Oled modules burn in?
electrobob wrote 03/23/2017 at 12:56 • 1 pointOled modules are supposed to suffer from burn in if something is displayed for a long time. Even more, the life of pixels is rather short, so I expect a dimming of most used pixels.
Has anyone actually seen how this behaves in real life with the cheap SDS1306 modules?
I normally don't like these modules, but need something small that will be on 24/7 so I am wondering what the display will look like after many months/years of being on and displaying static info.
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I've got as small project that switches a USB mouse between 4 PCs. This display has 4 circles 1 for each PC and the circle displayed for the main PC is definitely now dimmer than the others.
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Really depends on your application, you could use a light sensor to dim the display further down in darkness and generally run it at something like max. 70% brightness. You can also shift the static content around by a few pixels per hour to spread wear a little.
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I would like to stick with the 0.9x inch OLED because of size, cost and I2C/SPI interface. Plus they are very visible in room lighting levels.
The datasheet from more serious suppliers says something like 50% reduction after 10.000 hours, which is too little lifetime for me. I was trying to find some pictures or experience of how bad such a display looks after 1 year of being on all the time.
Inverting the display helps only if I do it 50% of the time, which is annoying. I guess I will have to stick with the 1.44" ILI9341 displays...
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Burned pixels will be well visible only on large white areas, but if you will use it only for text, then it will by not so much visible.
And yes, it decrease brightness of a pixel about 50% after 10k hours, but this is measured with maximum brightness. Don't worry to decrease brightness, the display will be still readable and you increase the lifetime...
My opinion is that OLED displays are the best, visibility, brightness, contrast, current consumption, connection to MCU, .... but only if you looking for small display. OLED is my first choice.
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you are actually right, dimming the display should still make it visible, but also last longer.
Thanks!
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maybe E-ink modules?
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I have these ideas:
- set lower brightness (which will be enough to read), this rapidly slow down burning
- invert image during day (dark on light) and during night light on dark, then pixel burning will be more uniform for whole screen.
- or just turn of the display if is not needed...
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these modules are cheap and work great. I've only used them for small projects so i haven't noticed wear of the pixels.
but they only need 4/5 pins and usually come with male headers solder on.
Build with female headers and you can just swap in a new module if its that bad after a while. or animate the data so its not as static.
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