Onboard OLED Display for Pixhawk - Part 1 of 2 - SOLVED

ArduCopter
1

Quick Question for anyone.

Does this OLED Display for PixHawk will display any lights, characters if you simply provide +5V and GND?

Is there a power test to see if board is good without connecting it to any FC. Is there a power on indicator on the display?

I have a bunch inside my box, I just want to simply test them to see if they are good or bad.

SOLUTION:

  1. The OLED Display will not light up if you simply provide +5V and make a GND connection. So, the only way to test if the OLED display will work is by connecting it to the PixHawk Flight controller.

Please also check this documentation https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-display-onboard.html

  1. There are Four Mission Planner parameters that controls LED display. Those are;

a) NTF_LED_OVERIDE = Should be set to 0 (Disbaled)
b) NTF_LED_BRIGHT = Chose from 0 to 3
c) NTF_DISPLAY_TYPE = Pixhawk either supports SSD1306, then select 1, if using the SH1106 then select 2 and you must reboot the board after writing the parameters.
d) NTF_LED_TYPES: By default you will see a value of 199. If you click value field you will see following options in a new pop up window.

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i) For OLED display to work default options are fine.
ii) If you want to learn more about other boards supported or how to connect an LED strip check this link for more details. https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-external-leds.html

From the pictures below of my two OLED displays, the one to the left didn’t worked because its not compatible with PixHawk.

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o2
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2

This is just the display. If you need lights, you can attach I2C LEDs or use WS2812 LEDs via serial.

3

That wasn’t my question. Is there a power test to see if board is good without connecting it to any FC. Is there a power on indicator on the display?

I have a bunch inside my box, I just want to simply test them to see if they are good or bad.

4

I don’t remember it having seperate power indication LED. But everytime I connected this to AP, It lights up without doing any setup.

5

Mine are not lighting up at all. All of them. Strange. I am connecting to I2C port. Will they light up using just the USB cable or need battery power?

Strange thing I have noticed that some has far left pin marked VCC and some has the 2nd last far left pin as VCC. There is no consistent design by the chinese manufacturers.

note with Pixhawk and Mission planner, you have to enable two parameters else they will not light up. One parameter define the type of OLED you are using.

6

Post a picture. Also try setting up the parameters as shown on the link and check again. There are lot of Chinese models in this.

8

You need to enable the right driver for them to do anything. Ntf_display is the parameter. There is only two options so try one if it doesn’t work try the other

9

What do you mean by right driver if connected to Pixhawk? there is no driver needed. I have one working already, the above two are just plain dead.

10

This is what I was referring to:

set NTF_DISPLAY_TYPE to 1 if using an SSD1306, 2 if using the SH1106 and reboot the board.

If I have a 1106 board and the display type is set to 1306 the display is dead and shows nothing

11

ok. I am familiar with the parameter. I solved the problem. I am going to update the original post with more clarity for future audience of this thread. Thanks