to hook up your display. It enables you to avoid soldering and get your display up off of the breadboard! Consider it a sort of "STEMMA QT for displays" - a way to quickly connect and extend display wiring that uses a lot of SPI pins. It also allows for communicating with displays over longer distances. The EYESPI flex cables are available in multiple lengths to suit any project. This is especially useful for projects where you want your display mounted separate from your microcontroller.

Board Technical Details

• 1.5" diagonal OLED, 16-bit color
• SPI interface
• 3.3-5V logic and power
• Micro-SD card holder
• Dimensions: 43.17mm / 1.7" x 42mm / 1.65" x 5.42mm / 0.2"

Please note: all OLEDs have a “half life” — their brightness naturally diminishes over time, albeit over many thousands of hours. This makes them a poor choice for always-on 24/7/365 use. Best to turn off the display when inactive, or consider using a color LCD for continuously running projects.