Particle Photon is a tiny micro controller, just about the size of an arduino nano. But the photon is designed for easy IoT prototyping, it supports OTA updates to its firmware. So all we have to do is get it connected to the internet and we could do all the programming wireless, the photon uses a Cypress WiFi chip and the STM32 ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller.
In this instructable I will be showing you how to work with OLED Displays with the particle photon. OLED displays are low powered led displays (consumes lower power than LCD displays) and comes in tiny packages which it make it easy to use for wearable devices.
Step 1: Tools and Components
Here is what you will need to start working with the project
- Particle Photon
- OLED Display (SPI)
- Breadboard
- Connecting Wires
- MicroUSB Cable
If you purchase a Photon Dev kit the mciroUSB cable and breadboard is included in it.
Step 2: Connect to the Particle Cloud
If you just ordered a brand new photon the first step is getting it connected to the internet and the Particle Cloud. All you need for this step is to download the particle app for android or your apple device. Create a user account in the app and login into it.
Once you login you should see the option to add a new device, follow the on screen instructions to add the photon to your account and also get it connected to your WiFi network.
Once connected to the internet, you should see the on board LED blink cyan, and after a successful connection to the particle cloud you should see it breathing cyan.
Step 3: Circuit
Now it is time to connect the OLED display to the photon, no soldering skills are required for this instructable as we will be using a bread board to do all the connections.
Follow the connections as shown below, this circuit is specific to SPI board so make sure you have an OLED SPI display. The connections are quite simple and you could change the connections if required, just make sure you make the changes to the pin mapping in the code.
OLED Photon
D0 ———– D0
D1 ———– D1
RST ———- D2
DC ———– D3
VCC ———- 3.3V
GND ———- GND
Step 4: Code
To upload the code to the particle photon open up the particle web IDE on a web browser, login into your account and copy the below code and paste it in the editor. You can make changes to display anything you want, by editing the last few lines of code.
If you have multiple photons make sure you select the right one, the IDE shows the photons online with a cyan circle beside the name of the photon. Once you have selected the right photon hit flash and the code should be uploaded to the board.
Read more: OLED Display (SPI) With Particle Photon