Interfacing Oled Display with SPI (and use it with luma.oled)

[joerg]

I haven't found detailed howto about it, so I write here how to interface a 7-pin oled display with spi interface. Most examples are using I2C interface, what means that the cheap oled displays need to be resoldered. Most of them come with spi interface as default.

Bildschirmfoto vom 2021-02-21 14-36-10.png (25.85 KiB) Viewed 117 times

-Install luma.oled, some dependencies might missing, depending the on your system.
-Install RPI.GPIO for odroid !!after luma.oled, as the spi interface of luma.oled need the gpios RPI.24 and RPI.25, and with luma.oled will be installed the officially RPI.GPIO.
-Install the luma examples.
Here are some commandos I saved from my C1:

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//luma.oled and dependencies
sudo apt-get install python3-dev
sudo pip3 install psutil
sudo pip3 install feedparser
sudo pip3 install luma.oled

//RPi.GPIO-Odroid
git clone https://github.com/awesometic/RPi.GPIO-Odroid
cd RPi.GPIO-Odroid
sudo python3 setup.py build install
cd ..

//luma examples dependencies
sudo apt install python3-dev python3-pip libfreetype6-dev libjpeg-dev build-essential
sudo apt install libsdl-dev libportmidi-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev

//luma examples
git clone https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.examples.git
cd luma.examples
sudo pip3 install -e .
cd examples

//load spi kernel modules
sudo modprobe spidev
sudo modprobe spicc

Finally start a luma.oled example:

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sudo python3 font_awesome.py -i spi --display ssd1309 --spi-bus-speed 4000000

Last to say, that it should run on C1, C4 and N2. On XU4 only with level shifting. On C2 off course not, because missing spi interface.

[rooted]

Very useful, thank you for the instructions.

[fvolk]

I haven't found detailed howto about it, so I write here how to interface a 7-pin oled display with spi interface.

Thank you for posting this example, this helps a lot for non-hardware people....

Does this mean all the SPI based LCD displays available in the RPi world can be used similarly like this?

[odroid]

@fvolk,
If you stick to upstream kernel, you need to port the tiny-DRM driver as @tobetter did.

[joerg]

@fvolk, typically this kind of oled displays are meant, that have a 7-pin interface, a ssd1306/1309 chip and they have in description spi/iic.
E.g. like this:

IMG_20210226_124431.jpg (220.9 KiB) Viewed 57 times

This one I have is 2.42" and one color only. It's OLED not LCD.
There are a lot of them on AliExpress or Ebay.
I am planning to use it with Esp32, not with C1. With the C1 I made only a basic test, to see how it is looking.

[fvolk]

If you stick to upstream kernel, you need to port the tiny-DRM driver as @tobetter did.

I have standardised on tobetter's 5.10.x tree on my C2/C4... :-)

[fvolk]

I have a 1.5 OLED laying around, it is wired as SPI default, so this should work as first test?

oled15.jpg (68.98 KiB) Viewed 51 times

[joerg]

Yes, this one should work.