Qwiic Transparent OLED HUD Hookup Guide

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Contributors: Englandsaurus
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Introduction

Clear screens are no longer a thing of the Sci-Fi world! The Qwiic Transparent OLED HUD (Head Up Display) is SparkFun's answer to all of your futuristic transparent HUD needs. While you can see through the display, each segment is area colored, meaning that while no one segment can change colors, there are different colored segments on the display.

SparkFun Transparent OLED HUD Breakout (Qwiic)

LCD-15079

Required Materials

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need the following materials. You may not need everything though depending on what you have. Add it to your cart, read through the guide, and adjust the cart as necessary.

Microcontroller

The Transparent OLED HUD requires quite a bit of RAM, so you'll need a microcontroller with at least 5500 bytes of RAM to control everything. Check out the below for some possible options.

SparkFun SAMD21 Mini Breakout

SparkFun SAMD21 Mini Breakout

DEV-13664
$22.50
18
Arduino Mega 2560 R3

Arduino Mega 2560 R3

DEV-11061
$48.40
60
SparkFun ESP32 Thing

SparkFun ESP32 Thing

DEV-13907
$23.50
69
SparkFun RedBoard Turbo - SAMD21 Development Board

SparkFun RedBoard Turbo - SAMD21 Development Board

DEV-14812
$19.95
8
SparkFun ESP8266 Thing - Dev Board

SparkFun ESP8266 Thing - Dev Board

WRL-13711
$18.50
71

Teensy 3.6

DEV-14057
15 Retired

Cable

Now to get into the Qwiic ecosystem, the key will be using a Qwiic shields to match your preference of microcontroller. In this tutorial, we'll be using Qwiic-to-breadboard adapter cable. You will also need a cable to upload code to your microcontroller.

USB Cable A to B - 6 Foot

USB Cable A to B - 6 Foot

CAB-00512
$4.50
1
Qwiic Cable - Breadboard Jumper (4-pin)

Qwiic Cable - Breadboard Jumper (4-pin)

PRT-14425
$1.50

Suggested Reading

If you aren't familiar with the Qwiic system, we recommend reading here for an overview.

Qwiic Connect System
Qwiic Connect System

We would also recommend taking a look at the following tutorials if you aren't familiar with them.

Serial Communication

Asynchronous serial communication concepts: packets, signal levels, baud rates, UARTs and more!

I2C

An introduction to I2C, one of the main embedded communications protocols in use today.

Serial Terminal Basics

This tutorial will show you how to communicate with your serial devices using a variety of terminal emulator applications.