Hi All,
I have a small battery powered ProMini project where I need to read quick changing values from a counter to a small display. This unit will be used both outdoors in direct sunlight as well as the dark of night.
I have tried a 12864 OLED (about 1.7") running I2C and it's very fast responding and displaying the fast changing numeric digits from the encoder, however in sunlight conditions (especially direct sunlight), the display washes out and is almost completely unreadable.
I have also used a JLX12864G lcd running SPI and its totally awesome in direct sunlight and great on battery consumption but is really not good for the fast changing digits, unless the encoder is spinning very very slow, the digits will blur together and again becomes difficult to read when trying to move quickly to a certain position. From what I've researched, I guess the liquid takes more time to discharge back to the OFF position which gives this blur effect.
I would appreciate any thoughts or experiences with either the OLED or LCD issue and maybe some ideas on how to get the best of both displays....
Ie. Some sort of filter for the OLED? A faster switching LCD? Maybe even a different type of display to try altogether?
Thanks in advance!
Vince
Regular yellow-green LCDs work pretty well in sunlight.
Yes, the LCD is relatively slow but humans can't read very fast either.
Just display a running average at a human readable speed.
There is not much point in seeing a fast OLED with digits changing so quickly that you can't read them.
David.
I recently worked with a JLX256128 display and I agree, the LCD refresh was very poor. On the other side, I once used a DOGM128 which seems to react much more quicker, but still is slower than a 128x64 OLED.
But... this is more like a personal perception. I did not do any measures.
I agree to David: Any changing values beyond 10Hz are hard to read. And 4Hz should be very much possible by the LCD. Sometimes it is also better to display the min/max/avg value of a one second period. This seams to be more meaningful that the a flashing current value.
Oliver
Hey Oliver,
Thanks for reference to the DOGM128, I see they sell that display at Mouser and I'm going to give it a shot.
As far as the slow refresh goes, for anything else, (as you and David have mentioned) the JLX would be perfectly acceptable however this application is a bit different as the display is used in a construction environment (with vehicle and equipment traffic present) on a handheld measuring device where the user needs to quickly move to get close to the target measurement then slow up to mark a reference point.
Just that short delay for the screen to settle between the short decimal increments right before the target distance is reached seems like forever in that environment. Now, I have used delays to sample the count to about 125ms and that helped quite a bit, but my job as a designer is to try and find the best solution that I can. That's why I posted here where I have seen some really brilliant ideas come to life!
"Just Maybe" the DOGM128 will provide that little extra quality that will make this product better. Its worth a shot for me if I can make a safer product for my workers.
Hopefully, your U8g2 library will support this display as I already created a perfect font for U8g2!
Thanks again for the reply's and I'll be re-posting my results for others in the future.
Best regards,
Vince
Yes, the DOGM128 is supported.
The picture shows my own DOGM128 (on an Arduino Shield), but with the older u8glib (Somehow I never made a picture with U8g2, but it works):
Oliver
Looks good, Interesting application you have running on it!
Looking at the specs, it only uses 270μA with a 5mA backlight... Thats actually better than the JLX!
Thx again...
Interesting application you have running on it
Little Rook Chess (https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Little+Rook+Chess) is part of the U8g2 library 
Oliver