OLED Burn In

the old fart

Senior Member
Hi Guys,

I have 3 AXE134Y Oled Moduals.

The first one I purchased has started to fail.

10 locations have missing colums, another has a missing dot.

I've output a screen test using CGRAM serout C.4, N2400, (254,120,31,31,31,31,31,31,31,31), to all locations.
I can read the usually displayed characters burn't into the screen.

What is the expected life of these units?


TOF
 

Dippy

Moderator
TOF, burn-in (as in ghostly image) is a documented fault with OLED displays.
When you light all the pixels you may see a dim image of something that has been previously displayed for lomg periods.
The Big Boys use screen saving or pixel shift for graphics displays but you are a bit snookered with character displays.
Hindsight being perfect, of course, but you may have to think of a plan to reduce long-term display in the same place on the screen.

Luminance degradation; particularly at higher temperatures (unsurprisingly) is another 'property'.
Yellow is the most reliable of the colours.


This is an example from Densitron who have been at it for years.
Click the link on that page.

Total failure is a different matter and could be down to manufacturing or random failure.
This, of course, assumes proper handling, implementation and use by the End User.
 

the old fart

Senior Member
Display is on 24/7, as are my other displays.
This one is a Time Clock, Date, and temperatures.
The others are used for Burgular alarm and a Koi Pond controller.

I also use this one 'in the field' for various projects, so possibly gets knocked around a bit.

I'll have to see about reprogramming clock to move the characters about a bit.

Thanks

TOF
 

grim_reaper

Senior Member
Pretty sure I've mentioned this before (Déjà vu!), but my solution to this exact problem is to add a PIR to the project(s) so that the displays are only active when someone is there to look at them.
A bit like the falling tree in the forest... if you don't see the display, it's not on...
Of course, it helps with a whole range of other power consumption issues - such as simple LED indications, etc.
 

the old fart

Senior Member
I've had a go at reprogrammimg the OLED 18M2.

I tried 'hide' but, while it worked to switch display on/off, the display corrupted.

This uses pinc.2 as an input, which when '0' changes the value of b1 to 32.

I used this method because this display is portable and used for project development, as well as date/clock.

Input c.2 is switched from a small PIR modual mounted in the display box.(PIR from ebay)

TOF
 

Attachments

Jeremy Harris

Senior Member
I've had similar issues with these OLED displays. One that was displaying the same data in some locations for over a year shows the "ghost" image problem when I changed the display fixed messages, another developed problems with odd lines showing up and rows of missing pixels after extended use.

I've now stopped using them for displays that are on all the time, and reverted to using backlit LCD displays, but I like the idea of using a PIR to turn an OLED display on only when needed. Apart from saving power and saving long term damage to the display, it also gets around the problem that these displays are actually too bright a night. I used one on my electric bike energy display mounted on the handlebars, and it was fine during the day, but at night was so bright as to be distracting, so was swapped out for a backlit LCD with a very dim backlight, which works well.
 

grim_reaper

Senior Member
... it also gets around the problem that these displays are actually too bright a night.
Yes, exactly! One of my many nearly-finished-will-get-round-to-it-one-xmas-holiday projects is a new alarm clock, and finding a decent dimmable OLED display is a nightmare! The PIR idea works, but sometimes it was triggered by me rolling over at night and other times I woke in the dark and end up frantically waving to get the thing to detect me.
It's been switched off for nearly a year now! Must get round to looking at the design again... sigh...
 

Dippy

Moderator
If you fancy getting fancy then look at some of the Graphics OLEDs. You can send commands to adjust display brightness. For example the old driver SSD1306.
Once you get the driving routines sorted they are no harder to use than GLCD.
But, again, without some user-care they are still susceptible to the problems described above. OLEDs aren't a magic solution.
 

geoff07

Senior Member
Perhaps you would be interested in my graphics display driver, nearing completion, that drives the 2.2" 320x240 displays that you can get on ebay for a few dollars. I'm not yet dealing with the touchscreen versions but I can write graphics and a 5x8 font on the screen with gazillions of colours. They aren't fast enough for moving images but fine for normal displays. The displays themselves are mobile phone units so presumably reliable and long-lasting.

More when I publish the finished version or you can have the work in progress if interested. It uses a 28X2 and an eeprom, and is driven with commands similar to the RevEd displays.
 

rq3

Senior Member
If you fancy getting fancy then look at some of the Graphics OLEDs. You can send commands to adjust display brightness. For example the old driver SSD1306.
Once you get the driving routines sorted they are no harder to use than GLCD.
But, again, without some user-care they are still susceptible to the problems described above. OLEDs aren't a magic solution.
Some time ago I worked on a project involving a 20M2 and a 4D Systems graphic OLED. It all works fine, but as you say the display does indeed burn in. And pretty quickly, too,
even though I generally run it at 1/2 brightness. As a strict guess, I would say that the issue became visible after a few hundred hours. The display is still perfectly usable, but the
burn-in is definitely visible at all brightness levels now.

Rip
 
Top